Netflix's new 'My List' feature is a vastly smarter take on the Instant Queue

Tired of being a slave to your Netflix Instant Queue? “My List” can help.

If you’re a Netflix user in the U.S., you likely have several years’ worth of movie and TV choices stored on your instant Queue. Unless you start manually sorting things (or use a service like InstantWatcher regularly), it’s easy to let your Instant Queue stagnate to the point of uselessness.

Today Netflix introduced My List, a smarter counterpart to the Instant Queue that will automatically recommend things you’re likely to watch. No more fishing through a long list of movies you added years ago. It’s a nice upgrade for U.S. Netflix users, but for international users it’s also their first chance to finally save Netflix streaming titles (the Instant Queue never made it outside of the U.S.).

My List works just like the Instant Queue does: You can quickly add titles to it, and the list will also appear across all of your Netflix devices. Netflix is also making My List more descriptive than the Instant Queue by offering a special tag for shows with new episodes (before you’d have to pay attention to a show’s cover image to see that), and it will also alert you when titles in your list will expire (one of the more useful features available on InstantWatcher). The latter feature is only available on the Netflix site for now, but the company says it will hit more devices eventually.

It’s surprising it’s taken so long for Netflix to revamp its experience for collecting streaming shows, given that it’s the company’s main focus now. But since Netflix still doesn’t have a decent social experience baked into its service, I suppose I’ll take what I can get.