How to Get Netflix, Hulu and Other Streaming Services to Recommend Better Shows
Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have more video offerings than ever. So why are so many of their recommendations so bad?
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The home screen is full of shows you’d never watch, or stuff you’ve watched 1,000 times already. When you spot the “Recommended for you” feed, you scroll…and scroll…and scroll, until you get the feeling the service might have you confused with someone else.
If that’s the case, your preferences might be wrecked by exes, spouses, kids or even friends who used your password before companies started cracking down. And if you don’t give shows a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, services might not understand how you feel about them.
Here are some tricks and hidden hacks you can use to retrain your streaming services so they don’t suggest “Love Is Blind” when you really want “The Crown.”
Get with the profile
Lorrie Bolt, a 33-year-old dance instructor in Yonkers, N.Y., has been sharing streaming services with her ex-boyfriend for the past five years. Even though they broke up years ago, they still use the same Hulu, Peacock and Max accounts to save money.
“My Hulu is filled with anime thanks to him,” Bolt said. “It’s a problem because our tastes are completely different.” And her ex, down in Texas, has an overdose of unwanted reality TV in his feeds: “He was beyond tired of seeing suggestions to watch every franchise of ‘Housewives.’ ”
Over the years, most services have introduced profiles, so that one account can keep different people’s preferences and recommendations separate. Bolt’s ex suggested she create one on Peacock so their viewing habits don’t intrude on one another. And she did.
Netflix has also long offered profiles. “The biggest thing a member can do to get the best recommendations out of the system is exert some profile hygiene,” said Elmar Nubbemeyer, senior director of product innovation at Netflix.
Profiles work well if everyone in the house keeps to their own. But if you regularly have family TV nights, you might confuse your own grown-up recommendation engine with the sudden appearance of a “Kung Fu Panda.” Instead, create a profile just for shared viewing.
“When the system learns what things you both enjoy together, the result might not be the sum of what you both enjoy separately,” Nubbemeyer said. “It may be a different genre that neither of you would ever watch on your own.”
You can also make more than one profile for yourself. Whether you’re in the mood for comedy, thrillers or relaxation, having separate profiles for each can streamline recommendations. Netflix lets users create five profiles per account. Hulu allows seven, and Prime Video enables six.
What to add and delete
Providing feedback on a show—by giving a thumbs-up, for instance—might mean more than just religiously watching every episode. The more you use available feedback tools, the better the service will understand your tastes.
Another powerful signal: editing or deleting your viewing history.
You can periodically go through the history to remove shows you tried and ended up not liking. (Looking at you, “The Witcher.”) If something stays in your history, the algorithm might suggest similar shows. If you remove it, the algorithm won’t take that show into consideration.
The trick is that you sometimes need a computer, or at least a web browser, to edit viewing history.
Netflix: Pull up your account page on a web browser, not the app, and select your profile from Profile & Parental Controls. Open Viewing activity, then scroll through to remove titles you don’t connect with. (You might need to click Show More.) Deleted shows also disappear from your Continue Watching queue.
“When you delete something, we really handle that as if you had not watched the show and we update the recommendations accordingly,” Nubbemeyer said.
Amazon Prime Video: To access your watch history, use a browser to access this website. If you delete videos from the watch history, Amazon won’t use them for recommendations. To hide shows from your home-page view, hover over the show or season, click the three-dots icon and select Hide.
In Amazon’s Prime mobile apps, you can do more than just give thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Press and hold the video thumbnail for options including “Hide this video.” When you tap in to a video, you can press and hold its play button to mark it as watched. In either case, the title itself won’t resurface as a recommendation.
Hulu: The thumbs-down button is helpful here. Tap it, and that video will be removed from the home screen and sections such as Up Next and You May Also Like.
Hulu’s view history appears under “Continue Watching” on the app and only includes recently watched content. To remove it, tap the three dots in the top left of the thumbnail and look for that option. For your full viewing history, you must submit a request. Go to Account > Your U.S. State Privacy Rights > Request Report.
Max: Max doesn’t have a thumbs-down button. Titles in its Continue Watching menu are automatically removed after three months, but you can remove them yourself by tapping the three dots. The app’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, declined to comment on how users can get better recommendations.
Cool apps, secret hacks
Sometimes, it’s easier to skip recommendations entirely—or use a different app for them.
The Reelgood app tracks titles from most major streaming platforms. It’s a super handy way to figure out which Oscar winner is on which service you already pay for. (“Oppenheimer” is on Peacock, “Poor Things” is on Hulu.) You can tell the app which services you have and what movies and shows you’ve already seen. Based on that, it will recommend new shows and provide new-season reminders. The catch: You have to update it manually, since it doesn’t know what you watch on any given service.
If you can’t trick the streaming services into giving you the good stuff, go behind their backs.
Netflix has a handy shortcut for finding hidden genres and subgenres. Say you’re into political documentaries, silent movies or “teen screams.” Each has a specific numerical code, many of which a Netflix superfan compiled and posted here. Yes, you also need a browser for this, but it might save you time and trouble.
Type netflix.com/browse/genre/ and add the specific ID code to the end. Entering netflix.com/browse/genre/81466194 gets you 90-minute movies, while netflix.com/browse/genre/1964512 offers cyberpunk-themed movies and shows.
Used together, these tips should help you see more of what you really want. Just give it time, because algorithms don’t change their stripes overnight.
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Write to Dalvin Brown at dalvin.brown@wsj.com
