While Netflix can be frustrating with its pay structure and features (particularly when it comes to password sharing), the streaming site just introduced an extremely handy new setting that allows users to instantly sign out devices from an account.
Per Netflix’s press site: “With the busy holiday season just around the corner, many of our members will be on the move and watching Netflix wherever they are traveling to see family and friends. Logging in to your account while at a hotel or even your friend’s house is easy and intuitive, but occasionally people forget to log out. Today, we’re launching Managing Access and Devices, a new feature in Account Settings that allows you to easily view recent devices that have streamed from your account and to log out of specific devices with just one click.”
Essentially, once you get into the settings menu, you can see which devices are currently accessing your account, where they’re located and when they were watching (and, most damningly, what is or was being watched). From there, it just takes one click to remotely remove that access.
The use cases here are numerous: If you forgot to log out at a hotel, for example, you can now do it remotely. Or if you used your account at a friend’s house. Or if you’re sharing your account with an ex- who no longer needs to be getting free access to Big Mouth. It’ll also help members who have a lower-tier plan, like Basic With Ads, which only allows a few devices to access an account at one time.
It’s a win for Netflix as well. As TechCrunch notes, “The addition could help Netflix push more freeloaders to become subscribers as they’re kicked off the service, where they may have been logging in without the account holder’s knowledge.”
After a brief membership dip earlier this year, Netflix has shown a surprising knack for keeping customers and garnering new ones — in October the company reported a 2.4 million subscriber bump.
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