The Story Behind Netflix's Secret Category Codes
Your Netflix queue is always stacked with movies and shows to hit play on, but what you might not know is that there’s a hidden way to make that viewing experience even better.
Amongst the films and TV series for your viewing pleasure, there’s a trove of secret category codes — a list that dates back to the earliest days of the company and already tops 36,000 (yes, really!) and is always growing, a treat for fans who either know exactly what they want to watch or want to try something entirely new. To explore these collections — ordering off the secret menu, if you will — all you need to do is fire up your web browser, type in “netflix.com/browse/genre/” and then add your ID code of choice to the end of the URL. So if you’re in the mood for something as specific as, say, Gentle British Reality TV (with the code 81240711) or Witchcraft & the Dark Arts (81552046), or think all movies should be short (90-Minute Movies, aka 81466194), there’s a code and corresponding collection waiting for you.
According to Mary Bertone of Netflix’s Curation and Taxonomy team, these codes date back to the days when Netflix was still in its DVDs-only phase. At the time, Netflix.com had a public-facing genre tree that linked out to all the various types of films and TV series, each of which has its own specific ID code. A fan scraped the genre tree for all the codes, shared the list online, and people have been using those codes (along with the thousands more that have been added since) to this day.
New codes are being added whenever inspiration strikes. As Michael Raphan, a curation strategist at Netflix, tells Tudum, a recent conversation with a colleague about the Noah Centineo-starring series The Recruit — a spy adventure with romantic subplots — prompted him to create a collection, fittingly, called Action with a Side of Romance (81647318).
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/netflix-secret-codes-guide?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=dec_test&utm_id=01&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIm-DO_b-u_AIVMy-tBh1qSQt2EAAYASAAEgK7XvD_BwE
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