If you’ve ever found movie and TV show streaming applications on your phone to be a bit lacking in the doom scrolling department, Netflix has you covered. After first teasing the existence of a TikTok-style vertical video feed experience back in May of last year, the company has officially announced that the feature will arrive in earnest later this month.
Netflix’s vertical short-form video feed will function similarly to various popular social media applications of today, with the ability to flick up to cycle through videos in perpetuity. From any video, it’ll be possible to jump into its associated full stream, as well as to share its link or add it to your watchlist collection.
“In addition to continued innovation on our new TV UI, after a period of testing and iteration, we are launching an updated mobile experience at the end of the month that includes a vertical video discovery feed. This redesign will better reflect our expanding entertainment offering and make it easier for members to engage how and when they want,” says Netflix in its Q1 2026 earnings report.
There’s no word on what day of the month this discovery feed redesign will land onto users’ devices, or if it’ll be exclusively available in certain regions to start with. With only thirteen days left in April, I’d expect the update to start rolling out sooner rather than later. It’s also unclear whether this redesign will eventually make its way to Netflix’s desktop web app, or if it’ll remain only on mobile devices.
- Subscription with ads
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$9
- Premium Subscription
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$20 or $26 options
- Simultaneous streams
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2-4
- # of profiles
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5
- Originals
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Yes
- Live TV
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No
Short-form vertical content for all
TikTok’s influence extends far beyond social media
As soon as it became clear that TikTok’s content delivery model was a hit, other social media services spared no time in jumping on the bandwagon. Nowadays, we have Facebook and Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlight, and the list goes on. Vertical-style content can even be found on LinkedIn, of all places (via TechCrunch).
With this in mind, it’s no surprise to see movie and TV streaming services flirt with the idea of porting over this same content delivery mechanism to their own discovery feeds. Disney+ now has Verts, Peacock is flirting with short-form videos (via TechCrunch), and now, of course, Netflix is joining the fray.
I do hope that in Netflix’s case, it institutes the ability to shut off this upcoming vertical video discovery feed wholesale. YouTube recently rolled out the ability to disable Shorts within its mobile app experience, and a similar option within Netflix would be much appreciated in my eyes. If short-form video content is here to stay, I’d like to at least stay in control of whether it appears on my main feed or not.
