Netflix goes vertical with its new mobile app

The next time you open Netflix’s app, it may look a lot more like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. That’s no accident: On April 29, the streaming service begins rolling out its biggest mobile redesign in years, with a major focus on vertical video.

Netflix is launching the new mobile UI in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and a handful of other countries now, with plans to expand globally in the coming months. Once the app updates, subscribers will gain access to a new “Clips” tab featuring trailers, highlights, and behind-the-scenes footage from Netflix shows, movies, and podcasts, all optimized for quick, on-the-go viewing. Clips appear in an endless scroll feed, much like the experience on popular social apps.

The redesign is a clear acknowledgment that the way people consume video, both on phones and TVs, is shifting. Netflix is also facing a growing field of competitors vying for viewers’ time, including YouTube, which now accounts for nearly 13% of all TV viewing time.

Netflix’s answer is to bring the fight directly to YouTube’s and Instagram’s home turf: mobile phones.

With vertical videos, Netflix puts podcasts front and center

Media companies have long struggled to adapt to the rise of mobile-native video platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Case in point: Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi raised $1.75 billion to create a Netflix for short-form vertical video, only to shut down six months post-launch after failing to attract viewers.

Netflix aims to avoid those mistakes, and it’s not treating vertical video as an end in itself. While Quibi attempted to pioneer entirely new formats, and apps like Instagram are built to keep users scrolling indefinitely, Netflix’s Clips feed is focused on content discovery. Users can find a clip from a show they may enjoy, add it to their watch list, or rotate their phone and begin watching immediately.

At its core, Netflix remains focused on long-form storytelling, which has not always translated easily to smaller screens. “Professional TV and film historically makes up a pretty small percentage of mobile viewing,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledged during a recent earnings call.

That reality helps explain why Netflix has embraced one of YouTube’s most successful categories: podcasts. In recent months, Netflix has partnered with companies like Spotify, Barstool Sports, and iHeartMedia to expand its podcast offerings, adding video episodes of The Breakfast Club, The Bill Simmons Show, and the like.

Highlights from popular podcasts feature prominently in Clips feeds for interested users. Netflix plans to personalize the feeds based on a subscriber’s viewing history and their Clips browsing behavior. In the coming months, the company plans to add the ability to browse Clips by categories, and, for instance, scroll through an endless feed of swoon-worthy romance moments.  

The new app makes room for further expansions

Podcasts are just one of the ways Netflix has been expanding beyond movies and TV shows. Over the past few years, the streaming service has also embraced live programming and sports as avenues to keep its subscribers hooked. Last year, Netflix relaunched its TV experience to better incorporate this content.

Today’s mobile app relaunch is supposed to solve the same problem for small screens, according to Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters. “[It] will better serve the expansion of our business over the decade to come,” Peters told investors earlier this year. 

Part of that is a new top-row navigation that specifically highlights podcasts and other new content categories while also leaving room for further personalization and changes in the future. “Just like our TV UI, it then becomes a starting point,” Peters said. “It becomes a platform for us to continue to iterate, test, evolve, and improve our offering.”

In other words: No matter what TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube cook up next, Netflix wants to be ready for it.

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