The Best Netflix Chrome Extensions

Remember when Netflix was done by signing up for a subscription and having your DVDs (and maybe blu-rays) mailed to you?  You’d pop it in your DVD player, watch it, and then send it back with the promise of receiving the next movie in your queue.  It was the greatest thing ever, twelve dollars or so a month and you had unlimited rentals once you returned the disc.

Boy have we come a long way.  Now Netflix streaming is instantaneous.  Many DVD & Blu-Ray players have a Netflix app built directly into the machine and Smart TVs come with a Netflix app already installed.  Instead of having to choose a movie a few days in advance and hope you’re still in the mood to watch that particular flick when it arrives you can just turn on the app and watch whatever you want when you want to watch it.

But what if we could make your Netflix experience even better?  What if there were extensions and plug-ins you could add to your movie experience to take it a step farther?  Guess what — there are! There are several Chrome extensions geared specifically toward making your Netflix experience the very best it could be and we’re going to take a look at the 5 best Netflix Chrome extensions to truly enhance your home theater.

FlixPlus by LifeHacker

FlixPlus helps you decide what you want to watch before you watch it.  How many times have we seen a movie or television show on our Netflix screen (especially those: “Recommended for You” movies we’ve never heard of?) and decide to watch it only to decide part way in that the story is terrible or it’s not going the direction you want it to?

What if you could watch the movie’s trailer first?  What if you could see its Rotten Tomatoes rating or see the IMDB cast list to figure out whether or not it’s Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise?  What if you could look up the movie or show on Google or Wikipedia and read all the reviews and information on it before you clicked play and wasted your time on a show you weren’t going to be interested in in the first place?

FlixPlus has the ability to do all of this.  Arguably the best Chrome extension for Netflix when you are trying to decide what you want to watch, FlixPlus works hard to give you every piece of information about a movie or television show you could possibly want before you start it.  Because there are so many movies on Netflix that we haven’t seen before or heard of – FlixPlus does a lot of hard work to be perhaps the MVE (Most Valuable Extension) for the Netflix experience on Chrome.

Download it now: Google Chrome

FindFlix

We’ve all done it – in those moments where we want to watch that one movie directed by Ron Howard that we can’t remember the name of.  FindFlix is a tool designed to help you as a viewer access the “secret” categories wired into Netflix to help you find a specific movie.

Instead of having to search for the exact title of the movie you are looking for, they have a drop down menu that will allow you to search categories such as: “movies for children between 0 and 2” or “movies starring Brad Pitt.”

Instead of knowing what all the secret search categories are, you can just pull down FindFlix’s dropdown menu and it will allow you to make a categorized search based on all of the “secret search criteria” programmed into Netflix that isn’t readily available.

For those moments or days where you just want to binge watch every Sean Connery movie you can find, or find a queue of age appropriate movies for your kids, FindFlix is the answer.  For its versatility and ability to find exactly what we’re looking for even when we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, FindFlix finds itself solidly in our top five best Netflix Chrome extensions.

Download it now: Google Chrome

Showgoers

Showgoers is a Netflix Chrome extension that is just fantastic when you want to watch or experience movies with someone else.  No matter where in the world your friend or family member is you can watch a movie together on Netflix in perfect sync.

Showgoers provides a link that can be clicked on by the other person/people watching the feed and you all can be watching the movie at the same time and if one person pauses the movie to take a bathroom break or to grab a drink out of the fridge the movie is paused for everyone synced up together.  It’s great in that you can get up without missing a beat and you don’t have to worry about your friends spoiling what happens next because they are a few minutes ahead of you in the movie.

Truth be told, it’s actually kind of surprising that Netflix hasn’t made this a permanent feature of their program coding yet, but until they do, Showgoers allows users to in different households to experience a movie together like they are sitting on the same couch.

Download it now: Softonic

SuperNetflix

SuperNetflix is our fourth best Netflix Chrome extension because it corrects a small quality of life issue that Netflix can have from time to time.  Buffering and connectivity are generally controlled by Netflix. Netflix senses when your internet slows down and when the internet loses bandwidth Netflix automatically corrects this issue by reducing the video quality temporarily to prevent your movie from skipping or missing beats.

SuperNetflix corrects this issue by giving you the control of how and when your video and audio quality changes.  If your wife in the next room turns on her laptop or your kids upstairs load into their tablet games, it could affect your internet speed, even if only for a few moments.  Netflix would generally sense this and reduce your video/audio quality until everything rectifies itself and then your video quality returns to normal.

SuperNetflix allows you to decide what your video and audio settings will be to ensure that you are watching your movie your way without those minor annoying lags.

Download it now: Google Chrome

Video Adjust For Netflix

We’ve all had those moments where we feel like a movie is too dark or the film washes out and gets a little too bright.  Generally it’s the cinematography where the director wants to darken certain scenes or illuminate certain individuals. Depending on the room in which you are watching the movie and the lighting conditions in your home those dark screens can be almost too hard to see or the brightness too high to really watch and enjoy.

Video Adjust for Netflix allows you the opportunity to change and alter your brightness, contrast, and color settings so that certain scenes appear the way you want them to look on your television (or computer screen) and enjoy your movie your way.

Download it now: Google Chrome

Netflix Profanity Filter

For those of us with children, some of the movies that come out that we enjoy come with language we don’t necessarily want our six year old to repeat outside the house.  Netflix Profanity Filter gives you the control (with subtitles) to program in the words you don’t want to hear during your viewing experience and it will “bleep” or “****” out the words in the subtitles in addition to muting them on the audio to protect the ears of your younger children (or yourself if you are easily offended by PG-13 terms).

Download it now: Google Chrome

Closing

Netflix has come a long way since its infancy and it continues to grow in library, features, and accessibility – and it will continue to grow broader and deeper as it further establishes itself as the primary option worldwide for streaming movies and tv shows on demand.  For the time being, as it continues along this path, many Chrome extensions will crop up that will make the entire viewing time better and more user friendly. These are the top 5 (or six) that we have found, and they all are the best at what they do.