Netflix Android App To Support Background Playback Feature

Background play is an important feature that lets users switch to other apps while the media player continues playing the content. Some media players support this feature and one such service is MX Player. Even YouTube supports the background play feature but only for the YouTube Premium subscribers. Now, it looks like Netflix is on the verge of getting this new feature.

Netflix New Feature Spotted

As per a teardown of Netflix Android APK version 7.9.1 by those at XDA Developers, the streaming service is all set to get a new feature similar to background play. Well, this new feature is termed Audio Mode. As its name indicates, you can use Netflix in the background and switch to other apps and still continue the playback of the content. This way, you will be able to listen to a show instead of watching the same.

The strings that were discovered in the APK revealed that Netflix will let users to turn off the video and stream only the audio content. Notably, this upcoming Netflix feature will let users save data as it will stream only the audio and not the video. Moreover, it will help users of the popular on-demand video streaming platform save the battery life of their device.

As of now, this feature has been spotted in the APK version and there is no word regarding when the same will be activated for users. Probably, Netflix might test the feature in select regions before rolling it out to all users globally. We need can get to know the details about Netflix background play capability only from an official confirmation.

Other Netflix Features

Already, Netflix offers a picture-in-picture mode for both Android and iOS users. This feature lets users watch content on a floating window as they multitask using different apps. Both these modes are different and the upcoming one appears to be more efficient in terms of battery power and data consumption.

The information regarding the background play on Netflix comes soon after the company's announcement of hosting a free weekend trial promotion in India called StreamFest. Going by the same, the service will host a free trial of 48 hours in India in December as an attempt to attract more subscribers.