If you watch a lot of video content on your phone, you’ve almost assuredly touched your screen by accident, pausing the episode you’re watching or forcing you to wait as the on-screen controls fade, ever so slowly, away. Thankfully, Netflix’s introduced a new Screen Lock button in its Android app to help protect your portable binging from stray pokes and prods.
This newest feature can be accessed easily with a quick tap while watching anything using the Netflix app. Tap to enable, and all touch controls other than a screen-lock indicator are disabled until the user taps twice to confirm their intent to unlock. You can find the whole process pictured just below. While this isn’t completely fool-proof, it should help to prevent the majority of accidental taps from interrupting as you catch up on your queue.
This latest change appears to be widely available. Though it doesn’t seem to be tied to a specific version of Netflix’s app, it’s rolled out to most of our own devices. It’s probably a server-side update, but feel free to double-check for app updates if you don’t have it — installing the latest version triggered it for one phone that didn’t previously have it.
Make sure to give it a try the next time you’re binging your comfort show of choice for the thousandth time while we’re all stuck inside.
