7 brilliant Netflix tricks you need to know about immediately.

Image via NBC/30 Rock.

Let’s talk about the perfect weekend. Beach? Shopping? Going out for dinner?

Not for me. I’m all about Netflix. And bed. Netflix and bed. There’s nothing better, right? Well, actually there is. These are our favourite, simple Netflix tricks that will save you time when binge watching your favourite shows. You can thank us later.

1. Deleting the history.

If someone’s been using your profile watching all manner of shows you never would, you can change your history so their “recently viewed” shows won’t mix in with your yours.

Go to your Netflix account settings and selecting ‘viewing activity’, you can see all the shows you have recently watched and delete whatever you don’t want in there so it’s more suited to your tastes. Voila.

2. Know these few simple shortcuts.

These are some handy hints for when you’re watching Netflix. Little shortcuts that will save you loads of time…

Pause and play: Hit the spacebar and enter keys. You can also use ‘page down’ to pause and ‘page up’ to play.

Full screen and small screen shortcut: Hit the ‘F’ key.

Rewind and Fastforward: Shift+left arrow will rewind, while shift+right arrow will fast forward.

Volume: Just hit the up arrow key for volume up, and down arrow for volume down.

Mute: Just hit the ‘M’ key.

3. Unblockers.

This is a littleeeeee sneaky: You can use sites like Hola or Media Hunt (paid but really great) to watch shows available on Netflix in other countries. Yep that's right, not all Netflix listings in every country are the same.

So you can binge watch all your favourite Norwegian crime shows (again, just me?) without having to wait for them to appear on your Aussie version.

Media Hint trick the site into thinking you're in another country, granting you access to literally hundreds of new titles. Obviously, unblock at your own risk - you may anger the Netflix gods, never a great move...

4. Change subtitles to suit your needs. 

If you, like me, need subtitles, then this is ultimate. You can activate them by heading to the 'audio and subtitles' option, and then you can also change them to match your eyesight, and your font preferences.

Go to your Netflix account settings, select 'subtitle appearance' and you can tweak everything from the colour to the font size and style. So good. (Post continues after gallery.)

 5. Change the buffering fix.

Slow loading time can really dampen your Saturday Plan (which is obviously watching the entire season of True Detective). The solution? Try changing the buffering time.

While playing a show, hold down shift+opt (shift+alt for Windows) and left click, to open up a menu with buffering fixes and other streaming options and you can select whatever buffering fix you need.

If you're using Chrome, press ctrl+shift+alt/opt+S.

6. Different Profiles.

If you share your Netflix account with anyone in your family/flatmates/your partner then this is gold. No more seeing "Keep watching BoJack Horseman?" when you exclusively watch murder mysteries.

By creating different profiles, you can have their shows and yours separate, so when Netflix recommends shows to you, they're exclusively related to what you watch.

7. Try out Netflix Enhancer.

If you're looking for more information, including critics' opinions and the best new shows you need to watch, then check out Chrome extension Netflix Enhancer. It gives more detailed ratings (including IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes ratings). It's quick and easy to download and will make your browsing time much more effective.

What's your Netflix hack? Have we missed any?