Netflix Just Made Binge-Watching Easier with This New iPhone App Feature

Toggle Dark Mode
Netflix may be getting more expensive (again), but at least the streaming giant is giving its customers something for their money. A small but significant change to the iPhone and iPad app will now let you more easily queue up your favorite shows for offline binging.
While Netflix has been allowing users on qualifying plans to download content for offline viewing since 2016, until now, Apple users always needed to do this one episode at a time. It’s an odd limitation for the iOS and iPadOS apps, considering Android users have been able to do bulk downloads of full seasons for years, but at least Netflix is finally addressing it for Apple fans. Better late than never, we suppose.
It’s a single button with a big impact for frequent travellers or those with a limited data plan. Netflix announced the change in a blog post today, explaining how iPhone and iPad users can now download every episode for a fulls Eason of their favorite Netflix shows with a single tap.
Today, we’re adding a much-requested Season Download button for all iPhone and iPad users. This feature, which Android users already know and love, allows you to download every episode in a season with just one tap.
Netflix
The new button should appear right next to the Share option, and it works exactly like you’d expect. All of the shows in that season will be queued up to download, and you can monitor their progress or see what’s stored on your device by heading over to the Downloads section on the My Netflix tab.

The full-season downloads will tie into the Smart Downloads feature. That’s been available for iPhone and iPad users since 2019, but like this latest full-season download update, it was also a late arrival; Android Netflix users got it in 2018.
The Smart Downloads feature cleans up old episodes as you watch them and automatically downloads the next episode in a series as long as you’re connected to Wi-Fi. That’s been a handy workaround for the lack of full-season downloads, but it doesn’t really help you if you’re about to get on a long-haul flight and want to have an endless supply of Squid Game episodes to keep you company. It can also be a bit too quick, removing a downloaded episode that you might want to watch again.
Among Apple devices, downloads remain limited to the iPhone and iPad. Netflix for Apple TV doesn’t allow for downloads as it assumes that you’ll always be online, and there’s no native Netflix app for the Mac or Vision Pro (and the company has explicitly blocked the iPad app from being used on those devices),
Netflix has allowed downloads on its paid plans since 2016. This feature was initially unavailable for its ad-supported plans when they launched in 2022, and remained limited even after those got upgraded to Standard with Ads in early 2023. This was presumably only because the streamer needed to figure out a way to insert ads into offline episodes. It eventually worked out those details, bringing downloads to ad-supported plans in late 2023.
However, while users of Netflix’s most affordable ad-supported plan can download episodes of their favorite shows for offline viewing, you’ll want to be careful with the new full-season option. Those plans are limited to 15 downloads per calendar month, so it’s not hard to hit that limit if you’re grabbing a season or two of a show.
That limit is per device, so you can download 15 episodes or movies per month on each of your two devices, but it’s still tight enough that you’ll need to be careful. Unlike Netflix’s ad-free plans, which allow you to have 100 active downloads on each device at any given time, ad-supported plans have a monthly limit that doesn’t reset until the end of your billing cycle.
Last week, Netflix increased its price for the Standard with Ads plan for the first time since its inception, raising the cost by $1 to $7.99 per month. The Standard plan also went up to $17.99 monthly (from $15.49), while Premium jumped to $24.99 (from $22.99). Standard subscribers can store downloads on up to two supported devices, with up to 100 active downloads per device, while Premium subscribers get 100 downloads on each of up to six devices — two more than the four that they can stream on simultaneously.
Netflix also added an “Extra Member with Ads” plan that allows ad-free subscribers to add up to two additional members from outside their household onto an ad-supported plan for $6.99 each, versus $8.99 for the ad-free extra members. Those additional members can also download shows for offline viewing to a single device, but the “Extra Member with ads” version still only allows for 15 downloads per month while holders of full “Extra Member” accounts have the same limit of 100 active downloads at a time as the primary account holder.