Netflix 'Sleep Tracker' pauses film when you nod off

A new Netflix feature monitors your Fitbit fitness wristband to detect when you fall asleep and pauses the film or program you were watching, ready to restart another time

Netflix accounts for around a third of broadband usage in America Photo: Getty Images

A feature to pause Netflix when you fall asleep has been developed during an internal Hack Day for developers - but may never see the light of day.

The Sleep Tracking feature uses a Fitbit wearable fitness wristband to detect when a uviewer nods off, then pauses the playback at that point, displays a message saying "Looks like you fell asleep!" and saves a "Sleep Bookmark" so that you can start watching from that point at a later date when you have more energy.

It was created as part of an internal Netflix Hack Day event, where staff are given time to work on a project or idea that may be outside of their normal remit, or work on a fix to a problem that affects them.

In a blog post on the Netflix technology blog, employees wrote: "For Hack Day, our primary goal is to provide a fun, experimental, and creative outlet for our engineers.

"If something interesting and potentially useful comes from it, that is fine, but the real motivation is fun. With that spirit in mind, most teams started hacking on Thursday morning, hacked through the night, and they wrapped up by Friday morning to present a demo to their peers.

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"It is not unusual for us to see a lot of really good ideas come from Hack Day, but last week we saw some really spectacular work." 
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Other developers created a new input device for Sony PlayStation to make entering WiFi passwords and other text easier, and a way to password-protect different users on a shared account so that other people can't disrupt your watch queue.
But these new features may never see the light of day as Netflix holds regular Hack Days and doesn't always roll-out those new features to the public.