Some individuals are big fans of action-packed movies, while others thrive on the thrills of horror films. Yet, there are those who have a fondness for unique genres, such as coming-of-age romantic comedies set in charming Italian villages during a single summer.

Those viewers might be a little harder to please — unless, of course, they’re aware of Netflix’s “secret” category codes.

What are Netflix’s ‘secret’ codes?

Netflix introduced its “secret category codes” in its early years when the company was still focused on its DVD-by-mail service, as highlighted in a Netflix article from 2024. These codes were designed to craft a “genre tree” that subscribers could explore on the website, guiding them to the specific types of films or TV shows they most wanted to discover.

A tech-savvy enthusiast managed to “scrape” this information from the site, eventually sharing the list of codes online, as mentioned in Netflix’s 2024 article. “And people have continued to utilize these codes (alongside the thousands more introduced since then) even today,” Netflix stated.

How do you find the codes?

Netflix, by its own admission, has created more than 36,000 of these genre codes for movie or TV categories, which cover everything from inspirational soccer stories (81648636) to supernatural soap operas (81238162). But Netflix itself does not host any public-facing “channels” outlining the complete list, a representative for the streaming service told Nexstar.

From time to time, Netflix will reveal some of its own newer category codes, usually when announcing a new categorization genre. In 2022, for instance, Netflix was inspired to create a category for “Short-A– Movies” in response to a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. (The code — 81603903 — was revealed in the URL of the “Short-A– Movies” link that Netflix provided when retweeting the sketch.)

Netflix also revealed a whole slew of its secret category codes in the 2024 article referenced earlier, including “Binge-Worthy British Crime TV Shows” (1192582), “Witchcraft & the Dark Arts” (81552046) and “Action With a Side of Romance” (81647318), among dozens of others.

For longer lists, Netflix viewers might want to consult non-Netflix sources like Netflix-Codes.com, which comes recommended by CNET, or Whats-On-Netflix.com, which Reader’s Digest once highlighted. The latter site even has a searchable table containing more than 4,100 codes.

Netflix’s representative, however, said the company “can’t verify non-Netflix websites that host codes,” so users would be wise to check for themselves to see whether the codes are accurate.

How do you use the codes?

To use an active code (or to “order off the secret menu,” as Netflix says), users accessing Netflix via an internet browser must type in “netflix.com/browse/genre/” and add their selected code to the end of URL. And if using the app, viewers can try entering the code into the search bar, but in many cases, it doesn’t appear to work quite as well.

Anyone struggling to find something to watch might also be delighted to learn that Netflix is constantly adding categories to its internal “genre tree,” like its “WWE Collection” for wrestling fans (81921063), or its “All Laughs, No Track” category (81647534) featuring sitcoms with no laugh tracks. And yes, there is indeed a relatively new “Italian Summer” category (81602646) highlighting movies, TV series, and reality shows focusing on summer romances in picturesque Italian villages.

“New codes are being added whenever inspiration strikes,” Netflix said.