Perhaps Netflix was waiting for the Fall Creators Update to hit 90 percent of users, or maybe it was working out the kinds of its proprietary streaming service and compact overlay, but the feature is now available.
For those not familiar, compact overlap was introduced as a feature for developers with the Fall Creators Update. It let them add the ability for a video or music streaming app to get a mini-mode window that could float over other opened apps, but also leave some basic controls visible.
Netflix using compact overlay is a mini-mode viewer.
Microsoft's Music & TV app was one of the first and there's even a nifty third-party app that works for websites, but we have been waiting for Netflix – the most obvious beneficiary of such a feature – to adopt it.
Starting with version 6.59.265 released within the last few days users can now put Netflix into a compact overlay.
While the feature works, it does seem to cause some stuttering issues on a multi-monitor setup, and the app feels a tad sluggish. Perhaps more work needs to be done for optimization.
Either way, it's great to see such a useful feature finally arrive. Let's hope Hulu and Sling get around to adding the feature sometime this year too.
