People sometimes ask whether BarkSkip uses AI to spot dogs or watch TV. It doesn't. I map every title in the catalog, one scene at a time. Here's what that looks like, start to finish.
Step 1: Picking the Title
I choose titles I have wanted to watch with Gus for years, and I also check Netflix's Top 10 in the US. I'll take requests too if you have a Netflix movie you'd like BarkSkip'd.
Some titles pick themselves. If you have a TV-reactive dog, you know Westerns and Victorian-era movies are filled with horse after horse after horse. That's how Enola Holmes made the list. Horses are one of Gus's big triggers.
Step 2: Watching With the Categories in Mind
First, I scan closed captioning files for triggers. Then I watch the entire title and add/remove timestamps in the database based on what's actually on screen.
This is not relaxing movie watching. I'm watching for everything at once: Animals, Loud Noises, Babies/Kids, Robots, Scary Things, Supernatural, Violence, and Weird Things. I broke those down in The 8 Things That Trigger TV-Reactive Dogs.
Gus has every category checked, so if it's on screen, I'm looking for it. A dog barking off-screen counts. A close-up of a baby does too, and a doorbell is another big trigger for Gus.
After years of TV-watching with Gus, I know what will set him off, so I go by the mantra, "What would Gus react to?" That's why the categories are selectable and customizable to what affects your dog.
Step 3: Marking Where the Skip Starts and Ends
This is the hard part. Every mapped moment gets a start point and an end point. Cut it too short, and the trigger sneaks through. Cut it too long, and you miss part of the plot.
The goal is to cover the trigger without wrecking the story. Arthur the King is an extreme example: a movie about a dog with 138 hand-mapped sequences where the dog appears on screen. The job was to keep the story intact so you could still follow it while your dog sleeps.
Then there's Okja. The original runtime is 2 hours 1 minute. BarkSkip skips 35 minutes 37 seconds of trigger-screen time, leaving about 1 hour 25 minutes of watchable film.
One of the most difficult scenes so far was from Meet the Parents, when the parents first meet Greg along with Jinx the cat. Removing Jinx from the scene led to quick cuts, and I think it made the scene funnier. A total of 52 animal triggers were logged for Meet the Parents, which added up to ~9 minutes. Unfortunately, it has left Netflix for now. If it ever comes back, BarkSkip has you covered.
Step 4: QA
Every mapped moment goes through QA before it ships. The point is simple: the 10-second warning shows up (you can cancel it if you want to watch the scene), the trigger is gone, and the story still makes sense.
QA doesn't stop at launch, though; your dog might react to something Gus sleeps through. That's what the Report at current time button is for. One tap sends me the movie and the timestamp, and those reports feed right back into QA.
Step 5: Take it Live
Once a title passes QA, it goes into the catalog. The catalog updates automatically, so you don't have to reinstall anything. Open Netflix, press play, and enjoy.
Why Bother Doing It by Hand?
Because guessing isn't good enough when your dog is the one on the couch next to you. BarkSkip works on Netflix only (for now), in desktop Chrome or Safari. If a title isn't in the catalog, BarkSkip won't skip anything. If it is, I actually watched it with your dog in mind.
BarkSkip is a movie-night management tool, not a replacement for professional training or veterinary advice.
Try It Tonight
Install BarkSkip for free and try one of the three rotating free titles. Turn on your dog's triggers and press play. If it works for your dog, Pro is a $15 one-time purchase that unlocks the full catalog.
Install for Chrome | Install for Safari | Browse the Catalog
-Newton, Founder of BarkSkip
