You can’t tell if there’s a limit on downloads, so you may cache something offline “just in case” and use up all your downloads. However, the way Netflix hides this limit is incredibly dumb. After all, it doesn’t own most of the content it offers, and rights holders can demand these rules. The existence of the download cap isn’t really Netflix’s fault. If you try to download again after that, you get an “10016-22006” error that informs you that you’ve reached your download limit. It’s not a large number-maybe four or five total downloads in a year. We’re not sure what the limit is, but it probably varies based on the content owner’s rules. After a few downloads, some episodes and movies will pop up a warning that explains you can only download them one more time before a particular date (probably a year from the first download). Caching a video always counts as a download whether you’re downloading on a new device or just refreshing an existing download. After a certain amount of time, you have to “refresh” the download. The worst part is Netflix doesn’t tell you about that until you’re almost out of downloads.Ĭurrently, all content downloaded from Netflix has an expiration date. However, Netflix’s downloading functionality comes with a nasty catch that many people have just recently started running into: some content can only be downloaded a certain number of times. It was long overdue, but still a much appreciated addition. Netflix added download support for a large chunk of its library late last year, which is great.