NOW SHOWINGWhat’s on, today.
Home opens on your own evening rather than on what everyone else is watching. Up Next is one row: what you scheduled for today, the episodes out today on shows you follow, and the shows you’re partway through, each with the episode you’re up to. Hold a card to mark it Seen, catch up on a show in one go, move it to another day, move it to the front, or take it off. Anything can be added to Up Next, front or back: any film, even one you’ve seen, for a rewatch, or a single episode of a show you don’t follow yet. See All opens the fortnight ahead.
Below it, Start Watching holds the shows you follow and haven’t begun, Coming to TV the ones still to premiere, and In Theaters, Streaming Now and Coming to Theaters sort the films you saved by where you can actually watch them. Your Collections sits underneath, showing the ones you choose in the order you like, and the search field is always at the top: films, shows and people.
SERIESShows, one episode at a time.
Follow a show and it keeps your place. Its page names the episode you’re up to with Seen beside it, and marking one moves the line on to the next. Whenever anything is marked Seen, the app asks when: the day it aired, today, another day off a calendar, or no date at all. Mark an episode further along and it offers to mark the ones before it. Picking a show up partway through? Tell it where you’re starting, and the seasons before don’t count against you. Every season has its own poster and page.
Notifications are about what’s out, at the hour an episode airs where that’s published. A premiere always gets through; a new episode does when you’re keeping up, saying so if you’ve slipped one or two behind. Further behind than that, only premieres. Tap one and it opens that episode, with the channel or service in the notification when it’s known. Pause a show and it goes quiet until a month and a week before it returns; abandon it and it stops. Lost the thread? Recap a Season retells a season from its episode summaries, written on your iPhone.
Coming from Trakt, Sofa or Marathon? Their exports bring your shows across with the date you watched every episode, and Marathon’s brings the state each show was in, your ratings, and your lists in the order you ranked them.
SHUFFLEDescribe the evening, not the film.
Choosing is the hard part, not watching. Pick for Me, which has a tab of its own, opens on a question: what are you in the mood for? Tick Laugh, Thrill, Scare, Cry, Swoon, Escape, Family or Think, as many as you like, each showing how many titles it holds, or Surprise Me for anything. Behind the filters button, tick any mix of lists and collections to draw from: Want to See, films you loved and haven’t logged in a year, a list of your own, the Criterion Collection, the MCU. Then narrow it as far as you like, by genre in or out, decade, rating, age rating, length, language, country, the people in it, and the services you pay for. A line at the top says what you’re picking from in plain words, and a set of filters you come back to can be saved under a name.
Switch to TV and it picks a show, from the ones you follow or from a collection. Press Pick and a reel of posters spins and lands on one, with the time it would finish if you started now. Not feeling it? Pick again: it won’t repeat itself until it runs out. Changed your mind about the mood? Change Mood takes you back to the tiles.
BOX SETLists worth working through.
Collections are lists other people drew up, carried in the app and measured against your library. The Collections store keeps them on shelves. Franchises have every film in the series in the order they came out, from James Bond to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Studios have every feature from fourteen of them, Walt Disney Animation’s canon from Snow White on, Pixar, Studio Ghibli, A24, Neon and more. Directors and Actors do the same for forty-two people, from Spielberg, Kubrick and Fincher to Streep, Hanks and Damon, an actor’s films each naming the part. Critics & Awards has Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time, every Best Picture winner and the Criterion Collection by spine number, and for television the New York Times’, its readers’ and the BBC’s best of the century. A collection can hold single episodes, too. A Films & TV tab holds the franchises that run across both, like the MCU’s films with its Disney+ series, Star Wars and Star Trek, in release order.
A shelf shows ten at a time, and its heading opens the lot.
Add the ones you want and they become Your Collections, in Pick for Me and on Home, where you choose which ones show and in what order, each saying how far through it you are. Open one to see every title with its placing and a mark on the ones you’ve seen; hide those, filter to what’s on your services, swipe through the rest, or pick several out and add them to a list of your own. Taking a collection off takes nothing else: your films and everything you’ve logged stay as they are.
RED CARPETEvery nominee, every year.
The Academy Awards, the Primetime Emmys and the Golden Globes each have a shelf of their own in the Collections store, with every ceremony as a collection: all 98 Oscars since 1929, the Emmys since 1954 and the Globes since 1948. Each lists every category of the night, every nominee in it, and the winner marked, an actor’s nomination naming the actor and a writing or directing one the episode and who made it. The Globes, which honor films and television on the same night, sit on both sides of the store.
A film or show’s page names the ceremonies it was up at, with how it did: won four of sixteen, or three nominations. And through each award’s season, from the morning the nominations are read out to the night itself, Home offers that year’s nominees to work through before the envelopes open.
SEASONALDressed for the occasion.
The seasons get a little more. Through October, Trick or Treat deals one horror film at a time from what’s on your services and Variety’s hundred best, each with how frightening it actually is, from Scary Meter: Spooky, Scary or Terrifying, so you can ask for a mild one at eleven at night, or the other sort. Through November, in the US, Leftovers serves up Thanksgiving films and TV’s Thanksgiving episodes, from Friends’ six to Cheers’ “Thanksgiving Orphans”: a feast, something by the fire, or a carve-up. Through December, Deck the Halls does the same for Christmas films, asking whether you’re after something cozy, magical or merry mayhem. When a month ends, its banner goes in a way of its own: up in smoke, on a gust of leaves, or in a thaw.
As each month arrives, Home invites you to add its list to Your Collections: Variety’s horror in October; Time Out’s 21 best Thanksgiving films and a list of Thanksgiving episodes in November; Time Out’s fifty best Christmas films in December. Say yes and it stays all year. Say Not Now and it asks again next year.
The rest of the year has its occasions too, each with a pick of its own, a list to keep and a send-off: Be Mine for Valentine’s, Friday the 13th’s slashers, twists for April Fools’, Star Wars for May the 4th, Pride in June, Summer Blockbusters, Shark Week, Back to School and the Fourth of July. Black History, Women’s History, AAPI Heritage and Hispanic Heritage months each bring a collection of the most-watched films by those filmmakers.
SCHEDULEA day for everything you mean to watch.
Add to Schedule on any film or episode puts it on a day, picked from a calendar that marks the days already taken. On the day, it’s in Up Next. The morning after, if it never got marked Seen, the app asks whether you watched it: say so and it’s logged, say not yet and it stays, or take it off.
Scheduled lists everything ahead, soonest first, by title, or in an order of your own. Anything on it can be moved to another day or swiped away, and a whole schedule can come in from a spreadsheet.
CATALOGEvery film, filed.
Seen, Not Seen, Want to See, Not For Me and Maybe; Liked, Disliked and Unsure; and Upcoming and Out Now for films you saved before they were released. Shows have their own side: watching, airing, between seasons, finished, paused and abandoned. Pin the four you use most to the top of Lists, group any list by genre, release year or decade, sort it by title, year or when you added it, and search All Films when you can’t remember where something went.
Lists of your own sit beside the ones the app keeps, films and shows together, or a single season or episode when that’s the thing you mean, numbered if they’re a ranking, and with a progress bar if you’re working through them. Add to them from any title’s page, from a collection, or from a spreadsheet. Coming from Letterboxd? Its export brings your films across: what you watched and when, your watchlist, and your star ratings as Liked or Disliked.
DIARYEverything you watched, and when.
The Logbook, in Home’s corner, is the diary: every film and episode you’ve logged, newest first, and searchable. Its other half, Updates, is the week’s news about what you follow, a renewal, a premiere date, a film arriving on one of your services, whether or not it came as a notification.
On the first of each month, In Review totals up the month before, and the year gets one of its own; either can be shared as a picture.
RATINGSHow much you watch.
Viewing History on your Profile charts what you watched: a pair of bars for each month of the year, films beside shows, or for each of ten years. Arrows page back to the first thing you logged, and holding a bar gives its numbers. A film counts each time you watched it, rewatches included; a show counts once in a month, however many of its episodes you got through.
Time Watched beneath it keeps the running total, films and TV, by year and by genre.
LINER NOTESEverything about a film, in one place.
A film with a trailer shows a play button over its still, and nothing plays until you ask. Beneath it sit the questions you can answer or change any time: have you seen it, do you want to, and what did you think. Then Add to Schedule, Get Tickets while it’s in theaters, and Add to List. The … menu in the corner has the rest: Up Next, a list, a night, or the deck’s answers. Then the facts (the release date where you are, runtime, score, age rating, genres), how the film fits what you watch, the collections it’s on, where it’s streaming, the cast and crew, each opening everything they made, newest first, and your own watch dates and notes. Share it, and the link shows its poster and title in Messages.
PREVIEWSWhat everyone else is watching.
Discover is the other side of Home, with the same search field at the top. Providers shows the most popular titles on each service you pay for, Genres the most popular of each kind, and Release Dates the most popular of each year, and each shelf opens to its top fifty. Below them come Popular Films, from theaters near you and your services, Popular TV, and the latest film and TV trailers; tap one and the title opens with its trailer playing.
Anything you’ve already filed wears a check or a star, so you can see where you stand, and holding any poster, here or anywhere else in the app, offers the lot: follow it, save it, add it to Up Next or a list, or schedule it. “Popular” is TMDB’s measure of attention on its site, not box office takings or viewing figures, which is why none of it calls itself a chart.
SIDE AHave you seen it?
Behind the Deck icon on Discover is the quickest way to tell the app what you’ve seen. It asks one question at a time: swipe right if you’ve seen a film, left if you haven’t, up to save it to Want to See, and down to rule it out for good. It moves between recent releases, the most-watched films of all time and pre-2000 classics, and a line underneath tracks how far through you are. Just starting out, Home offers it with a banner until there’s enough to fill your rows.
Rate asks what you thought of the films you’ve marked Seen: Liked, Disliked, or Unsure, for one too long ago to judge. Soon deals only what isn’t out yet, with Maybe for a film too far off to call, which comes back by itself about a fortnight before release. And a TV side deals shows in order of popularity, to follow, pass on, or keep for later.
Private by design
There is no account to create and no server holding your library. Every verdict, rating, watch date and note lives on your device. The app asks TMDB for film and TV data, through a relay that keeps no record of who asked, TVmaze for the hour an episode airs, Wikipedia for episode summaries when you ask for a recap, Scary Meter for scare levels in October, Plex only if you sign in to it, and YouTube only when you play a trailer. No analytics, no advertising identifier, and nothing tracking you. Your whole library, films and shows, exports to a file you keep.