I'd been using TV Time for years. 133 shows, 4,671 checked episodes, 322 movies: my whole viewing journey was in there. When the shutdown was announced, I did what everyone did — I looked for an alternative. Nothing really fit: paid for essentials, no import, or no movies, or a UI from another era.
So I built it
WatchTrail was born from that precise need: get the TV Time experience back, improve the parts that frustrated me, and above all NOT lose the history. The first feature built wasn't tracking — it was the import. My own TV Time export served as the test dataset: 95.9% of episodes matched automatically (the rest simply doesn't exist in public databases).
- Episode-by-episode tracking with automatic statuses and up-next
- Email and push notifications when an episode airs (you choose, per show)
- Where-to-watch for your country, calendar, stats, yearly recap
- Marvel / Star Wars / DC universes as checklists, chronological or release order
Free, ad-free — and your data stays yours
The service is free and ad-free. The long-term model: optional comfort extras, never the essentials. And the non-negotiable principle: export your data anytime, immediate account deletion. Nobody should relive a service shutdown by losing their history.