We’re living in an age of peak TV. Long gone are the days of four channels and limited programming. Today, there are so many different shows to watch over a variety of different content providers. Cable, over-the-air, streaming services; it’s virtually impossible to keep track of all the things you want to watch. Fortunately, there are numerous apps available that can help you keep track of it all.
Trakt Integration
Many of the apps that appear on this list feature Trakt integration. Trakt is a free service that allows users to sync their watch lists across apps. If you already use Trakt, you should opt for one of the apps below that are compatible with it.
1. Next Episode
A recommendation from one of our readers (see, we do listen), Next Episode (Android, iOS) is one of the most popular TV-tracking apps around.
It lets you save your favourite shows (and movies) for tracking, keep a bespoke calendar based around your shows, and keeps you updated on which shows have recently aired and which ones are coming up.
With its unintrusive UI, it’s silky-smooth to use, comes with a bunch of widgets, and is even thoughtful even to track how much time you spend watching your favourite shows (though, understandably, you may want to bury your head in the sand about that potentially alarming information).
2. Hobi
Hobi (Android, iOS) is a lightweight series tracker that is super simple to use. Upon installation, Hobi allows users to select the TV series that they watch. Once completed, Hobi takes care of the rest. The app will automatically send you notifications when a new season premieres and when a new episode airs. Furthermore, users can customize these notifications. For example, users can tell Hobi to notify them one week or twenty-four hours before a new episode airs.
Currently, Hobi has 50,000 TV series available to track. Additionally, the app will recommend new series the user might be interested in based on their current watch habits. Finally, Hobi offers full Trakt integration, allowing you to sync Hobi with your current Trakt watchlist.
3. TVTime
Despite a somewhat clunky user interface compared to Hobi, TVTime (Android, iOS) is a very popular TV show tracker. In fact, it markets itself as the “#1 Show Tracker.” It features TV series from networks and content providers all over the world and offers the same tracking features as Hobi. Although Hobi and TVTime seem similar on the surface, there are a few areas where they are very different.
TVTime allows users to browse other user reviews. This can be handy when trying to decide whether or not you should start watching a new series. Furthermore, TVTime gives users the ability to search for articles, podcasts and videos related to their recently watched episodes, all from within the app. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, TVTime does not offer Trakt integration. So if you use Trakt, you may want to look elsewhere.
4. SeriesGuide
Like TVTime and Hobi, SeriesGuide (Android) offers an easy way for users to keep tabs on their favorite TV shows. In addition, SeriesGuide also features Trakt integration so you can sync your watchlist. Furthermore, SeriesGuide features a widget that users can add to their home screen, allowing them to track their shows without launching the app. Finally, SeriesGuide includes a number of plug-in extensions and even allows users to make their own plug-ins.
Unfortunately, the free version of SeriesGuide is ad-supported. Opting for the premium version of the app will give users access to more widgets, customization of notifications and future support, including functionality expansion. Unfortunately, SeriesGuide is currently only available for Android.
5. Seen It!
If you’re looking for a super lightweight app, look no further. Seen It (Android) comes in at only 782 kilobytes. The app offers basic TV tracking, allowing users to add shows and manually tick off the episodes they’ve seen. The user interface, if you can really call it that, lacks the flashy graphics of all the other apps on this list. Instead, Seen It relies on a basic text list, which is one of the reasons why it’s so tiny. At the time of this writing, Seen It has less than one thousand installs. That being said, if you’re after a TV show tracker that requires very little data and won’t ask much of your device to run, then this might be the app for you.
Unfortunately, Seen It is only available for Android users; however, there is a completely unrelated iOS app also called Seen It (iOS). It’s not as barebones as its Android counterpart, but it is currently the only completely free full-feature Trakt client for iOS.
Do you use a TV Show tracker? Which one do you prefer? Let us know in the comments!
This article was updated in July 2019.
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