Best TV Show & Movie Tracker Apps in 2026 (Build Your Own)

If you want to track what you’re watching, you’ve probably searched for the best TV show tracker app and found the usual suspects. They’re fine—but none of them work quite the way you do. Here’s how to build your own instead.

The honest state of watch trackers

There are solid apps out there. TV Time is popular for episode tracking and community features. Letterboxd is the go-to if you want the best movie tracker app with a social feed. Trakt syncs across devices and integrates with media servers.

They all share the same catch: you’re logging things by searching a database, tapping through menus, and living inside someone else’s idea of what tracking should look like. If you’ve ever wanted a TV Time alternative or a Trakt alternative that just does the one thing you care about—without the clutter—the fastest path in 2026 isn’t downloading another app. It’s building your own.

Build it in Auto (about 5 minutes)

Auto is camera-first. You describe what you want, snap a photo, and it builds you a personal mini-app—a “Frame”—around it.

1. Open Auto and describe your log: “Build a TV watch log. When I snap a photo of a show’s title card, log it as watched.”
2. Add the behavior you actually want—like assuming you enjoyed something by default, with a quick option to mark it down.
3. Ask for extras: recommendations, thumbnails, whatever fits your taste.

That’s it. You now have a tracker shaped exactly around how you watch, not how an app company thinks you should.

How someone built theirs

A real Auto user built a Frame they called TV Watch Log, and their prompts show how simple it was.

They started by asking Auto to build a watch log where snapping a photo of a show—usually the title card—logs it as watched. Smartly, they set a default: assume they enjoyed it (a thumbs up), but leave a thumbs-down option for the misses. That small choice means most logging is a single snap, no rating friction.

Next they wanted the tracker to earn its keep: they asked Auto to add a tool that reads their last 30 days of watching habits and suggests one to three new shows, triggered by a button right in the app. Personalized recommendations from their own history—not an algorithm optimizing for something else.

Finally, a polish request: a thumbnail image for each movie, so the log looks like a shelf instead of a spreadsheet.

Three plain-English prompts, one custom app.

FAQ

Do I need to code? No. You describe what you want in normal sentences and snap photos. Auto handles the rest.

How is this different from TV Time or Trakt? Those are pre-built for everyone. A Frame is built for you—your logging habits, your rating shortcuts, your recommendations from your own history.

Can I track movies too, not just shows? Yes. Just say so when you build it. The user above added movie thumbnails; you can mix shows and films in one log.

Can I change it later? Yes. Frames aren’t locked. Want to add a “currently watching” list or a friend’s picks? Just ask Auto to add it.