TV Time has shut down: where your watch history went, and where to go next

TV Time closed on July 15, and the ending was quieter than the announcement. The apps came off the App Store and Google Play, tvtime.com is offline, and the watch histories went with it. If you have landed here trying to get back into your account, I am sorry. There is no way back in.

I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago while the shutdown was still coming, and the advice then was: export now, pick a new app after. Plenty of people did exactly that. Plenty of others requested their export and never heard anything back, because the official tool was buckling under millions of people all asking at once in its final fortnight.

So this is the after version of that post. What you can do now depends entirely on what you managed to get out before the lights went off.

If you have the Liberator CSV

The community-built TV Time Liberator extension pulled your history straight out of the site while you were signed in, and it produced a CSV. If you ran it in time, you are in the best shape of anyone reading this.

LaterRex imports that file directly. Shows come in with their status, so anything you had marked as up to date lands as finished, anything in progress stays in progress, and the ones you stopped watching come across as dropped. Watched episodes come with them, season by season, with the dates you watched them, and the movies you logged come in as well. If you imported your file before September 22, run it again: it fills in the real watch dates on what came across the first time.

Open LaterRex, go to Settings, choose Import, and select your file. If you're not on an iPhone, the same import works in your browser at app.laterrex.com.

Worth saying plainly: the extension itself no longer works. It read the live site, and the site is gone. If you did not run it before the 15th, this is a dead end.

If you have TV Time's in-app export

TV Time's own in-app export gives you a set of files rather than one: tvtime-series, tvtime-series-episodes, tvtime-movies and tvtime-lists. LaterRex reads those too. Select them all at once, or the zip if they came in one, and it works out which export you have from the files themselves. Your shows keep their status, your watched episodes and movies come across with their dates, and this export brings your TV Time lists over as well.

If you got nothing

This is most people, you're not alone. If your export never arrived, your history is, sadly, gone.

The thing I would say, having watched a few people go through this now, is that the rebuild is less miserable than it looks from the start of it. You do not need to reconstruct a decade of viewing in an evening. Add the show you are in the middle of right now, then the two or three you are waiting on. That covers most of what tracking is actually for, which is knowing what you are watching and what is next. The archive of everything you have ever seen is nice to have, and I understand why losing it stings, but it was doing less work for you day to day than the handful of shows you are actually in.

The completionists among you will hate this advice. Add them in batches when you are bored. It goes quicker than you think.

What to look for in a new tracker

The obvious next question is where all of that goes. There's no shortage of trackers, and honestly the right one depends on what you actually track. A few things worth weighing before you choose: does it accept your TV Time export, so you're not re-adding hundreds of shows by hand, does it cover just tv or everything you watch and read, does it run ads, and does it cost anything. If tv shows and film are the whole of it for you, Trakt and Simkl are both well-built, cross-platform, and worth a proper look. This isn't a one-answer situation, and I'd rather point you somewhere that fits than pretend otherwise.

Where LaterRex fits

Here's the thing TV Time was never built to do, and it's the reason LaterRex exists. Your watching was never really just tv. The show you're three episodes into is quietly competing for a free evening with the novel on your nightstand, the game sitting in your Steam backlog, and the podcast a friend keeps pushing on you. TV Time could only ever speak for one of those. LaterRex holds all of them in one place, movies, tv shows, books, games, podcasts and music, so "what do I actually feel like tonight" has one answer instead of five separate apps.

It tracks tv properly, episode by episode, with an up-next list and a nudge when a new episode drops, so the part TV Time was best at doesn't get lost in the move. On top of that, the whole app is built around recommendations from people you trust. A friend mentions something, you save it the second they say it, and it waits for you with their name attached so you remember whose fault it was when you love it. There's no public feed to perform for. No ads anywhere, on the free tier or the paid one, ever.

And you won't be starting from a blank slate. LaterRex imports from TV Time, so your shows, films and episode progress can come across rather than getting typed back in by hand. Hang onto that export you downloaded, it's your portable copy of everything.

I should be straight about one limit, because it'll decide it for some of you: the LaterRex app is iPhone-only right now. On Android or a computer you can use LaterRex in your browser at app.laterrex.com instead, sign up with Google or Apple, and import your TV Time file there. If a proper Android app is what you need, Trakt or Simkl will look after you.

LaterRex vs TV Time at a glance

So which one should you pick

If you're on Android or you mostly track from a browser, LaterRex works there through app.laterrex.com, TV Time import included, though Trakt and Simkl both have proper Android apps if that matters more to you. If you're on an iPhone and your watching has quietly spread out into books, games and podcasts, that's the exact case LaterRex is built to fill, and your TV Time history doesn't have to go away with the app. The question is really whether "my shows" is shorthand for everything piling up across your free time, or just the tv.

Frequently asked questions

When did TV Time shut down?

July 15, 2026. TV Time announced it on July 2. On the 15th the apps came off the App Store and Google Play, tvtime.com went offline, and account data was deleted with it.

Can I still export my TV Time data?

No. Both ways of getting it out, TV Time's own export and the Liberator extension, stopped working when the service went offline on July 15. If you didn't get a file out before then, there's no way to get your history back now.

Can I move my TV Time history into LaterRex?

Yes, if you got a file out before the shutdown. LaterRex reads both the TV Time Liberator CSV and TV Time's own in-app export, and brings across your shows with their status, your watched episodes and films with their dates, and, from the in-app export, your lists. On iPhone it's in Settings under Import, and it works the same way on the web at app.laterrex.com.

Is LaterRex free?

Yes. The core app is free, with an optional upgrade for a few extras, and no ads on either tier, so we don't run into the same issue TV Time did. If what you want is a calm place to keep your shows next to everything else you're into, the free version has you covered.