What happened
Whip Media, which owned TV Time, announced on 2 July 2026 that the service would close on 15 July 2026. The company said the free app was no longer sustainable and that there was not enough demand for a paid version, while redirecting the business toward enterprise AI products.
The app was removed from the App Store and Google Play, tvtime.com went offline, and personal user data was deleted after that date. TV Time had passed 26 million lifetime installs.
Your watch history is probably gone
If you did not export your data before 15 July 2026, there is nothing left to recover.
TV Time offered a GDPR self-service export until the shutdown date. If you used it, you have a file. If you did not, no app can retrieve your history. Not Showtime, not Trakt, not Simkl. The servers that held it no longer exist.
Several migration guides published in July suggested otherwise. If your history is gone, the only question left is where you start again.
Whether Showtime suits you
It depends entirely on what you used TV Time for.
It will not work for you if
- You are on Android. Showtime is iPhone only. TV Time was on both.
- Your iPhone cannot run iOS 26.5. Showtime requires the current release, which rules out older devices.
- You want the TV Time community: the comments under each episode, the reaction GIFs, the badges. Showtime has none of that.
- You want automatic check-ins. Showtime does not scrobble.
It will suit you if
- What you used TV Time for was knowing which episode comes next, and keeping a list of what to watch.
- You found the alternatives you tried too dense, and you want fewer screens rather than more features.
- You are willing to keep your data on Trakt, which is a stable, independent service with a public API.
- You want to try before committing. Showtime has a guest mode that works without any account.
Starting again from nothing
You do not need all of it back, which makes this shorter than it sounds.
- Open Showtime in guest mode. No account, no email. Save up to three shows and three movies to see whether the app suits you.
- Create a free Trakt account when you are convinced. Showtime offers to move your saved titles into your Trakt watchlist at that point.
- Add the shows you are actually mid-way through. For most people that is five to fifteen titles, not hundreds.
- Mark the last episode you watched in each one. Showtime asks whether to mark the earlier episodes of that season as well, which does most of the work in one tap per show.
- Leave the rest. Older history is not worth an evening of typing, and nothing in the app depends on it.
The other options
Showtime is one answer among several, and it is not the right one for everyone.
- Trakt. The service Showtime is built on, with its own official app. Far more capable, and correspondingly denser. Imports from IMDb, Plex, Letterboxd and TV Time exports. Runs on iOS 18.6 and later, so it reaches older iPhones than Showtime does.
- Simkl. Tracks shows, movies and anime, on more platforms. It absorbed a large share of the TV Time migration.
- Serializd. Closer to the social, review-driven side of what TV Time offered.
- Moviebase and SeriesGuide. Strong options if you are on Android, where Showtime is not available.
These are real options. If one of them fits your case better than Showtime, use it.
Showtime
Showtime is a native iOS app to track the TV shows you watch, powered by your Trakt account. It also tracks movies, and works in guest mode without an account.
