How to keep track of the TV shows you watch

16 Jun 2026

Somewhere around the third streaming service, keeping track of TV in your head stops working. You forget which episode of the slow-burn drama you were on, a season you were enjoying ends and quietly returns a year later without you noticing, and half-finished shows pile up across apps that each pretend the others do not exist.

There are three real approaches to fixing this.

Memory and vibes

Free, zero effort, and how most people operate. It works right up until you watch more than a couple of shows at once, or a show takes a break between seasons. The failure mode is silent: you do not notice what you forgot.

A note or spreadsheet

The honest DIY option: a note on your phone or a spreadsheet with show, season and episode. It genuinely works, and for one or two shows it is arguably enough. The problems appear with scale and with time. You have to remember to update it, it cannot tell you when a new season is announced, and it knows nothing about air dates. A spreadsheet is a record, not an assistant.

A tracking app

Purpose-built trackers solve the two things the spreadsheet cannot:

• They know the schedule. Air dates come from a live database, so the app knows a new episode exists before you do, and can send a notification the day it airs.
• They compute “next” for you. Tick off an episode and the app works out what you should watch next across every show you follow.

The catch is that most tracking apps grew social feeds, badges and stats dashboards, and the useful tool got buried inside an engagement machine. If you have ever opened a tracker to check one episode number and closed it five minutes later having scrolled a feed, you know the problem.

What to look for in a tracker

• Opens straight onto what you should watch next
• One tap to mark an episode watched
• Air-date notifications you can trust, and nothing else
• No pressure to rate, review, follow or share
• Easy account deletion, so your data stays yours

That list is essentially the design brief for OnNext. One list of next episodes, a tick for each one you watch, a push the day a new episode airs, and a deliberate refusal to become a social network. However you decide to track, the goal is the same: never again lose your place in a show you were enjoying.