On July 15, 2026, TV Time shut down for good: 26 million lifetime installs and a decade of watch histories, deleted. If you're standing in the rubble wondering where your tracking habit lives now, this guide is for you.
Background
TV Time's parent company, Whip Media, announced the closure by in-app notification on July 1, 2026, giving users two weeks' notice. The stated reason was that the free app wasn't financially sustainable and too few users wanted to pay for a subscription version. After an acquisition by Blue Torch Capital the company refocused on enterprise AI, and shut the app down rather than selling it to someone who would keep it running. The apps left the stores, tvtime.com went dark, and personal data that wasn't exported through the company's GDPR portal before the deadline was deleted.
If you exported in time, your file holds your watched episodes, ratings and watchlist, and two apps below can import it. If you didn't, there is no recovery path, and that stings. It is worth carrying one lesson forward: pick apps that let you take your data with you. Every recommendation below is judged partly on that.
Disclosure
I build Limelight, one of the apps below. It is not the closest functional clone of TV Time. The guide points you to the apps that are, and says plainly who Limelight suits instead.
Step one
TV Time was several apps in a trench coat, and no single replacement does all of it. Pick your lane.
The options
Simkl is where most former TV Time users should start. Episode-by-episode tracking across TV, movies and anime, a working TV Time import tool that reads the export file, and automatic scrobbling from Netflix, Plex, Kodi and VLC so future history builds itself. The interface is dated and discovery is weak, but as a free system of record it is the most direct heir.
Trakt does everything TV Time did with more depth: episode tracking, calendars for upcoming airings, and a large set of third-party apps built on its open API. It also imports TV Time exports. Two caveats. VIP renewals were unified at $60 a year, double the old price, and the free tier's limits tightened. If you'll use the automation and integrations it's worth paying for. If you just tick off episodes, Simkl covers you for nothing.
What TV Time's comment sections did badly, Serializd does well: a real community of TV watchers reviewing seasons and episodes with wit and taste, which is Letterboxd's culture applied to shows. Completely free. It's TV only and has no streaming availability lookup, so it pairs naturally with an availability app rather than replacing everything at once.
The pitch, plainly. If your TV Time habit was less about ticking every episode and more about keeping a list of shows and working out what to watch next, Limelight covers that with less ceremony: a Watchlist and Seen List at title level, streaming availability on every search, and with Limelight+ the Top 10 charts for 107 countries so you can see what's trending on your own services. No ads in any tier. What it doesn't do is episode-by-episode progress bars or a social feed. If those were your TV Time, pick Simkl or Serializd instead.
The most complete Android-native tracker: episode tracking, multiple watchlists, statistics, and optional Trakt sync. That last part matters more after this year, because syncing to Trakt means your history lives somewhere exportable no matter what happens to any single app.
If you would rather not rebuild any history and just want a clean modern tracker going forward, Matinee is the polished newcomer: movies and TV in one feed, streaming availability built in, free on both platforms. It's young, and the flip side of losing an app to a corporate pivot is being cautious about studio-built newcomers, but it's a pleasant place to start over.
Comparison
| App | Episode tracking | TV Time import | Community | Where to stream | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simkl | Yes | Yes | Basic | Basic | Generous |
| Trakt | Yes | Yes | Basic | Basic | Limited |
| Serializd | Yes | No | Excellent | No | Everything free |
| Limelight | Title level | No | No | Yes, built in | Full tracking, no ads |
| Moviebase | Yes | Via Trakt | No | Basic | Solid |
| Matinee | Yes | No | Early days | Yes | Everything free |
Checked August 2026. Import tools and tier limits change, so confirm on each app's own site before you commit a decade of history to it.
The lesson
The portability lesson
TV Time users with a Trakt sync lost nothing in July. Everyone else lost everything they hadn't exported. Whatever you pick next, spend five minutes setting up an export path or a sync. Apps die. Your watch history shouldn't have to.
Ask one question of any app before you trust it with years of data: can I get it back out, in a format something else can read? Trakt, Simkl and Letterboxd all say yes. Apps that say no are asking for a commitment they haven't earned.
Limelight is for the part of TV Time that was really about deciding what to watch tonight, without the episode admin.
Title-level tracking that takes one tap and no maintenance.
Every search shows which of your services actually has it.
See what's trending on your own services in 107 countries.
Free on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Limelight+ is $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year. No ads in either tier. Limelight tracks at title level, so if you need episode-by-episode progress, Simkl or Trakt will serve you better.
FAQ
Whip Media said the free app wasn't financially sustainable and demand for a paid version was too weak. After the Blue Torch Capital acquisition the company refocused on enterprise AI and closed the app on July 15, 2026, rather than selling it.
Only if you exported before the July 15 deadline, so check your downloads and email for the export file. The company said unexported personal data would be deleted, and the export portal went offline with the service.
Simkl, for free episode tracking with TV Time import. Trakt if you want more power and will pay for it. Serializd if the community was your reason for opening the app.
Nobody knows, which is the point. Prefer apps with working data export, such as Trakt and Simkl, or business models that don't depend on ads or acquisition. Ask how an app makes money. If the answer is that it doesn't, your data is the runway.
Limelight is free on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Watchlist, seen list and streaming availability, with no ads.
