How to export your TV Time data

Your watch history is worth saving

If you used TV Time for years, your account held a lot: every show you tracked, every episode you ticked off, the movies you logged, the ratings you left and the little comments you wrote after each episode. When TV Time shut down, a lot of people worried that all of it would simply disappear. If you requested a copy of your personal data while TV Time was still open, that copy is yours, and you can carry your viewing history into an app that will still be here next year.

If you did not manage to export in time, we are sorry. Now that TV Time has closed, new data requests are no longer possible, and there is no way to sugar-coat that, it is a genuine loss. The one bit of good news: you can still rebuild your library on TV Track by searching and re-adding the shows and movies you remember, and start again from a home that will not vanish on you.

Below is what a TV Time export contained, how the request worked while the app was open, and the simplest way to import your archive if you have one.

How to export TV Time data (how it worked)

While TV Time was open, you could request a copy of your personal data through what is often called a GDPR or privacy data request. You asked for your data from within your account settings, and after a short wait you received a downloadable archive, usually a .zip file, by email. We are keeping the steps here for reference, and for anyone who exported in time and wants to understand what they downloaded.

1. Sign in to your TV Time account, then open your account or privacy settings. This is usually where you manage your profile, email and password.
2. Look for a data export or "request my data" option. It may sit under a privacy, data, or account section, and can be worded as downloading or requesting a copy of your information.
3. Confirm the request. You may be asked to verify your email or identity before the request is accepted.
4. Wait for the email with your archive. Preparing a data export is not always instant, so you may receive a link to download your .zip a little while after asking.
5. Download the archive and keep it safe. Save the .zip somewhere you will find it again, such as your downloads folder or cloud storage. This file is your history.

What is inside the export

The archive you receive is a compressed folder of data files. The exact layout varies, but a personal data export from a tracker like TV Time typically includes your tracked shows, your watched episodes with the dates you saw them, the movies you logged, your lists and follows, and your ratings and comments. That information is usually stored as data files in JSON and/or CSV format. You do not need to open or edit these files yourself; they exist so that another app can read your history and rebuild it faithfully.

If you are curious, you can unzip the archive and take a look. JSON files are plain text and open in any text editor, and CSV files open in a spreadsheet. You will usually see rows or records with a show or movie name, a season and episode number, a date, and sometimes a rating or a short note. The most valuable part is the dates: they are what let a new app rebuild your timeline exactly, rather than guessing. That is also why it is worth keeping the whole .zip rather than picking out a single file, since the pieces work best together.

Import your TV Time data into TV Track in one click

Getting the export is only half the job. The point is to have your history somewhere you can keep using it, and that is what TV Track is built for. Open the import screen, then drag and drop your TV Time .zip straight in. TV Track reads the files, matches every show and movie to TMDB so the artwork and details are correct, and keeps your real watch dates instead of marking everything as watched today. Your ratings and your written comments come across too. If you ever run the import again, it never creates duplicates, so you can safely re-import or even combine TV Time with another source.

TV Track is free, has no ads, and installs as a single app that works the same on iPhone, Android and desktop. It speaks 7 languages. And because you can later export your whole TV Track account as a .zip with CSV and JSON, you are never locked in again.

Other export tools

The official GDPR data request is the most complete way to get your data, since it comes straight from TV Time. There is also a free, community-made option worth knowing about: a browser extension called TV Time Out by Refract, which can export your TV Time data locally on your own machine as JSON, CSV or a ZIP file, running client-side in your browser. If you would rather grab your data that way, that route works too. TV Track imports both the official TV Time GDPR zip and Refract exports, so whichever method you choose, you can bring the result into TV Track the same way.

Frequently asked questions