Wanted: One Movie & TV Organizer to Rule Them All

Today’s entertainment junkie has a seemingly endless supply of TV shows and movies to watch, along with an overwhelming number of ways to consume them.

If you’re like me, you probably struggle to manage all of the TV shows and movies on your watch list. You may be facing one or more of the following challenges:

All of these challenges lead to the ultimate question:

The answer: yes … and no. I haven’t found a single app that can organize my entire screen entertainment life. (Although — spoiler alert — JustWatch is getting very close.)

Consequently, I’ve adopted several different apps that, in combination, meet most of my needs. In other words, creating a complete solution requires cobbling together several apps and services, which is what I have done to date.

Admittedly, this is a First World Problem and a bit silly to anguish over. Yet, I suspect that I’m not alone in my frustrations with the solutions available today.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share my current setup and highlight where it falls short. At the very least, I hope that some readers may learn about a helpful app or two. And if I get lucky, maybe someone reading this will have ideas about alternative apps I might try.

My current setup relies on four apps: IMDb, EpisodeCalendar, JustWatch, and Rotten Tomatoes. All of these services are available on both the web and mobile devices.

IMDb

I use IMDb to manage my movie watch queue. (I use a different app for TV shows.) I mostly use the web app, but the iOS app is equally handy.

For registered users, IMDb offers a robust Lists feature. The default list is the “Watchlist.” I use this list to remember which movies are already available on one of my streaming services. You can also create custom lists. For example, you might create a list of your favorite movies or a list of recommendations for a friend. I have a “Backburner” custom list for movies that I’m not sure I want to watch.

IMDb is a great place to keep movie lists because each item includes a bunch of data at a glance — everything from the movie’s basic meta info to its IMDb star rating and Metacritic Metascore. And if you click on the title, you can view all of the details about the movie on its “reference view” page.

On any movie (or TV series) details page, you can click on the plus icon inside the poster image to add titles to your Watchlist. You can also add titles by searching for movies or shows directly on the edit Watchlist screen.

Another key feature of IMDb lists is the custom notes field, functionality difficult to find in other services. For each title on your list, you can add whatever personal comments you’d like. I usually add a note indicating where the movie is available to stream (e.g., “Netflix” or “Paramount+”). Sometimes, I add a reminder of why I added the movie to my list.

As much as I like IMDb for managing my movie watch queue, the service comes up short in two key areas.

1. From a list, you can’t see where a movie is available to stream. To get that info, you have to either click the blue info icon or click the title to view the details page for the movie. (JustWatch provides better at-a-glance streaming availability.)
2. IMDb doesn’t provide the Tomatometer score from Rotten Tomatoes, which is my favorite source for reviews and evaluations.

IMDb (Internet Movie Database) also has data about TV series. However, I don’t use IMDb at all for managing my TV watch list.

Why not? Because EpisodeCalendar is a far superior tool for tracking TV series and episodes.

EpisodeCalendar

For managing your TV watch list, EpisodeCalendar has a killer feature set.

With EpisodeCalendar, you can:

Add TV series to your “My Shows” queue.

Organize your shows into default or custom lists.

See your unwatched episodes and mark the ones you’ve recently watched.

View a monthly calendar that indicates when new episodes of your shows will stream (or air) in the next few weeks or months.

Receive daily and/or weekly email notifications for new episodes of shows in your queue.

For a full overview of EpisodeCalendar, see my previous post: How I Tamed Peak TV with EpisodeCalendar.

As much as I love EpisodeCalendar, it’s not a complete solution. What’s missing?

• Unlike IMDb, EpisodeCalendar doesn’t offer a custom notes field for titles on your lists.
• EpisodeCalendar indicates the original network or streamer for a show, but it doesn’t provide current streaming availability.
• EpisodeCalendar doesn’t have native mobile apps. However, its website is mobile-optimized.

Note: In 2022, I took a quick “test drive” of a web app called TV Time, which has a feature set similar to EpisodeCalendar (but also offers a mobile app). The result: an epic fail. The site was extremely buggy and several core features were working only intermittently (e.g., adding shows to the Watchlist) or not at all (e.g., the calendar never loaded when I set it to display only “My shows”). I turned off my ad blocker and also tried a second browser with no luck. I also found the user interface confusing. I haven’t re-tried it since then; if you’ve had better luck, let me know in the comments.

JustWatch

As I’ve already mentioned, EpisodeCalendar doesn’t offer streaming availability, and IMDb doesn’t show this info directly on its list view (without clicking on something). So, for tracking where I can watch movies and shows, I rely on JustWatch. (I’ve also tried Reelgood, but I prefer the user experience on the JustWatch web and mobile apps.)

JustWatch is a search engine that tells you where you can stream movies or TV shows via subscription, rental, and/or purchase.

JustWatch is equally good for tracking TV show availability. For example, below is the Watch Now grid for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (as of September 2025).

As you might expect, you can add movies and TV shows to a Watchlist. Even better, you can filter your Watchlist to show only movies, only TV shows, or only content available from specific streaming services. For example, you could filter the list to show only movies available on HBO Max.

Helpfully, JustWatch displays rating scores from three sources: their own service, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes.

In 2021, JustWatch enhanced its service to allow you to track which episodes you’ve watched of a TV series, bringing it closer to feature parity with EpisodeCalendar. For each series, you can mark which seasons or episodes you’ve already seen.

The “TV Show Tracking” feature has sections for “Continue Watching,” “Haven’t Started,” and “Caught Up.”

Another helpful feature on JustWatch is their “Notify me” feature. Originally, it would send a push notification to the app when one of the titles on your Watchlist became available on a streaming service. I never used the feature because I didn’t want to receive general notifications from JustWatch. However, around August 2025, they started sending email notifications (a feature I previously used on the defunct GoWatchIt app).

You might be wondering why I don’t use JustWatch as my single organizer to track movies and TV series.

For tracking TV shows, JustWatch is catching up with EpisodeCalendar, but I still prefer the latter since it also offers weekly episode email notifications and a calendar view of upcoming episodes.

For tracking movies, JustWatch could work as a viable alternative to IMDb, depending on your needs. For me, the complication is that I maintain two movie lists:

1. Pending Availability – movies that aren’t yet available on a subscription streaming service or that are available on a streaming service that I don’t subscribe to at the moment.
2. Available – movies that are available on one of my current subscription streaming services. This is my movie watch queue.

For #1, JustWatch is perfect, and I use its native Watchlist feature. For #2, a custom list could work (you get two free custom lists on a free JustWatch account). However, on custom lists, JustWatch doesn’t show streaming availability unless you open the details page for a title. Doh!

For this reason, I use the Watchlist on IMDb as my movie watch queue (and I enter the streaming service as a custom note).

IMDb has several advantages over JustWatch:

• Custom notes.
• Unlimited custom lists (vs. two free ones on JustWatch).
• A more comprehensive list of movies. Its database contains virtually every movie ever made. By contrast, JustWatch has most movies, but sometimes, I can’t find more obscure titles.

Even so, I’m considering switching both my movie lists (pending streaming availability and available now) to JustWatch. I’d still use IMDb as a movie database (e.g., to see actor and director filmographies) but not for watch management.

Rotten Tomatoes

I heavily rely on Rotten Tomatoes to decide which movies and TV shows to add to my watch queue. A movie’s critical consensus is usually more important to me than its box office performance (popularity), genre, or cast.

For most titles, Rotten Tomatoes offers a comprehensive aggregation of reviews, and I like the ability to filter reviews to see only those from the “Top Critics.” Rotten Tomatoes easily allows me to get a quick measure of a movie (or show) by scanning over the review excerpts, with each corresponding full review just a click away.

The listing for each TV series and movie on Rotten Tomatoes contains a “Where To Watch” section that indicates where the title is available for rental, purchase, or streaming. The availability data is not as comprehensive as JustWatch, but it’s probably good enough for most people.

Unfortunately, Rotten Tomatoes isn’t a contender for the ultimate organizer. You can add movies and shows to a “Want to See” list, but the list doesn’t have custom notes or show streaming availability (without visiting the details for each title). You can create custom lists, but only in the mobile app (not on the website). It also doesn’t offer TV episode tracking.

Recap

I got pretty far into the weeds about each app above, so here’s a brief recap:

• I use IMDb for my active movie watch queue (for movies already available on one of my streaming services).
• I use EpisodeCalendar for all my TV show organization, including planning which services I should cancel and/or subscribe to soon.
• I use JustWatch to track the streaming availability of movies and TV shows, including a watch list of movies that are not yet available to stream.
• I use Rotten Tomatoes to help me decide which movies and TV series I want to watch.

My Ideal Feature Set

As I mentioned already, JustWatch is the closest to becoming my “one organizer to rule them all.” But it doesn’t do everything I need. My ideal movie and TV organizer would allow me to:

The table below summarizes how the apps I use measure up to my feature wish list.

1. All features of EpisodeCalendar are for TV shows only since the service does not cover movies.
2. To create more than 2 custom lists, JustWatch users have to subscribe to the pro version. To create custom lists in Rotten Tomatoes, you have to use the mobile app.
3. Except for EpisodeCalendar, all the apps now show streaming availability, but JustWatch has by far the most comprehensive info.
4. EpisodeCalendar includes the user rank and number of followers for each series, but not a critical consensus. Rotten Tomatoes calls its critics score “Tomatometer” and audience score “Popcornmeter.”

My ideal vision of “one app to rule them all” seemed elusive when I first wrote this post in 2019. Happily, over the years, the organizer apps have continued to add features. JustWatch is emerging as the winner. I could use it to manage both movies and TV. However, for now, I still prefer EpisodeCalendar for TV. So, maybe in the end, “two apps will rule them all.”

Your Turn

If you’d like to share your solution for managing your TV and/or movie watch lists, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

(Note: I moderate all comments so you may experience a delay before your comment appears on the post. For any SPAMMERS out there, don’t waste your time submitting as I will reject your comment.)