Know When Your Watchlist Arrives on Your Streaming Services
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A watchlist fills up with things you cannot watch yet. A film that is only in cinemas. A show on a service you do not pay for. Months later it quietly lands on one you do have, and nobody tells you.
OpenTV can tell you. You pick the streaming services you pay for, and the app keeps an eye on your watchlist for you. When something you saved arrives on one of them, you get one notification.
This is part of OpenTV Plus.
Where to find it
Open Settings and go to the App tab. Right under Notifications there is a row called My streaming services, with the line "Hear when something on your watchlist arrives on one".
Without Plus, the row carries a Plus label and tapping it opens the Plus screen.
Picking your services
The screen opens with a short explanation and a list of streaming services. The list is the one for your country, so you only see services that exist where you live.
Tap the ones you pay for. The heading counts them as you go, for example "3 services picked".
The list is downloaded when you open the screen, so it needs a connection the first time. If you are offline, OpenTV shows the services it has already seen on your own titles. If even that is empty, it says "Couldn't load the list. Check your connection and try again."
Turning on the alerts
Under the list there is a switch: Tell me when it's on my services. The line under it says exactly what to expect: "One notification per title and service, never twice."
When a title arrives, the notification reads Now on followed by the service, with the title in the body. Tap it and the show or film opens.
On Android, these arrive in their own notification channel called Streaming arrivals, so you can control them separately from episode reminders in the phone's own settings.
What it checks
About once a day, your phone looks at two things:
- Films you have added but not watched yet, which is your watchlist
- Shows you follow but have not started
It does not check shows you are already watching. You know where those are.
If you move to another country, titles are checked again for the new one. A title checked for one country does not count as checked for another.
The filter that comes with it
Picking your services also gives your library a new filter.
On your Profile, tap the title of the Shows or Movies shelf to open the full page, then tap the filters button. There is a section called Streaming with one choice: On my services. Turn it on and you only see titles that are on a service you pay for.
It is the quickest answer to "what can I actually watch tonight without signing up for something?"
Privacy
The intro on the screen says it plainly: "None of this leaves your phone."
Your list of services is stored on the phone. The daily check runs on the phone. OpenTV asks a public film and TV database which services carry each title in your country, and does the matching itself. There is no OpenTV server holding your services or your watchlist, and nothing about them is published to your profile.
That is the same idea behind the rest of the app. If you want to read more about it, see how to track TV shows offline, with no account.
If Plus ends
Your choices are kept. Until Plus is back, there are no arrival alerts and the On my services filter is not offered. Pick Plus up again later and your services are still there, already picked.
Where to watch, for one title
You do not need any of this to see where a single title is streaming. Every show and film page has a Where to watch section that lists the services for your country. That part is free.
My streaming services is for the other direction: not "where is this?", but "tell me when it gets here".
A few good uses
- A film you saw a trailer for, that is still in cinemas
- A show everyone talks about, on a service you do not have
- A classic you want to see, waiting for it to come back to a service you already pay for
Getting your watchlist in first
The alerts only help if your watchlist is in OpenTV. If you kept one somewhere else, bring it with you. OpenTV can import from TV Time, Trakt, Simkl, Letterboxd, IMDb and others. See how to get your TV Time history back or how to move from Trakt, Letterboxd, Simkl or IMDb.
Get OpenTV
OpenTV is free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android. Tracking and Where to watch are free. My streaming services comes with OpenTV Plus.
Questions or ideas? Ask on Discord or r/opentv_app.