How to Move from Sofa Time to OpenTV

13 November 2026

Sofa Time lets you download your library as a file. That file is enough to rebuild your history in another tracker, as long as the tracker can read it. OpenTV can, since version 2.0.4.

This guide shows how to move from Sofa Time to OpenTV, step by step, and is honest about what comes across and what does not.

What Sofa Time's export is

Sofa Time's export is a ZIP file. Inside are JSON files, one for each list: the shows you watched, the shows you stopped, the shows on your watchlist, and the same three for films.

The important detail is that every show and film in the file carries its TMDB id, a number from The Movie Database. That means OpenTV never has to guess a show from its title. Two shows with the same name, or a show stored under a different language, still land on the right one.

Step 1: export from Sofa Time

Open Sofa Time and look in its settings for the export. Save the ZIP it gives you somewhere you can find it on your phone, such as Files or Downloads.

Leave the ZIP as it is. There is no need to unzip it first.

Step 2: import into OpenTV

Open OpenTV and go to Settings.
Open the Library tab.
Under Your data, tap Import your data.
The app asks "Where is your history coming from?". Tap Sofa Time.
Tap CHOOSE EXPORT FILE and pick the ZIP.

If this is a new install, you can start from the welcome screen instead: tap GET STARTED, then IMPORT YOUR DATA.

If you already have a library in OpenTV, you are asked what to do with it. Merge into my library adds the import on top and deletes nothing. Erase it and import clean starts again from the file alone. For most people, merging is the right choice.

Keep OpenTV open while it imports. If your phone locks or you switch apps, nothing is half-saved. Come back and start the import again.

What comes across

Watched shows, with every episode. Each episode keeps the date you ticked it off in Sofa Time, so your history reads in the right order.
Stopped shows. Sofa Time keeps shows you dropped and shows you put on hold. Both arrive as stopped shows in OpenTV: the episodes you watched are kept, and the show leaves your Watch Next list.
Your show watchlist. Shows you planned to watch arrive as shows you follow, with nothing watched yet.
Films. Films you watched and films on your watchlist are read from the film files.
Ratings, where the file has them. Sofa Time rates out of ten, and OpenTV shows that as five stars with halves, so a 7 becomes three and a half stars. Episode ratings are rare in Sofa Time exports, so do not be surprised if few come across.

What does not, and why

Films you stopped watching. OpenTV has no "abandoned" state for films. Such a film is neither seen nor still wanted, so it is left out rather than guessed into one or the other.
A show OpenTV cannot place. OpenTV keeps shows by their TheTVDB id, the database it uses for episode lists. Each TMDB id in your file is looked up there. A show with no match is listed in the Import Summary instead of being matched by name.

One thing to check: anime

Sofa Time numbers episodes the way TMDB does. For most shows, that is the same as TheTVDB. Some anime are numbered differently: one long run of episodes on one side, split into seasons on the other.

So if you track long-running anime, open one or two after the import and check that the episode you are on is the right one. If something looks off, it is most likely this.

After the import

The Import Summary shows four columns for shows, episodes, movies and watchlist: Total, In app, New and Issues.

New is what this import added. If you import the same file twice, it is zero the second time, because nothing is ever duplicated.
Needs attention lists anything that could not be matched. Tap FIND next to a show to match it by hand.

Then a few quick checks are worth a minute:

Open two or three shows you know well and look at the episode counts.
Check a long anime, as above.
Turn on a backup: your own iCloud Drive on iPhone, or your own Google Drive on Android, under Settings, Library, Backup.

Bringing more than one app

Imports merge, so you can import from several apps one after the other. If you also have a TV Time export, a Trakt file or a Letterboxd diary, import those too. Your shows and films end up in one library, and nothing is counted twice.

The TV Time export is the richest of all, with ratings, emotions and favourite characters. See how to get your TV Time history back. For the others, see how to move your history from Trakt, Letterboxd, Simkl or IMDb.

Your library stays on your phone

OpenTV keeps your library on your phone. There is no account to make, and importing does not send your history anywhere. Your Sofa Time account is not touched either, so you can keep it as a second copy if you like.

And if you ever want to leave OpenTV, Export my data under Settings, Library, Backup gives you your whole library as a ZIP. More on why that matters in what happens to your watch history when a tracker shuts down.

Get OpenTV

OpenTV is free, open source and has no ads. Get it on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, or on Google Play for Android. Comparing apps first? See TV Time alternatives and OpenTV vs Trakt.

Questions or ideas? Ask on Discord or r/opentv_app.