How to Track TV Shows Offline, with No Account

12 October 2026

Plenty of people would rather not create yet another account just to remember which episode they are on. Others watch on planes, on trains, or in places where the signal comes and goes. And some simply prefer that their viewing history stays with them.

All of those are good reasons to track TV shows offline. This article explains how OpenTV does it, what works without a connection, what still needs one, and how to keep your library safe without handing it to anyone.

The short version

OpenTV keeps your library in a database on your own phone. There is no sign-up. You open the app, add your shows or import your history, and start tracking.

When you mark an episode watched, it is written to that database on your phone. Nothing has to reach a server for it to count.

Starting with no account

On the first screen, tap GET STARTED. You can then:

• IMPORT YOUR DATA from a TV Time, Trakt, Simkl, Letterboxd or IMDb export
• START FRESH and add shows yourself

There is no email, no password, and no username at this point. The welcome screen says it plainly: no account needed, your data lives on your device.

If you have a TV Time export, see how to get your TV Time history back. From other services, see how to move your history from Trakt, Letterboxd, Simkl or IMDb.

What works offline

Once a show is in your library, the everyday things work without a connection:

• Marking episodes and films watched, or unwatching them
• Rating episodes and films, and picking emotions
• Your Watch List and Upcoming lists
• Your lists
• Your stats and your history
• Wrapped, the cards that sum up any month or year

Episode lists and artwork are saved on your phone after they are first downloaded, so your library still looks like your library on a plane.

What still needs a connection

We would rather be honest than overpromise. A few things need the internet:

• Adding a new show or film. Searching the catalogue and downloading its episodes needs a connection. OpenTV uses TheTVDB for show data.
• New episodes and artwork updates. The app refreshes show details when it can, so new seasons appear.
• Backups and sync, which go through your own cloud.
• The optional community: comments, other people's ratings and profiles.
• Plex, Jellyfin and Stremio connections, which read your watched episodes from those services.

None of these send your history to us. Fetching episode lists asks for show data; it does not upload what you have watched.

Keeping it safe without an account

A library that lives only on one phone has one weak point: the phone. If it is lost, broken or wiped, the library goes with it. So OpenTV can keep a copy in a place you already own.

On iPhone, OpenTV backs up to your own iCloud Drive. It writes a file called OpenTV Backup.zip to Files, iCloud Drive, OpenTV. If iCloud Drive is on, the backup happens on its own.

On Android, OpenTV can back up to your own Google Drive. Signing in to Google here only connects your Drive. It does not create an OpenTV account or join the community.

Both are free. You will find them under Settings, then the Library tab, then Backup.

You can also keep a copy by hand. In the same Backup screen, Export my data saves your whole library as a ZIP in TV Time's own file format. Put it wherever you like, and import it back any time.

Moving to a new phone

When you change phones, open Settings, Library, and tap Moving from another phone?. It asks which phone you had and shows the options that apply:

• From iPhone to iPhone, restore from your iCloud copy
• From Android to Android, restore from your Google Drive copy
• Between the two, use the export file: export on the old phone, send it to yourself, import it on the new one

An iCloud backup only restores to another iPhone. Between an iPhone and an Android, the export file always works, and so does free sync through your own Google Drive, which runs on both. See how to sync iPhone and Android for free.

If you want more later

Nothing about the offline setup locks you out of the rest. If you decide later that you want to read comments under episodes, you can join the community with Apple or Google sign-in. Your library still stays on your phone. Joining syncs a summary to your profile, such as your totals and the shows and films you watched, along with the comments and ratings you write. The app tells you this before you join.

If you want your library on two devices at once, you can sync them for free through your own iCloud or Google Drive, with no OpenTV account. The optional OpenTV Plus subscription adds backup and sync through OpenTV's own server.

Neither is needed to track.

Why we built it this way

A tracker holds years of your life in small ticks. We think that belongs to you first. Keeping it on your phone means it works when the network does not, and it does not depend on any company staying in business, including ours. More on that in what happens to your watch history when a tracker shuts down.

Get OpenTV

OpenTV is free, with no ads, on the App Store for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android. Bringing history across? Follow our import your TV Time history guide. Comparing apps? See TV Time alternatives and OpenTV vs Trakt.