On This Day: What You Were Watching Years Ago Today

6 November 2026

Photo apps have done this for years. You open your phone and it shows you a picture from this day, five years ago. It is a small thing, and it is often the best part of the day.

Your watch history can do the same. If you have years of it, there is almost always something: the night you finished a show, the weekend you watched a whole season, the comment you wrote after a finale.

OpenTV calls these Memories. They are free, they work with no account, and they come entirely from your own history on your phone.

On this day, on your profile

When there is a memory for today, it appears as one line at the top of your Profile. It reads like this:

• "A year ago today you finished" followed by the show
• "A year ago today you wrote about" a show
• "A year ago today you watched" a number of episodes of a show
• "A year ago today you watched" a show and the episode number

For older memories it says how many years ago instead.

There are four kinds, and OpenTV shows the strongest one, in this order:

1. A finale. The day you finished a show. Endings are what people remember.
2. Something you wrote. A comment you posted about a show. Your own words, years later.
3. A binge. A day you watched several episodes of the same show.
4. A single episode. When nothing bigger happened, the one episode you watched.

When two memories are the same kind, the older one wins. "Four years ago" is a better surprise than "last year".

Many days have nothing at all, and then no line appears. That is on purpose. A memory every single day would mostly be weak ones, and weak ones teach you to ignore the good ones.

Tap the line and it opens what it names. An episode memory opens that episode, not just the show, and a memory of something you wrote opens your comments. Then the line goes away until tomorrow.

The Memories page

Behind the line is a whole page. On your Profile, tap the ⋯ menu and choose Memories. Its subtitle is "Everything worth remembering, newest first".

It starts with On this day: everything that happened on today's date in past years.

Below that comes everything else, as a dated archive, newest first, ending in Earlier for the oldest. Each entry is short:

• Finished followed by the show
• How many episodes of a show you watched that day
• Wrote about followed by the show
• A show and the episode you watched

Tap any of them to open it.

What makes this different from a plain history list is the date. A log tells you what you did. A memory is something that happened on this same day, years ago, and that coincidence is the whole point.

A memory in the evening

You can also get the day's memory as a notification. It arrives in the evening, when people are deciding what to watch, and tapping it opens the Memories page. Only the bigger memories are sent this way: a finale, a binge or something you wrote. A single episode stays on your profile and never interrupts you.

To turn it on or off, open Settings, go to the App tab, open Notifications and find On this day: "A memory from your own history, on your profile and in the evening".

Where the memories come from

Everything comes from your own library: the dates you watched episodes, the shows you finished, and the comments you wrote.

That has two consequences.

First, memories only work if your history has dates. If you are just starting with OpenTV, the page will say "Nothing to remember yet. Mark episodes as you watch them and this fills itself in." That is honest, but slow. A year from now you will have memories.

Second, if you bring your history with you, memories start on day one. A TV Time export keeps the date of every episode you marked, often going back many years. Import it and the first memory can be from a decade ago. See how to get your TV Time history back. Other apps work too: moving from Trakt, Letterboxd, Simkl or IMDb explains what comes across from each.

Private by design

Memories are built from your watch history, and your watch history stays on your phone. That is why Memories lives in the ⋯ menu and not on a shelf you publish. Nobody who opens your profile sees your memories. They are worked out on the phone, so they also work offline.

Small things people enjoy finding

• The date you started the show you now call your favourite
• A finale you had forgotten watching on a weeknight
• A whole season in one weekend that you had forgotten
• What you wrote the night a show ended, before you knew how people would feel about it

Then the obvious next step: open it again. A memory is often the start of a rewatch.

Is it free?

Yes. The line on your profile, the Memories page and the evening notification are all free, with no ads and no account.

Get OpenTV

OpenTV is free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android. Bring your history in, and see what you were watching on this day.