Keeping tabs on the TV shows you watch can be a chore — there are so many streaming services to balance these days that it becomes a mess trying to keep up with new series. While film fans have Letterboxd to track the movies they watch, there hasn’t been a similar solution for tracking TV. That is, until Marathon.
Is Marathon a good TV tracking app?
True to the pitch, Marathon makes it easy to track the shows you watch. The app pulls show data from JustWatch, so you should have no problem finding virtually any program you’re following. For example, my current obsession is The Last of Us (as yours should be), so it was naturally the first thing I searched for in the app. Marathon pulls up the show with official art and lists the number of seasons (one) and episodes (nine), as well as the ratings from users on the site. You can see how many Marathon watchers the show has, the number of reviews written, and the number of lists users placed the show on. You can tap each metric to see more, so you can see exactly which users are watching the show, read reviews, and check out those lists.
Scroll down a bit and you can see focused details like ratings for each season (of course, The Last of Us is a singular season), plus metrics for the highest-rated episode of the season (episode three), and the lowest-rated episode of the season (episode four). But it’s at the bottom of each show’s page where the important bit is: tracking. Here, you can check off each episode of the season you watched, and even mark any you’ve rewatched, which really only works when cataloging shows you’re actively watching. (Lord only knows how many times I’ve rewatched Breaking Bad.)
Once you start tracking, things get interesting. You can use the “Up Next” tab to see the upcoming episodes that should be in your queue. Because I’ve only seen the first two seasons of Stranger Things (I know, I know), Marathon lets me know I should be checking out Season Three, Episode One next. You don’t have to search for the season to track it, either — Up Next lets you check it off and will replace it with the next episode in line.
Finally, there’s your profile, which I only really mention for one thing: It measures the total time you’ve spent watching TV. And it’s a sobering figure. I’ve only added a handful of shows I’ve watched while testing the app, and I’m already at six and a half days of TV watched. I shudder to think what that number would really be if I had been using something like Marathon since I began my TV-watching career.
Where to download the Marathon app
Since it’s so new, Marathon’s social scene is small, but you can find users to follow. Better yet, convince your friends to try it out so you can keep tabs on the shows you watch together.
Marathon is 100% free to use, but if you’re loving it, you can send a tip to developer Josh Pensky here.
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