Can you still get your TV Time data after the shutdown

What happened to TV Time

TV Time started in Paris in 2011 under the name TVShow Time and was bought by Whip Media in 2016, according to Wikipedia's history of the service. It became one of the biggest show-tracking apps around. TechCrunch reported more than 26.4 million lifetime installs, citing the app intelligence firm Appfigures, and noted that Whip Media's own marketing spoke of more than 25 million users.

On July 1, 2026, TV Time announced that its app and website would be discontinued, and TechCrunch reported that the app would no longer offer service after July 15, 2026. Whip Media's explanation was that it was no longer sustainable to keep running TV Time as a free app, and that there was not enough demand for a paid one. The company also said the data collected through TV Time would not be used in any commercial service afterwards and that everyone's personal data would be deleted.

Why a new export is no longer possible

While the service was running, TV Time offered a GDPR-compliant self-service export at gdpr.tvtime.com. As TechCrunch and Listy's migration guide describe it, you signed in with your TV Time email and password, requested a download of your personal data, and waited while it was prepared. Some people used an email route instead: Simkl's documentation describes sending a message with the subject GDPR Data Request to TV Time support and receiving the data within seven days.

Both routes ended with the service. Moviebase's help page states that TV Time no longer provides a new-export route, and Cinopsys puts it more bluntly: for anyone who did not export, there is nothing to recover from. Treat any website that promises to restore a TV Time account with suspicion, because the deletion was announced by the company itself.

You may notice an App Store listing called TV Time: Show & Movie Tracker that appeared in July 2026. It comes from an independent developer, and its own description calls it a replacement for the now-defunct TV Time app. That description also says it can import your original TV Time export if you saved one, which is the same file every other tracker needs.

How to find an export you may already have

If you requested the export, look for more than one email. Simkl's documentation says TV Time sent two separate messages, one with a ZIP file of your data and another with the password that opens the archive, and Cinopsys describes the same split. Search your inbox, including spam and archived mail, for messages from TV Time and for the word GDPR.

Then check the device where you downloaded it: the Downloads folder on a computer, or the Files app on a phone. Keep the original ZIP exactly as it arrived. The developers of TV Time Capsule, an open-source viewer for the export, tell users not to unzip or edit the file before loading it, and Trakt says its importer takes the ZIP directly with no unzipping needed.

Once you find it, make at least two copies in different places, for example a cloud drive and a second computer or an external disk. Put the password next to the file in a way you will still understand a year from now. With TV Time's copy deleted, losing a laptop now means losing the history.

What is inside the export

The archive is a folder of CSV files rather than one tidy list. A guide from Achriom describes CSVs with names like tracking-prod-records.csv, and the open-source TvTimeToTrakt script reads tracking-prod-records.csv and tracking-prod-records-v2.csv for shows and movies while warning users to check where their own data actually sits. Exports are not identical, so expect some digging if you open the files by hand.

The viewing records are the valuable part. Trakt's forum post for TV Time users lists watch history, watchlist and ratings as what its importer brings across when available, and Achriom notes that the files also carry ten-point episode ratings and emoji reactions. TVmaze's announcement of its importer mentions followed shows, watched episodes, watchlist items, dropped or completed shows, and ratings where they can be matched. Trakt is explicit that comments, reactions and social activity do not transfer, and Cinopsys says comments, reactions, GIFs, polls and votes had no export path at all.

The archive also holds account data you may not want to scatter around. The developers of two open-source viewers, TV Time Capsule and tvtime-time-machine, say their tools deliberately skip files such as login and authentication data, password hashes, IP address history, tokens and device information. In other words, those files are in the ZIP alongside your watch history.

Where the export can go now

Several trackers built importers for the file. Trakt's sits under its Settings, Data page and accepts the ZIP without unzipping. Simkl's documentation describes uploading the ZIP and pasting the archive password into a field. TVmaze announced in July 2026 that it was working on an importer of its own. Each service matches titles against its own database, so a few shows or episodes may need fixing afterwards; the Achriom guide reports users seeing odd episodes skipped even though they were present in the export.

Before uploading, think about where the file goes. A web converter or online service receives the whole archive, account files included, unless it says it reads only the parts it needs. A tool that processes the file on your own device avoids that question entirely.

Common mistakes with a saved TV Time export

Unzipping and re-zipping it. Several importers expect the original archive, and TV Time Capsule asks for the file untouched. Work on a copy if you want to look inside.

Losing the password email. The ZIP and its password arrived separately. A backup of one without the other may be useless, so store them together.

Keeping a single copy. There is no longer anywhere to download it again. One extra copy on a different device costs nothing.

Expecting the social side to come back. Comments, reactions and polls are not what importers carry. If what you want is the tracking without the social layer, ShowShelf reads the saved ZIP, or the CSV files from it, on your phone and puts your series and checked episodes back on a shelf, with no account to create.

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