I Tried Binge, the Letterboxd Alternative That I Now Like More Than Letterboxd

The aptly named Binge is a new app for iPhones, iPads, and Macs that has set its sights on Letterboxd. Like that popular movie-centric social media platform, Binge gives you a way to track what you've watched and what you want to watch. But whereas Letterboxd sticks mostly to movies, Binge covers both movies and TV shows, and adds "jump scare warnings," an innovative feature Letterboxd can't match (though in testing it out, I experienced mixed results).

Keeping tabs on my viewing is something I very much need help with, and while I've had a Letterboxd account for a while, I don't log into it or update my viewing history very often. Because it offers one spot to track both movies and TV, I decided to give Binge a try—and despite the aforementioned issues with its standout feature, I mostly liked what I found.

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Use Binge to track both movies and TV shows

You don't need to sign up for an account to use Binge, but if you do, you can sync your activity in the app across multiple Apple devices. As far as the interface goes, you've got three tabs for checking out new and trending content—Discover, Movies, and Shows. The final tab is the Library, where your viewing is logged.

The tracking is really simple: You can mark movies or TV shows as watched or that you'd like to watch in the future; for shows, you can also log how many episodes you've got through. This is all then sifted into a timeline on your Library page. (One non-Letterboxd feature I enjoy is the I do like the option to pick a selection at random from your want-to-watch list—a good bet for those times when you just can't decide what to wathc.)

Binge offers a clean and simple layout. Credit: Lifehacker

Overall, Binge is simpler than Letterboxd, which crams in so many options—marking something as watched, rating it, adding it to lists, and sharing it with others—into the same pop-up window; while that app offers more to do, it also feels cluttered. Binge provides just the basics, which is a plus for a low-effort media tracker like me.

The same goes for the built-in search: It's much more comprehensive on Letterboxd, where you can really dig down into search categories like genre, year of release, and cast and crew members. Binge offers a more straightforward keyword search for matching titles or people associated with a title.

Still, Binge is impressive in terms of how much information it presents for each movie or TV show. As well as cast and crew lists, you've got trailers, ratings from across the web, awards and nominations, information on which streaming app you need to watch something, and a parents guide that flags up anything that's frightening, violent, or otherwise adult in nature.

You get plenty of information about each title. Credit: Lifehacker

The Library tab is well done, sorting everything in an easy to follow way, though you can create collections for movies and shows if you want to organize them more deliberately. I like the idea of the Your Next Watch section, which recommends titles based on what you've already seen, and it turned up some interesting picks for me.

You can customize a lot of the interface inside Binge, so if there are features you're not really interested in—like reviews of a movie or lists of how many awards it's picked up—you can disable them with a tap. It's also possible to tone down some of the effects, like parallax and shimmer, that are applied by default.

THe jump scare tracker is a great idea, but it didn't quite work for me

I'm not much of a fan of horror or violence—I really don't like being scared or grossed out—which can make watching movies tricky. Some of the most critically acclaimed and popular flicks come with these elements included, and so I find myself wanting to watch them while also worrying about being traumatized.

Binge provides a solution for this in the form of jump scare warnings: Many title pages offer a timeline showing when the jumps are coming, and details of what happens (so beware spoilers). There's a timer you can start when you begin watching that will ostensibly deliver a jump scare alert to your phone as a "Live Activity" before the scary scene hits. However, while the timeline screen was straightforward enough, I couldn't get the Live Activity notifications to pop up consistently—the app seemed to lose track of what it was tracking and when, and there's no way to manually adjust the time elapsed once you've already started a movie or TV show. Still, the jump scare timeline on its own is useful. The scares are sorted into minor and major categories, and if you don't mind getting advance warnings about a plot point or two, then they're handy to have if you want to know when to cover your eyes.

A jump scare timeline. Credit: Lifehacker

Unfortunately, jump scare charts aren't available for every movie. In browsing, I found that films like The Invisible Man (2020) and Prometheus (2012) offer them, but they're missing on older fare such as Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Single White Female (1992). I'm not sure where Binge is getting its data from (possibly WhenJumpScare), but it's not guaranteed for every film.

The other downside: Jump scares are a paid extra in Binge. You'll need to sign up for a monthly ($1.99), yearly ($17.99), or lifetime ($49.99) package to get them. The subscription also unlocks several other features, like episode ratings graphs, the ability to set custom movie posters (also a paid feature on Letterboxd), and reminders for upcoming movies and shows.

The app includes recommendations too. Credit: Lifehacker

The app also scores highly for its data import and export tools. You can load in existing information from your accounts on Trakt, Letterboxd, and iMDb, and export everything you've logged in a JSON file to use elsewhere. You can also sync activity with Trakt, though that's another premium feature.

Binge is a worthy Letterboxd alternative

While hardened film nerds are still going to prefer Letterboxd—not least for the baked-in community and sharing features—Binge is a worthy alternative for the rest of us. You can get up and running in just a few minutes, everything is neatly laid out and easy to parse, and there are numerous cool touches spread throughout. It might finally get me to more faithfully track my media consumption.

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