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Switching from TV Time to CouchReel (TV Time Has Shut Down — Here's What to Do)
Updated Sep 15, 2026
This guide is different from the others in this series: TV Time shut down permanently on July 15, 2026, and as of this check (2026-09-15) its export tool is offline too. If you're arriving here months later looking for a live export, it doesn't exist anymore — read the "if you don't have an old export" section below.
If you already have an old TV Time export file
Before the July 15, 2026 shutdown, TV Time offered a GDPR-compliant self-service export at gdpr.tvtime.com/gdpr/self-service — sign in, request a download, wait a few minutes for it to prepare, and receive a data file covering your watched episodes, ratings, and lists. If you did this before the deadline and still have that file sitting in your downloads or email:
1.
In CouchReel, go to Settings → Bring your history.
2.
Choose TV Time as the source and upload the file.
3.
CouchReel matches entries by show/episode title (TV Time's export doesn't carry TMDB ids the way Trakt's does), so review the preview step carefully — this is the migration most likely to need a few manual corrections.
4.
Confirm to apply. Watched episodes and ratings merge into your CouchReel history; the further-along progress wins if anything overlaps with what you've already added manually.
If you don't have an old export
As of this check, TV Time's website, help center, and GDPR export tool all resolve to the same "Thank You, TV Time Community" farewell notice or fail to load — there is no way to pull a fresh export anymore. The company stated that personal account data would be permanently deleted after the shutdown date, and nothing in this check contradicts that. That history is very likely gone for good.
The fastest way to rebuild:
1.
Start with what you remember. CouchReel's search adds a title to your watched history in a couple of taps — rebuilding your top 50–100 shows takes minutes, not hours.
2.
Check if you were also logging on Trakt, Letterboxd, or Simkl. A lot of TV Time users cross-posted or dual-tracked. If any of those has a more complete record, import from there instead — see the other switching guides in this series.
3.
Let your streaming services fill in gaps. Netflix and other providers keep their own "continue watching" and viewing-history pages; there's no direct CouchReel import for these yet, but they're a manual source to cross-check against while you rebuild.
Why this happened
TV Time's parent company, Whip Media, shut the app down citing the cost of running a platform with tens of millions of free users and no clear path to paid conversion, while shifting the business toward enterprise artificial-intelligence products. It's a useful data point if you're choosing a tracker to switch to next: ask whether the product you're moving to has a real plan to stay funded. CouchReel's answer is a household subscription designed in from the start, not a pivot after the fact — see docs/monetization.md.
See also: `content/articles/couchreel-vs-tv-time.md` for the fuller picture of what TV Time was and why it's gone.