How to organise your watchlist with Trakt (and actually use it)
Updated November 2026
Almost everyone has a watchlist somewhere. Screenshots of recommendations, a note on the phone, half a dozen "My List" rows spread across different streaming services. The problem isn't saving movies. It's that the list grows for years and never gets used, because by movie night it's too long and too messy to choose from.
Trakt is a free service that solves the first half of the problem: one place for everything you want to watch and everything you've watched, no matter which service it's on. This guide covers how to set it up so it stays useful, and how to turn it into a decision quickly.
What Trakt is, in one paragraph
Trakt is a website and account that keeps track of movies and TV shows: what you want to watch (your watchlist), what you've already watched (your history), and how much you liked each one (your ratings). It isn't a streaming service; it doesn't play anything. Instead, many apps can connect to it, so the same watchlist and history follow you everywhere. QuickFlick is one of those apps: sign in with Trakt and your watchlist becomes a deck of cards to swipe through.
Creating an account is free at trakt.tv. Trakt also offers a paid plan with extra features; for everything in this guide, the free account is enough.
Rule 1: save fast, without thinking
The moment to add a movie is the moment you hear about it: a friend's recommendation, a trailer, a review. Don't decide whether you'll really watch it. Just save it. A watchlist is a collection of "maybe", and the decision belongs to later.
The easiest ways to save are the Trakt website, Trakt-connected apps, or straight from a swipe in QuickFlick's Discovery (swipe down to save for later).
Rule 2: record what you watch
A watchlist only stays clean if watched movies leave it. Every time you watch something, mark it as watched. Trakt moves it to your history, and from then on apps know not to suggest it again.
This is also where a lot of the value is. After a year, your history tells you how many movies you watched, which genres you prefer and which directors you keep coming back to. (QuickFlick's FlickWrapped, between mid-December and early January, turns exactly this into your year in movies.)
If you use a media centre like Plex or Kodi, look into Trakt's automatic tracking ("scrobbling"): what you play gets recorded by itself.
Rule 3: rate, even roughly
Ratings on Trakt go from 1 to 10. You don't need a careful system; a quick gut number right after the credits is enough. Over time, ratings show you patterns ("I always rate slow dramas low on weeknights") and make recommendations much better.
QuickFlick asks the day after you pick a movie whether you watched it and lets you rate it in two taps, so the habit builds itself.
Rule 4: clean the list a few times a year
Some movies sit in the watchlist for years because, honestly, you'll never be in the mood for them. That's fine, but they make choosing slower. A few times a year, go through the list and remove anything that no longer makes you curious. If you're not sure, keep it; if your reaction is "why did I add this?", delete it.
A quick way to clean: swipe through your watchlist and use the "remove" direction for anything that makes you sigh. It takes minutes instead of an afternoon.
Turning the watchlist into a decision
Here's where most watchlists fail: scrolling through 300 saved movies is just as overwhelming as scrolling a streaming catalogue. The fix is to look at them one at a time and filter first.
- Filter by tonight. Maximum length, the services you have, the mood you're in.
- Go one by one. Yes or no on each movie, without overthinking.
- Stop at a shortlist of five to ten, then cut until one is left.
That's exactly the flow QuickFlick runs on your Trakt watchlist: a random order every time, so the movies buried at the bottom of the list finally get a chance.
Sharing with friends
On Trakt you can follow friends and see what they're watching. That makes group decisions much easier: combine your watchlists and look first at the movies several of you saved. In QuickFlick that's the Watchparty: choose the friends you follow and swipe through everyone's lists combined.
In short
- Save every recommendation the moment you hear it.
- Mark movies as watched so the list stays clean.
- Rate quickly; patterns appear after a few months.
- Clean the list a few times a year.
- On movie night, filter first and look at one movie at a time.