Watchlists are broken. The union can fix them.

This is it Low corridor By Yanko Rutgersa newsletter about the ever-evolving intersection of technology and entertainment, published specifically for Edge Subscribers once a week. Low corridor He will take a winter break and will return on January 8, 2026.

All I want for Christmas is to find that damn movie I’ve been meaning to watch. What was it called again? I could have sworn I had bookmarked it somewhere…

If your family is anything like mine, you may face the same problem frequently: There’s so much to pay attention to, it’s becoming a nightmare to keep track of all the things you want to stream one day. That’s not to say there aren’t any tools for that. there! And a lot of them! And they’re all easy to use! Which is kind of a problem.

Here’s what usually happens: I might be browsing Netflix, logging into my profile, and bookmarking a movie I want to watch in the future. Then, my wife takes over the remote, spends some time clicking on Hulu, and adds a show she wants us to enjoy to the viewing list associated with her profile. Or so we think — until we try to find it again and eventually discover that she’s already logged into our daughter’s profile and inadvertently added the show to her watch list.

Then, the next day, we turn on the TV and see something interesting on the home screen. One quick button press, and it’s added to your watch list. Except that Google maintains this list, and it’s completely separate from all the other lists. Our family probably has about a dozen different watch lists. We don’t all actively use them, at least not when we’re in the mood to find something. But you can bet there’s a really fun movie on our dog’s Tubi watch list (made by my kids), and we’re desperate to finally remember where we bookmarked it.

There are apps that try to solve this very problem. Plex, for example, has a very good global catalog of titles available across all the major streaming services and a watchlist to remember your favorites. The app also does a good job of deep linking to third-party services, so you can jump right into a Netflix show or movie rental on Amazon with one click. At least that’s true on mobile. On smart TVs, those deep connections can be hit or miss, depending on the platform the TV is running on. (Sorry, Roku users! You Of luck.)

The problem is that a global watch list like this requires a lot of work on your part. When you’re browsing Netflix at 11pm and stumble upon something that looks interesting, you should pull out your phone, open the Plex app, search for the same title, and add it to the list. And when you’re finally able to watch it, you’ll have to do the same thing again to remove the title from your Plex list. That’s a lot of work for a small late-night TV.

The sad truth is that watchlists, while well-intentioned, are broken. Here’s how streaming services and smart TV platforms can fix it: Instead of keeping all watchlist data in a silo, these services should enable consumers to choose to share it between services. That way, if I bookmark a movie on Netflix, the Netflix app will share that information with my Plex watchlist. Once you watch it, it disappears from both lists again. And when my wife adds a Hulu show to her Google TV watch list, it immediately appears in her Hulu watch list as well.

Ideally, I’d like to have a bunch of different ways to enter this type of data and many ways to consume it. Maybe I’ll keep one main list maintained by Plex or Google or another company. But I also want to be able to keep smashing that bookmark button into whatever streaming app I’m using and have all my listings updated across all providers in real time. Granted, Netflix may never list titles that are only available on Hulu. But these days, offers regularly move from one service to another. What if Netflix took a note internally of the shows I bookmarked on HBO Max and then added them to my Netflix watchlist when those HBO shows eventually found their way onto its service?

Once you have enough data flowing back and forth between streaming apps and watchlists, you may also become less reliant on profiles, which has always been an imperfect solution. Sure, my wife and I might like different things sometimes. But most of the time, we watch TV together. So why don’t we automatically sort bookmarked shows and movies by genre, mood, and age rating, instead of putting them in watch lists linked to individual profiles?

Standardizing watchlists, freeing movie and TV show bookmarks from those silos, could also allow for a whole host of neat new use cases that simply aren’t possible today. What if, for example, Spotify automatically created playlists of soundtracks for movies and shows you’ve recently watched, based on data for titles that disappear from your watching list? (Tip to J Herskowitz for this one.)

Unfortunately, streaming services are incredibly protective of their data. Companies like Netflix want you to spend all your time within their app and not with a third-party aggregator that may recommend titles from the Hulu catalog based on your Netflix viewing history. In fact, Netflix is ​​very protective of its in-app experience, and its watchlist Not allowed Google TV users can add Netflix titles to their smart TV’s global watchlist. And none of the major streaming services, with Plex being the one notable exception, offer an RSS feed for your watchlist.

But at this time of year, I can only hope for miracles. There’s probably a streaming CEO out there right now who’s still looking for a New Year’s resolution. Here’s a great idea: open the gates. Edit the data. Let people remix it, and build interesting tricks. Take in as much data as possible from other services, and use it to help everyone find the perfect movie or show without having to search through thousands of listings.

Until then, I might as well open a book. Now, if I could just remember what I wanted to read next…