How I Built My Own Movie & TV Tracker App (No Code)

If you’ve ever wanted to track what you watch but couldn’t find an app that fit exactly how your brain works, you don’t have to settle. Here’s how I made an app to track what I watch — built from scratch, tailored to me, no coding needed.

Why build your own instead of downloading one

There are plenty of watchlist apps out there. I tried a few. But I built a TV tracker because no app had the custom tags and simple logging flow I actually wanted — most were bloated, ad-heavy, or forced me to search a title every time.

That’s the case for a DIY movie tracker project in Auto: instead of bending your habits to someone else’s app, you describe what you want and get a personal mini-app (a “Frame”) shaped around your taste. It takes minutes, and it fits because you made it.

Building it in Auto

The flow is camera-first:

1. Describe your Frame. Tell Auto what you want it to do — for example, “log a show when I photograph it.”
2. Snap a photo. Point your camera at the TV (a title card works well) to log an entry.
3. Refine. Add features one prompt at a time — thumbnails, ratings, recommendations — until it works the way you think.

No app store, no code, no generic template.

How someone built theirs

A real Auto user built a Frame called “TV Watch Log,” and their prompts are a great blueprint.

They started simple: build a TV watch log where snapping a photo of a show (usually the title card) logs it as watched. Smart touch — they told Auto to assume they’d enjoyed anything they bothered to log (an automatic thumbs-up), with an option to thumbs-down the misses. Less tapping, more watching.

Next, they added intelligence: a tool that reads the last 30 days of viewing and generates recommendations, triggered by a button and returned as a short list of one to three shows. So the tracker doesn’t just record — it suggests what to watch next based on your actual habits.

Finally, a polish pass: add a thumbnail for each entry, so the log reads like a visual shelf instead of a text list.

Three prompts, one working app. You could take the same path and tweak it — swap in your own tags, track movies only, or add a “rewatch” flag. The point is that it’s yours.

FAQ

Do I need to know how to code? No. You describe what you want in plain language, and Auto builds the Frame. Every feature above came from a typed sentence.

Can I add my own custom tags or categories? Yes — that’s the whole reason to build your own. Ask for genre tags, a “watched with” field, mood ratings, whatever fits how you sort your viewing.

Does the photo have to be a title card? It works well because titles are easy to read, but you can describe your own logging trigger — a poster, a paused frame, or a manual entry.

How long does it take? Minutes. Start with one core feature, snap a test photo, then add pieces one prompt at a time until it feels right.