Maybe that the movies and shows on the watchlist appear on the calendar when their release is upcoming?
Other than that, I agree that, in the situation where someone doesn’t really check the calendar and only manually checks the watchlist if they’re just looking for something to watch, then yes, using the lists as “Watchlist 2”, “Watchlist 3”, “Watchlist 4”… is the smart move.
Ah, that’s a good point.
I rarely use the calendar (if ever), I wasn’t aware that’s exclusive for the watchlisted items.
The other lists wont bring it up in “upcoming” or “up next” or “watchlist” section on the dashboard, so i would miss if a series or a movie airs.
so the watchlist is meant for “keeping track of what i want to watch and keep an eye out for”.
I even put “series/movies i want to watch” and which are already out in the seperat lists, we freeusers still have, (dont need them in the “upcoming” sections and so on) but still my watchlist is full.
I’ll start by saying that obviously the following suggestion wouldn’t be necessary if the limits weren’t in place, and will obviously require more manual effort for you, but if you’re ok to work around, this might help you at least in the short term. I’m also not sure if this will help your specific case but some things to try.
If your issue lies in losing the side effects that come with the watchlist (such as being included in calendar), you could create a list for items (whether movies and/or shows) that you know don’t need to be in the calendar or up next right now.
eg.
Sort your watchlist by release date, and move all Released movies to a separate list for later, and leave all unreleased movies in your watchlist. Obviously you lose the ‘auto-remove on watch’ from the extra lists, but otherwise you can always sort the other lists periodically by watched status or watched date and delete those that are watched, etc. This is something I do myself with a list for my partner and I to keep track of things we want to watch together and, using the newly-made-free feature of adding list collaborators, even free users can both add and manage the list items when necessary.
Same as above could be applied to your shows that are otherwise already released or canceled/ended that you know won’t be appearing in your calendar in the future.
For everything else, it’d likely be about prioritising those which you care to actually be alerted about in calendar that you haven’t started watching yet and keep those in your watchlist (are you really going to get to all of those?).
Your other options would be to utilise the collection feature, up to its limit, as things will show up in calendar for those. Or worst case you could also, as a ‘hack’, have a list of shows that you add a single episode to your history way in the past that you intend to watch at some point - this will cause the show to come up in the calendar without needing to be in the watchlist.
Again, sucks that any of that might be necessary, but if VIP is not an option for you then that’s about all I can think of to help workaround the issue.
As i already said, i already use the lists for things i dont need in the upcoming or calendar. But still my watchlist ist full (103 items) with upcoming stuff.
I cant delete anything in my watchlist, because its all upcoming and i want to know when its airing.
Its just sad, that a page that basically says “track your stuff with us” limits the main feature behind a big paywall with alot of other “power user features”.
I already looked into it and other similare sites give you the watchlist feature and some “light vip” if you want to have an export or other “small” stuff casual user can really need and use for a fair price.
I think i will switch then, because it looks like there wont be any solution (they already said no cheaper vip step, no bigger limits, so no changes at all it seems.
Sorry, my bad, I hadn’t read the full thread, just figured I’d offer some general tips for others but it sounds like you already did what I suggested.
I use watchlist (literally) for these TV Shows I am currently watch. I now know that that was not it’s purpose (what’s in a name). So in my case it’s not an ever growing list, I can only watch so many series. I use other ‘custom’ lists as well, to keep track of things looking for or on hold, or simply skipped watching after a while. So their limitation to 2 lists and a 100 items is shame. Further more, I heavily use the collection-option to keep track of what I have in my library, also now capped to 100 items (not series, but episodes also count as an item). Now with the cap on Lists, and the Collection, Trakt has become useless for me, unless I pay 60$ a month, which is a bit high compared to the things I use on Trakt. Another thing I really oppose to is the short timeframe, or actual lack of, is the announcement of the cap.
Because you wrote this in two different topics today, I want to check whether you know: it’s $60 per year (for new subscribers); not per month.
(And yes, that’s still expensive)
Collection counts shows + movies, not individual episodes.
congrats - you not only lost a user but potential customer… thankfully there are other services than trakt
Why even bother? No point in still using it as a free user OR a paid user. I had 2k watchlist items. I cannot export/transfer to an alternative. That was the cruel move. I would have paid for VIP IF there was some type of warning and this didnt turn into a data hostage situation with my watchlists. Traktv is very poorly run and kinda jerks for the way this was handled and the web interface is buggy and how many years old is the service? This has forced me off Kodi + Seren and I am without my watchlists. Happily using Stremio now, the new contender displacing Kodi.
Playing devil’s advocate here, but this was stipulated in the past on Reddit. I happily pay VIP for two separate accounts (one private, one public), but have friends that haven’t the money to pay. This indicated that Watchlist would always have higher limits than other lists for them and would have placated them (and likely many others too). It only took three months from this public (official) declaration for you to go back on your word.
Totally in agreement, the cost is too much in today’s financial climate. I have my Trakt synced to my Kodi so there are alternatives that are free to use with no limits.
I don’t think my reply indicates it would “always” be the case, but yeah that was my thought at the time of that reddit reply.
Your data can be exported in JSON format at https://trakt.tv/settings/data.
It certainly gave that impression “any limits would STILL”. It does make one worry about any promises Trakt makes, or any statements made, whether they are truthful or not. “My word is my bond” obviously doesn’t apply. And if that’s the case I also worry about the future of VIP and the grandfathered price, if you’ll go back on your word for that, or if those things VIPs have now will be be taken away and free users even more restricted, since your “thoughts” are obviously made so flippantly.
they need (more) money and they’re trying anything they could think of, no matter what they said/promised in the past.
they won’t backpedal.
It does make one wonder if they have been “taken over” by Younify and no longer have much say. All these weird decisions have come from the pair up with them (matching colour scheme being the start of it, along with VIP price hike) and since then everything has gone downhill in the decision making. Younify obviously costs quite a bit to implement and everyone is paying the price whether they like it or not. Did they “sell out” to Younify and they call all the shots now? Will us grandfathered VIPs be the next target? Justin keeps saying we keep the grandfathered price, but if that was only his “thoughts” last week, will that change? I think if they make a statement, like with the Watchlist, they should keep to that statement - it would go a long way to placating many and give everyone a bit of piece of mind and feeling over the security and the future of Trakt.
I use the calander to keep track on what’s on right now and what’s comming, from my watch list. Paying for VIP means I will be paying for a lot of features that I do not use, or want. Why would I do that?
I do think that there should be two tiers of VIP looking at lots of the replies - one that is cheaper without the automatic scrobbling in as it seems Younify is what could be driving the price up, and one with automatic scrobbling included. Maybe a completely bottom tier for a tenner a year with an unlimited watchlist.
Do think this would drive up the overall number of people using VIP and appease most people.
Its a pity to see a lot of people leave as one of my favourite things is reading peoples thoughts on episodes and shows 
Don’t we pay for things included but we don’t use on many things in life?
Getting a sports package on “cable” tv because we want to see our baseball team on one of its channels is my best example I can think of but I’m sure there are many others that have tier/bundle pricing rather than menu pricing.
