How do I... [many things]? (alternate title: I really really really don't like this)

[somegirl (Jamie)]

Good god, I avoided this as long as possible (only short peeks at V3 which sent me running away), even renewed against my own good judgement, and oh boy this is so bad.

Just a few things I’m struggling with right off the bat… this is basically a real-time exploration, some of it I could have backtracked over as I found a few (bad) answers to things, but staff, if anyone actually give a sh*t, might find it helpful to get an idea of a user’s experience trying to make sense of this.

1. Where is the progress page?

2. How do I view a calendar for a custom list? Or access the RSS for a custom list calendar? I had a list called “Currently Watching”; I would view the Calendar for that list only, and I had an RSS/.ics link so I could also have that calendar in Google Calendar. Now, as far as I can tell I can only view the default Calendar - no option to view a calendar view of a custom list. And my old .ics URL seems to give me a 404, and I can’t find any way to generate new one. So, what, is this just gone?? If I recall correctly the RSS links were part of the feature list for VIP and were a big part of why I originally subscribed. I really hope this is all hiding somewhere… I have a bad feeling the answer is I really should not have renewed like an idiot. This is a big deal to me as far as the value I get out of my money spent here.

3. Why does nothing have ALT text/hover tooltips/whatever? Every time I’m unsure what a button will do so I hover over it to see, I get… nothing. Is this not 2026? Hope to heavens there’s no one here who actually NEEDS these for accessibility; too bad for them I guess!

4. Why, on my History page, can I not see my Rating on the posters for anything? I used to regularly go to my History page, switch to Movies only, and do a quick scan to make sure I’d rated everything I’ve seen recently. Now - nope.

5. I found that I can use more clicks and go to my profile and find Activity and I thought, okay, I can check that I rated things here - but then realized, NO I cannot, this just shows me what I DID rate - I still can’t see at a glance if there are any movies that I marked as watched but have NOT rated yet. I still would have to go my History and then open each movie one at a time to check.

6. Also why does the Activity just open a stupid, small sidebar on the side of the screen? The other sections open a full page. Why not Activity?

7. Oh wait, I just saw there’s a History view on my profile that DOES show my ratings on the posters! Well that’s great, honestly, but what the hell? What page was I on earlier?

   Okay, I figured it out - the first History page I landed on was at https://app.trakt.tv/profile/somegirl/history?mode=movie - this is where I was redirected to after initially trying to go to the V2 History page. This one at least actually uses the whole page on my monitor (a rarity in V3!), but has less information - just the date watched. Then there’s the History page actually linked in the sidebar and profile - https://app.trakt.tv/history?mode=movie - this only uses a narrow bit of screen real estate, but even so is better in that it has the date AND time watched and importantly, it has my ratings on the cards. But why are there two different History pages??

8. Oh look, I found a progress page on my profile, too! Which absolutely sucks. THIS is what’s replaced the old progress page that had all that detail at a glance? Bloody hell.

9. On Continue Watching, I see that I have a ton of shows I want to Drop. (I must have had them Hidden on V2 which is different? I guess??) Anyway I thought I’ll start dropping them. When I do, first of all I get a confirmation dialog that appears to be cut off at that top. I guess there’s probably not other text that’s actually cut off, but the rectangle is clearly missing it’s top, and the text just barely avoids being cut off at the top.

   

10. Carrying on with trying to Drop shows from Continue Watching, every time I do, the whole page jumps back up to the top! Why?? This is time-consuming - scroll, scroll, drop, confirm, jump to top! Scroll, scroll, drop, confirm, jump to top! UGH.

11. Related - is there some way to bulk Drop shows? Stopping it from jumping back to the top every single time would help, but far better would be if there’s a way just tick a box on a bunch of shows and drop them. Am I overlooking this?

12. Seriously, why no ALT text or tooltips on anything? I was looking at the TV show episodes on the History page and the little star icon on the corner wondering what that does… Is it to mark it as a favorite? Hover… no hints. Okay, guess I’ll just click on it and see - ah, okay, it’s how I rate it. Fine. But it shouldn’t be trial and error! This problem was solved decades ago!!

13. Not a question, but I hate the change from 10-star ratings to 5-star ratings.

14. Again not a question, but that stupid date-picker at the top of e.g. the History page is stupid. Big and dumb and “modern” just for the sake of it.

15. Repeatedly, I’ve clicked a link or just gone back in my browser and just gotten a mostly blank page of nothing. Have to refresh to get it going again. E.g. when I clicked on my profile (first image), and when I clicked on Continue Watching (second image).

    
    

    Ah wait, for this second one, it’s because it was filtered to Movies and I have none to continue watching. So say that! Don’t just spit out a blank page! Put on there, “You have no movies in progress; try switching to TV shows” or something. You guys need to be told this??

16. The design, overall, I kind of just hate it. So much white space, so much less useful information at a glance, so much “oooh we’re so mooooodeeeerrrrrn now”. Yuck. But you guys have known that a lot of people felt that way for a very long time, so, whatever, just add me to the pile.

[silvia_ceravolo_0099 (Silvia Ceravolo 009973)]

Yes to all of the above. The poor design choices are one thing, but all the things that don’t work are just mind blowing since they have been testing this for months before forcing us all to switch. I literally can’t sign in since they took passwords away, this isn’t my VIP account, just a random sign=in with an old email address. That’s pretty basic. I used to love and recommend Trakt, now it’s just a hot mess.

[somegirl (Jamie)]

@somegirl

10. Carrying on with trying to Drop shows from Continue Watching, every time I do, the whole page jumps back up to the top! Why?? This is time-consuming - scroll, scroll, drop, confirm, jump to top! Scroll, scroll, drop, confirm, jump to top! UGH.

I’ve now found that on the Progress page (https://app.trakt.tv/profile/me/progress?mode=media), I can drop and it does NOT jump back up to the top every time. Good job, guys! But if you can manage it there, why not on Continue Watching (https://app.trakt.tv/users/me/progress?mode=media)?

BUT (probably related), if you Drop Show from the Progress page, you do NOT get that prompt to “Add Note” that you do on Continue Watching. Why on earth is the user experience different on these two pages?? Any task, e.g. dropping a show, should be the same experience regardless of where you’re doing it. So now if I might want to add a note when I drop a show, I have to remember on my own, in advance, that I can only do this by dropping it from the Continue Watching page, not the Progress page. I’ll never remember that. (AND that also means the process is more painful if I’m doing more than one, because on the Continue Watching page, it jumps up to the top every time!). This is asinine.

Also, I tested out adding a note after dropping a show, and it’s no simple task to view that note later. You have to really be looking for it. If a user has added a note to a dropped show, it should be made obvious after the fact. For example, on the Progress page when on the Dropped tab, either the note itself should appear on the show card, or at least a little note icon should appear on the card to indicate there’s a note. (And that icon should have ALT text/tooltip to identify itself!) And then when you view the page of a show you’ve dropped, again either the note itself should be visible on the page, or at least there should be an icon to indicate there’s a note - I would suggest putting it near the “Dropped” indicator on the poster. And ideally that icon should be clickable to open the Notes tab.

Nothing I’m saying here should actually need saying - this is all really basic, obvious stuff that should have been done in the first place. It feels like literally nothing in V3 is thought out at all. Just a bunch of stuff cobbled together. Wildly amateurish, which is so sad given how long Trakt has been around and how long V3 has been worked on.

Also, why are the URLs so non-descript? Those two URLs both would seem to be “the Progress page” (/progress?mode=media), and they are indeed similar, but one (profile/me) is “the Progress page” and one (users/me) is “the Continue Watching” page. Weird.

[somegirl (Jamie)]

@somegirl

8. Oh look, I found a progress page on my profile, too! Which absolutely sucks. THIS is what’s replaced the old progress page that had all that detail at a glance? Bloody hell.

Among other issues with this travesty of a Progress page… why does each tab have a different user experience? On the up-to-date tab, the default sort seems to be by when I last watched or finished a show. (But nothing actually tells me if this is the case, I just have to guess what “Default” is.) On the in-progress tab, the default sort seems to be by which shows have the most remaining episodes. There appears to be no way to me to sort this by when I last watched - please add this!! (For all tabs!) And then on the dropped tab, there’s no way to sort at all!! Why?!

And given the complete lack of information on this page, the stupid purple star in the corner of each card that shows overall user ratings is just annoying - my brain keeps thinking this is the percentage I’ve watched. Since that’s logical information to expect on the progress page!

And on that note, there’s so much inconsistency here too - depending what page I’m on, that bottom corner might show overall user ratings, or it might show MY rating, or it might show a star for me to add my rating, or it might show a checkmark to mark something as watched, or it might show nothing. What a fun game!

I just can’t wrap my head around how bad this all is. Trakt was such a good site for so long and now it just feels like it can’t even be salvaged.

[daybreak1012]

Honestly, for me, the whole v3 is just so not intuitive. Half the time I can’t figure out where to go. The other half I am trying to perform a task and it takes me half a dozen tries to figure out how… and then how to undo the five things I didn’t mean to do in my attempts. I just want a user experience that doesn’t give me a headache to figure out: check in for show or mark it watched after the fact. See a full season of episodes for a show. Basic tasks. I eventually figure it out but it takes me so many failed attempts first that when I go to do the same basic function a second time, I can’t remember how I did it the previous time and I have to repeat the process. It used to be so easy on v2, right from day one, without any sort of learning curve. V3 makes me feel inept which isn’t all that conducive to making me WANT to use the site.