🚀 Introducing a New VIP Beta of Trakt for Android

[Mattwak3 (Matt)]

Yes, I can also say that releasing a beta where half the features are missing is really dumb

[CajunRob]

Agree. Normally something where more than half is missing and it’s not functioning as intended is called Alpha. Beta should be reserved for something that is just being finalized, tweaked and tested before final release. Not something that’s being developed as it goes along.

[AustriaZero94]

I fully agree with you, they should have waited with the release until it was more polished and not half the features missing, that users like.

[Seven_PRX (Jaap)]

Another 3 points from my side:

When watching something in Kodi, I used to be able to see that in app, it would say what I’m watching and at what minute i am. That’s no longer there.

Also when i look at a season, the Icons for watched and not watched seem to be reversed: I’m seeing a red X when I’ve watched something, and a purple V when i haven’t watched it. That doesn’t make sense to me.

And when im viewing an episode, i used to be able to click on the season there to jump to the season. Can’t click that any more.

I went ahead and uninstalled the beta and went back to the prod version.

[allyssonsouzam (Kry)]

Hi. It would be nice if there was a “AMOLED Black” option for Dark Mode under settings. Reddit is an example of another app that provides this option.

[teduardosam (Eduardo)]

“Now watching” is not working in the beta app neither the scrobbling on stremio

[Seven_PRX (Jaap)]

@dgw

Even the buttons that remain, like IMDB now tries to open an app (and install it if you don’t have it) instead of just opening a browser. In another thread I was told that they had to do that for Play Store policy reasons, but it’s definitely not helping the new app’s UX.

Hi I can’t imagine an app isn’t allowed to link to a website anymore? Because that is what the old app used to do. If linking to websites from apps isn’t allowed anymore, that would be weird.

I hope that’s not really what;s going on. It would be even weirder if the Trakt app wouldn’t even be allowed to link to their own website.

[kcador (Kevin)]

@Seven_PRX

I can’t rate episodes anymore? When i open an episode i can see the avg trakt rating in a percentage. But nowhere can i rate it myself with the usual 1-10.

Rating is being worked on right now on Android. The beta will be updated soon. We are also experimenting on a quick 5-star rating system by default with a fine-grained 10-star rating system for those who want it.

@Seven_PRX

I don’t see my ratings any longer. Normally when I opened an episode i saw my own rating in a very clear heart with the number of my rating. That’s gone.

Same as above.

@Seven_PRX

The recently viewed was moved all the way to the bottom. That’s the thing i use the most. Also that defaults to Social instead of my own activity… why?

It will be split with your own activity on top. We are also bringing it under your profile.

@Seven_PRX

I don’t see the timestamp anymore of past viewings, only the date.

We’ll have to look into this. Thanks!

@Seven_PRX

When having an episode or movie open in the app, there used to be an option to open the episode or movie on the full trakt website in a browser. That option seems gone.

That’s an option we can bring back. We would prefer to give you everything in the app tho. What are you currently missing from the old or the new that you would like to keep access to?

@Seven_PRX

The list view seems pretty useless? I can’t sort the list and also can’t search in the list.

Sorting and filtering is right next on our list with the highest priority after ratings.

[kcador (Kevin)]

Your recently watched should be sorted by watched date.
Do you track manually? Can you see the wrong date on top of the item in your recently watched?

[kcador (Kevin)]

@karpiq

• movie creators (director, screenplay)
• on a person page, like an actor there was information in which movie I have seen this actor

Both good point that will be back. Thank you!

[kcador (Kevin)]

@SatchellBC

I use the Trakt Android app daily (Pixel 6a), and the other night it updated to the new Beta experience. One of the features I LOVE about the old app is that by taping on an actor and going to their page, I can immediately see the list of movies they’re in from my watched history. On the new experience, it shows a list of their popular shows and movies, but now I have to scroll and hope I recognize a poster (not hard, just really annoying compared to the previous quality of life).

This will be back.

@SatchellBC

I also loved how on the old experience, the actors page had their character name listed below each poster. This was extremely helpful, especially in TV shows, to figure out where I recognized someone from.

Same.

@SatchellBC

I know y’all are working on getting filtering added to the experience, so possibly this could be done through that? I would love to have filter settings save, so I don’t have to re-filter on every new actors page each time I want to see where I know them from.

It shouldn’t be done via filters. Filters are coming back on Lists first. This is not about filters, it’s about making the Actor page personal to you (based on your viewing history) and that is coming back.

@SatchellBC

Overall, I want to like the new design, but it is going to take a lot of getting used to after 3 years on the old design, lol. I’ll get there. And I know it’s in Beta, so I’ll just have to use both the old and new at the same time during this transition (like on desktop, there is almost no settings options in the “new”, where on the “old” I can see and set so many features, like the Plex integration. But that’s a different topic for a different thread).

Thank you!!

[kcador (Kevin)]

Sorting and filtering is coming back, it’s just not in this first beta. It is a priority and we won’t move to production without it.

[kcador (Kevin)]

@Gratiskeder

How this can make sense to force users over to this when it haven’t been developed properly yet.

We are not forcing anyone to use the beta. This beta version is currently deployed on a beta track, so only VIP that wants or wanted to be part of pre-release testing have access to it. You are free to leave the beta anytime you want.

[kcador (Kevin)]

Commenting and replying hasn’t been implemented yet but it’s on our todo list for before a public release.

Thanks!

[kcador (Kevin)]

Rating will be available soon on the Android beta.
Thanks for your feedback!

[kcador (Kevin)]

We use “Alpha” for internal testing and “Beta” for external testing.
Currently, this version is available to only a limited group of VIP users who either asked for testing pre-release build in the past or are interested in testing the new builds now.

[kcador (Kevin)]

@Seven_PRX

When watching something in Kodi, I used to be able to see that in app, it would say what I’m watching and at what minute i am. That’s no longer there.

It will be back. Check in and Currently watching (aka Scrobbling) is coming back.

@Seven_PRX

Also when i look at a season, the Icons for watched and not watched seem to be reversed: I’m seeing a red X when I’ve watched something, and a purple V when i haven’t watched it. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Yes, that is an issue we are going to fix, thanks for pointing it out.

@Seven_PRX

And when im viewing an episode, i used to be able to click on the season there to jump to the season. Can’t click that any more.

Those kind of shortcuts will be coming back.

@Seven_PRX

I went ahead and uninstalled the beta and went back to the prod version.

[kcador (Kevin)]

Not high on our priority list, but I’m taking note of this. Thanks!

[kcador (Kevin)]

The current app on the Play Store has been flagged by Google for violating their policies about linking to external payment mechanism. The problem with TV content in general is that a lot of websites we link to have their own payment mechanisms. This is one of the reasons we are adding external links carefully in the new app.

[Granitoro]

Can you please make an easy to follow set of instructions for how to opt out of the beta, and revert the app to the non-beta version?