💬 New Trakt Feedback

[webflx]

I just wanted to share some feedback about the new Trakt redesign. While I appreciate the effort to modernize and improve the platform, I genuinely think the old Trakt web already works really well. It’s clean, functional, and familiar. Everything we need from a tracking site.

If anything, I’d suggest keeping the current Trakt exactly as it is and maybe just borrow a few small UI elements from the new version (like subtle visual polish or layout refinements). But the overall design, structure, and user flow of the old site should stay.

The old saying applies here: “Why fix what isn’t broken?” The current Trakt might looks modern, is ultra-fast, reliable, and easy to use. That’s what long-time users appreciate most.

Please consider maintaining the old version or at least giving users the option to stick with it forever. Many of us have been using Trakt for years and love it just the way it is.

Thanks for listening!

[Dsnake1]

So, I was pretty unhappily surprised when I went to Trakt on a desktop I hadn’t before and, after logging in, was subjected to what felt like a tablet app on my desktop.

I’ve given it some time and actually tried it, but I still switched it back on my desktop. My phone, maybe, we’ll see.

I like the Continue Watching and the History and how it feels generally on my phone. It feels a little clunky on desktop, like how Windows 8.1 felt after Windows 7. I know desktops are likely a shrinking share of the devices that access the site, but it doesn’t feel like a desktop site. It feels like a mobile-focused site where desktop is an afterthought.

Oh, and I’d like the Lists tab a lot, at least, I’d like it if lists hadn’t largely put behind a massive paywall. It looks nice, although it doesn’t look like I can manage lists from there yet.

Now, as for bigger overall problems:

• There’s no option to set a show or movie as watched at a specific time. It’s either check in or watch now. It’s a pain to have to jump back to the old version of the site to add a few episodes of a show because I didn’t have my phone in my hand or whatnot.
• I wish I could reorganize the homepage (or maybe I can if I pay? Idk.) to put Start Watching down further. It is a lot less useful now that I have really, really limited list options.
• Why can’t we rate in half-stars? I have no problem switching to 5 graphical stars if we can do half-stars.
• Not being able to get to play history easily from an episode/show/movie pages is frustrating.
• I’d really like to be able to view seasons of a show and episodes in those seasons vertically. It’s not so bad with 8-episode seasons, but even 20+ episode seasons gets tedious. It’s functionally unusable for shows with long seasons, like The Daily Show or other shows with annualized seasons and multiple episodes per week.

I’d say the biggest thing it’s missing for me is stats. No Last 30 Days, no snapshot overview of total time tracked, no graphical representations of activity. And I’m ni longer VIP, but I don’t see any links that would take me to Month in Review, Year in Review, All Time Stats, etc. Those were the primary reason I subscribed previously.

Overall, I feel like Lite is missing a bunch of visibility and is a lot harder to navigate when doing deeper dives and heavier work on the site. It’s also missing the functionality I listed above. I don’t mind it for checking in on my phone, although there’s no reason I’d prefer it. But I won’t be using it on a desktop, at least for a good while.

And frankly, I know I’m old-guard, and don’t take this personally, but it’s clear with the decisions Trakt had made lately that old-guard folks aren’t the priority (and that’s fine, tbh. We didn’t pay as much as others due to legacy pricing, we’re probably less-likely to stick around during price hikes, and we’re certainly less likely to resubscribe than others you may have lost), but I really struggle with the mobile-first design choices. I know it’s about a unified platform, but it almost always results in worse functionality. Reddit did it, Microsoft is doing it with OWA and attempting to replace existing desktop apps with OWA skins, and now we’re seeing Trakt do it, too.

[sp1ti]

Thanks for chiming in but I don’t think V3 is comparable to V1 to V2. There was a necessity for it resulting it being rushed but you managed to clean up the lost data and functionality rather quickly. Meanwhile this V3 has been in development publicly for over a year and feedback is seemingly ignored* and it doesn’t run stable at all. Worse yet - you guys are ready to drop features because it came with an entirely different scope in mind… which follows a pattern of bad decisions for trakt users. All that talk about making up for the VIP price increase with new features becomes a facade with V3.

Let’s hope Sean can help with guidance here but the trakt that was announced by Kevin as the "new default” is nothing like the trakt I fell in love with. [At least you guys are now redefining the timeline for it’s readiness…]

*i.E. I got a dev reply that recommendations shouldn’t show things you watched, etc. in February yet it still does it as of today. An area you wanted to improve on for years is set back to the stone ages by not applying a simple filter… And that’s just one of many things.

[Duckyz95 (Ducky)]

@kcador

Forcing is a strong word.
We did that for a while actually

May I ask how long you’ve been defaulting new users to Lite? I ask because I tried to get a friend to switch from a competitor to Trakt so that we could be on the same platform. He hated it, saying how little features it had compared to competitor which confused me because Trakt was doing more. I just assumed he wanted an excuse to make me switch but this would explain a lot of things on why he only lasted a few hours on Trakt.

Personally I don’t think Lite is anywhere near being feature complete for it to be the default experience for new users

[ohg]

1-10 ratings, edit lists ranking are crucial for me.

[Parzival (Mītobōru)]

Now they even changed the rating system? My god… I wonder what happened that every single thing seems to have to change to a worse alternative? This is the most ridiculous 180° move I have ever seen. The devs really don’t care about ANY comment in here. Otherwise they would at least have stopped changing even more of the features. This is just insane. Can someone please remove the person responsible for this from his job? I’m usually not the type who wants people to get fired but this is just screaming for it.

[DisgruntledJarl (jarl)]

@kcador

• Which feature you really need in the New Trakt

@kcador

I am not going to rain on how bad the new UI is, I think you’ve had plenty of that.

These are the features I absolutely want and will 100% leave if they’re not on the V3 when V2 shuts down -

• Half star ratings. I do not care if the ratings are out of 10 or 5 as long as there are 10 different ratings I can choose. I don’t understand the rationale behind switching to 5 when you had a working system but if you provide half star, it’s essentially the same. Or switch it back to 10. Forcing your users to simplify their ratings after using the platform for many years is a serious rug pull. I hate Goodreads for the same reason and will hate Trakt if this is not provided.
• List specific Calendars - I use lists extensively and am very methodical in how I track things. I do not use the default Watchlist since I prefer my movies and TV shows in their own watchlists. I then use the calendar feature of a list which is very useful to have and your USP. Removing this means I can just switch to any provider that is free because you’ve lost the uniqueness. A good UI with no functionality is just a bad UI
• The ability to go to an actor or director’s page and see the movies and shows I’ve watched of that actor/director with the percentage. Sometimes I watch a particular actor’s work in order and this is a very useful feature. To be completely transparent, the only reason I haven’t switched to Simkl is this feature. If they implement this, I will probably be gone despite their god awful cluttered UI.
• The ability to see all the movies and shows of an actor/director and not just what is shown currently. I assume this is a bug because there is no way to scroll. If it was a design choice to show only 30 or so items, I’m not sure what to say.
  • Edit - I now realize there’s an empty scrollbar below each minimizable list. This is not great design. I’ll just re-iterate what other users mentioned - horizontal scrolling is not the best choice when the number of items cross 30. I’d rather you show 10 or so items, have an expand button which will just show all of the items on a new page in a grid where horizontally, 6-10 items are shown.
• The ability to filter shows and movies in the History tab i.e. Only show movies or TV shows
• Ability to track the exact date of a show I watch. I don’t really use scrobbling since I prefer to be more manual with my tracking. To be able to track “I watched this on X date” is a must
• The ability to keep track of rewatches or multiple watches of the same episode or same movie along with their dates. Letterboxd doesn’t really have a system for tracking re-watches and is one of the main reasons I won’t go over there.

These are things that would be nice to have in your development cycle that I don’t consider are absolutes but probably QoL -

• The ability to fade watched items in Lists. It’s something that I found really useful and already exists in V2.
• The ability to choose which items you want to display on your main dashboard. Like I mentioned, my Watchlist is empty because I do not use the default Watchlist. So the Start Watching and Upcoming Schedule are useless to me. I would like the ability to remove them. Even better if I can add a custom list instead of that particular default list. This is why I use list specific calendars to keep track of upcoming releases.
• Ability to adjust card size on lists, history tab etc. It would be nice to be able to increase the size of the poster card. This feature did not exist on V2 but it would be nice to have
• The option of adding an item as “watched” without specifying a date. For shows that I remember I watched but don’t know when, this is a fantastic addition. I only recently saw this in Trakt v2 which means it must have been a new feature. I really love this and would suck to not have this in V3. A popup when checking an item as watched that shows “track on release”, “track on specific day”, “track now”, “track with no date” is perfect. Pretty much how it is on V2.

I like the new UI. There’s a lot going on with the simplifcation and it’s well done. But simplification of UI doesn’t have to mean simplification of features. I understand this is just a test and you guys released this as a beta to guage feedback. I also understand that it is being built from the ground up where implementing new things will take time.

I am lenient enough because the pricing change affected me in a positive way since it included regional pricing update that made it cheaper for me rather than going up. Hence, I will stay loyal to Trakt since it is a great product. But there are very specific use-cases I use the product for and V3 seems to have taken away most of them. As long as V2 has these features, i will continue paying but when V2 is shut down and V3 doesn’t have the features, I will most likely quit.

Thank you for listening to feedback. Happy to hear your thoughts, workarounds for certain things etc.

[pauls67 (Paul)]

Main things i need

Be able to mark something as watched at release time (actually time of release, not with added airtime to it)

Be able to mark something as watched at a specified time

Be able to view a calendar of what aired in last few days and what is coming up, coming up is there but past isnt, so i can easily mark as watched things i have missed

Nice to have would be a change of colour scheme for the new version (not just light/dark), the new look looks like an Ios app, and is far to bright for me to use (could be due to lots of empty space), the current website doesnt have this issue

[The_Argentinian]

Was the designed reversed?

[NeuronButter]

Seems like it. And honestly, I tentatively have gained respect for the devs here. There were a lot of regressions in functionality with the new version, but I trust that they’ll continue to work on polishing it and switching over when it’s up to scratch.

As a SWE I get being excited for a new rewritten app, it’s just good that they’ve admitted their mistake unlike some devs (cough cough Plex) and am looking forward to the update once they can bring back some missing features (not being able to watch something in the past was killing me).

[brooza (Shaun வலிமையா)]

I’m currently doing a thing where I watch a movie from every country in the world, and the ability to filter search results and the movie discovery by country and by streaming service has been essential to that but I can’t find a way to replicate that in the new version

[dollas_mike (Mike)]

The biggest fuck is only 5 stars. I can never change to this rating. I don’t give up my 15 year proven system because of trakt. I’d rather switch back to Excel. I also miss the filters.

[SolarVanity]

@kcador … You are being hurtfully tone deaf in how you communicate with the customers that pay you money.

Why is there no switch to functional (what you are calling “classic”) in the new Android app? Why was I forced to uninstall, disable beta, and reinstall, instead of just switching to the only version of the product I pay for that works?..

And another thing. You say that you are all real people, and that supposedly a client has said something that doesn’t meet your communication standards. Fair.

Do you understand that we, the paying VIP users, are people too? This entire thread is you effectively telling us that our concerns - i.e., the fact that the interface we are used to (which is A COMPLETELY SUFFICIENT REASON TO RETAIN IT FOREVER, BY THE WAY, EVEN IF BY YOUR OWN ESTIMATE IT’S WORSE IN SOME MANNER), is going away - and in response you are just telling us about the retention of new users between app versions. So they matter. Great.

Do we? What in this thread has indicated to us that we matter to you as a company? Not just as numbers, but as actual people who care enough to post in this forum, for example? I don’t see anyone supporting the new design here. And yet those that had it forced on them and stuck around are people, and we are… what? Numbers? Cows to milk until we finally drop?

[Parzival (Mītobōru)]

I completely agree. Also he has never gotten back to me what the counter numbers are in regards to customers…

I also think it’s really telling that there are supposedly 1000 new customers a month but not a single one of them left a positive comment in here that he likes the app or doesn’t understand what the negativity is about.

Either those thousands of new customers are all bots or they really don’t care about the app/service enough to add valuable thoughts on it in here. Which will proof problematic when we VIPs are all gone because they then just don’t have any clue what customers want - which isn’t really different from now I guess since they just don’t listen to us, but hey at least they get feedback they don’t want

This is all so stupid. In the meantime S**** is getting new customers daily because they actually listen to the feedback and are implementing new features people are asking for on a weekly to monthly basis. And the big player L********* is adding TV Shows at some point since it’s in development for ages now. They’re slow but they also listen to their customers feedback. And when that happens Trakt is going down fast imo.

[Vicquelly (Vicquell Lightbourne)]

Morning!

I’m not 100% what’s going on, but on the new Trakt website it’s showing that there are 4 episodes of The Amazing World of Gumball that’s listed as unwatched. However when I click on the episode it shows that I’ve already watched it

Then when I check on the old Trakt website, it doesn’t show these episodes as unwatched at all.

[somegirl (Jamie)]

I could almost have written this myself. I myself haven’t explored the Lite/New version yet, but as I read through this post it was like a horror show of one after another saying to myself, “THAT’S NOT IN THE NEW VERSION?!!” Pretty much this whole list are things that will likely be dealbreakers for me if it comes to it. I hope it doesn’t. Change design if you must, sure, but do it without removing features.

I was already sitting on the fence about whether I’d keep VIP next year when I’m up for renewal, so if Trakt ends up a super simple tracker that’s missing things that I value about it, then I feel like why wouldn’t I just use a spreadsheet for free?

[blankster]

Desktop-user and long‑time supporter and VIP (7 years). I appreciate Trakt and the team, which is why I keep supporting it. I was shocked when v3 was temporarily activated and relieved when v2 returned—I assumed it was a glitch. Seeing v3 become the default was disheartening, and I’m worried classic.trakt.tv might stop working, as I really love it and it provides everything I personally need, and I appreciated all the little iterative improvements over the years.

Requests:

• Let us choose our default (v2 Classic or v3/LITE/pre-beta)
• Let us chose 5/10 rating options and breakdowns
• Fix horizontal scrolling issues
• Guarantee complete data export at any time
• Provide clear timelines and advance notice before any deprecation
• Show how respectful feedback is being incorporated

While I appreciate the continued development of the backend to make it more stable and future-oriented, I don’t really feel that the needs of power users (on desktop) are being taken seriously with the UI changes. It may be confirmation bias, but it feels like you are imposing your vision on your users with little empathy for those who do not want a light variant (though they have nothing against an alternative for those who do). Setting v3 as the default instead of an option underscores a lack of empathy for this.

Especially with the simultaneous price increase, it leaves a very bitter taste, and one wonders if what they wanted to support—not because of pro features, but on principle—really deserves the support if that’s the direction being aimed for.

[somesounds]

I really appreciate what you guys are trying to do and all the hard work that obviously went into Lite. I feel like it’s for sure on its way to becoming something great and a huge improvement from classic, but it was released entirely prematurely. I’m going back to classic!

Here’s my big list of feedback:

UI

• I think text is just too small and low-contrast. E.g. I can barely read/scan/differentiate season and episode numbers.

• The lack of any meaningful margins makes the UI overwhelming to look at and read through.

• These horizontal “carousels” are harder to swipe/scroll through and visually track than vertical lists.

• The new landing page for each show is really confusing. For instance:

  • The poster image is overwhelmingly huge.

  • I certainly don’t want the entire series’ description blurred just because I have Hide Spoilers on.

  • The thing I’m most often looking for is really hard to spot and make sense of: a list of the seasons. I miss the classic dedicated pages for each season, but if you’re going to combine it into the main show page, it should be more prominent, and episodes should be more of a “sub-level” of the visual hierarchy beneath the seasons.

  • Again, the Season and Episode numbers are just too obscure when looking at the list of episodes.

• I love the quick new way to filter between Movies and Shows. Super slick. It’s almost ironic that it’s not a part of the broader Filters features, yet it’s perfectly implemented just as you did.

• “Filters” shouldn’t be in the sidebar – it makes you think it’s another page, which doesn’t make sense. Maybe it could be a separate bubble next to the Media/Shows/Movies blob (but not connected to that group) since those are also filters, just broad scale ones.

• I wish the sidebar included the main “Watchlist” separate from custom Lists, plus Ratings, History, Favorites, and Library (if it’s actually used).

• If you’re trying to keep the sidebar simple, maybe let the user decide by making it customizable. I much prefer quick access to all those useful pages without having to hunt around for them.

• You know the little icon on each title under the poster that denotes that you watched it or have it in one of your lists? Multiple icons should be able to show up next to each other, and there should be a distinct icon for each thing:

  • Exists in Watchlist (existing bookmark icon)
  • Exists in any other of your custom lists (the Lists icon in the sidebar)
  • Exists in your Favorites (a heart icon)
  • Has been watched (existing bold checkmark)

Features I really miss

• ×/10 rating system – please, please bring this back. It was literally one of my favorite things about Trakt.

• Custom list orders and list sorting.

• Ability to customize which spoilers to hide or not. I definitely want to hide them, but lists become super incoherent and kind of useless with all the titles blurred.

• Also, clicking on blurred text should reveal it – it does for a couple things, but not for others (like blurred titles).

• The Progress page. That was the perfect high-level view of all the shows I’ve watched and how far I’ve gotten in each. (That’s also another thing to add to the sidebar.)

• I’m missing one of my four custom lists. I can access it in Classic but not Lite.

• Settings > Advanced doesn’t work in Safari (just infinite loading).

[SnowyBoy (Snowman)]

If you even get a response to this, the spin will be enormous, can’t wait ( hopefully) for a reply.

[somesounds]

The “spin” isn’t complicated. “Fair enough” just means “that’s a fair take,” not “I wholeheartedly agree with you.” (edit: nor just “I agree with you” or “I think you’re right”). It’s possible to understand someone’s side without agreeing with them.

More importantly, this place called the internet is crazy fodder for the most unproductive form of communication between all of us. I don’t think even small hostility and rofl emojis are going to change Kevin’s mind. I think that will backfire and make him want to accommodate less.

Here’s hoping they do take all the feedback to heart, though. @kcador a toggle switch to get back to Classic from Lite would probably go a long way. And maybe a splash screen explanation of the situation for all the users who suddenly see a completely different interface and wonder where all their favorite features went.