Watch History Journal 2.1

Today, I’m releasing version 2.1 of Watch History Journal, my shortcut for adding the shows and films you watch to your favorite journaling app in the style of Apple’s journaling suggestions. Here’s the full list of new features:

• Improved Journal app integration on iPhone. Watch History Journal creates new entries directly in the Journal app on iPhone using the app’s new Shortcuts actions introduced in iOS 18. (On other devices, the Journal integration remains unchanged, generating images and copied text that you can import into the app manually.)
• A new advanced option: This Week's History. This option allows you to create a journal entry reflecting your watch history over the past week. (Thanks to Miles Jefford for coming up with this idea.)
• A bug fix for Text Lists. A blank line will no longer appear at the beginning of Text List entries without a title.

When Watch History Journal 2 came out in early June, I thought it might be the final update. To be honest, I was hoping Apple would sherlock me with native TV app journaling suggestions in iOS 18. But despite some nice additions to the Journal app this year – including the Shortcuts actions used in this version of Watch History Journal – shows and films still aren’t included as journaling suggestions. And so the shortcut lives on.

You can download Watch History Journal 2.1 here. I appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to try the shortcut, and I’m always open to hearing feedback and new ideas for it. If you’re using it and have thoughts, I’d love to know.

Watch History Journal 2

Today, I'm happy to share version 2 of Watch History Journal, the shortcut I made for logging what you watch in your favorite journal app. This update includes two major additions:

• the ability to use media-tracking app Sequel as your watch history source
• advanced options to adjust the shortcut's behavior to fit your needs

These features were added based on user requests and things that I wanted to add for my own use of the shortcut. I'm really pleased with them, and I hope others will enjoy them as well.

As soon as I found out that Sequel, my favorite app for tracking what I watch, was adding Shortcuts actions, I knew that I wanted to integrate them into Watch History Journal. While Trakt is a great way to log your watch history and will continue to be supported as a source, Sequel is my preferred tracking method, and being able to use it in the shortcut was a dream come true.

Swapping in Sequel for Trakt was quick and easy, but it resulted in two different verison of Watch History Journal, one for each source. This wasn't ideal because it would mean I'd have to maintain and release two separate versions of each update going forward, and I didn't want to add confusion for those who want to use Watch History Journal. So instead, I rewrote the shortcut from scratch to add support for multiple watch history sources.

Basically, I had to split Watch History Journal into two parts. The first part grabs your watch history from your chosen source and converts it into a format the shortcut can understand; this part differs based on whether you choose Tratk or Sequel. The second part takes that information and turns it into your journal entry; it works the same way regardless of which source you choose. The whole rewrite was an exercise in modularity, and it was a ton of fun. The end result is a shortcut that's more efficient, capable, and future-proof than ever before.

My original plan was for Sequel support to be the only new feature this update. But once I started digging into Watch History Journal again, I was inspired to keep going. After all, adding support for a new watch history source would make for a boring update for those who already use Watch History Journal with Trakt. So I decided to add something fun for everyone: advanced options.

These settings allow you to easily adjust the journal entry created by Watch History Journal to make it exatcly what you want it to be. Version 2 includes the following advanced options:

• Text List: Add a bulleted list of watched titles to your journal entry in addition to images.
• Posters: Use only a title's poster as its image rather than the standard compiled journal image.
• No Images: Create a journal entry that includes only a bulleted list of watched titles with no images.
• Leading Zeros in Episode Codes: If a title's episode or season number is below ten, add a leading zero before it (i.e., S01E01 instead of S1E1).
• Yesterday's History: Create a journal entry for yesterday's watch history rather than today's.
• Split Multiple Episodes: Create separate images for each episode of a series that has multiple episodes watched in a single day.

Thanks to these options, you can now make Watch History Journal work exactly the way you want it to. Do you prefer poster images instead of the default journaling suggestion-style ones? You can use those instead. Want to log your watch history from yesterday instead of today? It's just a setting away.

Advanced options can be configured by opening Watch History Journal in the Shortcuts editor and placing an "x" in the brackets next to the option(s) you want to enable. They can be mixed and matched to create the exact journal entry you're looking for. Personally, I leave the Text List option enabled to make my journal entries easily searchable in the future.

In addition to these major new features, this update includes options to change the default text that appears in your journal entry and to create entries in multiple journal apps at once.

My hopes for this new version of Watch History Journal are that it will offer something exciting for existing users and make the shortcut a viable option for a whole new group of people who use Sequel for tracking shows and films. As I've said before, I'm a big believer in the power of journaling, and this shortcut is my way of helping people round out their journaling practice by reflecting on what they watch.

You can download Watch History Journal 2 by following this link. If you give it a try, I'd love to hear what you think of it, how you're using it, and what you'd like to see in the next update. This project is such a pleasure to work on, and that's thanks to the awesome feedback from users like you.

Thank you for reading this writeup on the update. I hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed making it.

Watch History Journal 1.1

When I released Watch History Journal, my shortcut for logging TV shows and films in your preferred journaling app, I had no idea if anyone else would find any use for it. To my pleasant surprise, a lot of people have reached out to let me know that they're using and enjoying the shortcut. Turns out, we love journaling about the shows and films we watch.

To help make that experience the best it can be, I’ve continued working on Watch History Journal, and I’m excited to release its first update today. Version 1.1 includes a few changes:

• Image Sorter: Title images are added to your journal app in watch order.
• Adjusted character counts for show and movie titles to allow for longer titles.
• Revamped time zone logic to work for all regions.

Image Sorter was the first thing I added to the shortcut after its release, and it came from my own experience using it. I noticed that my journal entries weren’t displaying title images in the order I watched them; in fact, they were showing in reverse. I added a small loop to reorder them, and now, shows and films appear in watch order as they should.

While using the shortcut, I also noticed that some titles were being shortened unnecessarily. It’s hard to know exactly when to cut off a title because not every character is the same width on the image. But there was certainly some wiggle room, so I upped the limit.

The final improvement in this version came after I mentioned Watch History Journal in my recent column for the Club MacStories Monthly Log. Club member Vlahn reached out to let me know that the shortcut wasn’t returning any results even though there were a couple of episodes logged for that day. Thanks to Vlahn's kind help, I was able to narrow down the problem to a time zone issue, and I realized that Watch History Journal wasn’t compatible with certain time zones.

This led to a complete redo of the way the shortcut handles time zones, as well as a thorough testing process. I wanted to ensure that no matter where you are in the world, Watch History Journal will return the titles you watch on a given day in your location – something it was intended to do all along. I believe this version delivers on that.

These are just a few little fixes that make the experience of using the shortcut a bit better (and a possibility at all for those in affected time zones). This update is an iterative one, but I hope it will be the first of many. I’ve never put out a tool for other people to use like this before, much less followed up on it, and I quite enjoy the whole process.

You can download Watch History Journal 1.1 here. Once installed, it will require you to go through the setup process again, so be sure to have your Trakt API information handy. (I suggest copying it over from the previous version.) If you ever wonder which version of Watch History Journal you’re running, just tap the … button on its listing in the Shortcuts app, and the very first text action will list the version number.

My thanks to everyone who’s tried Watch History Journal, and especially to those who’ve let me know how they’re using it. It makes me happy to know that other people are out there reflecting on what they watch, too.

I love working on this shortcut and plan to continue doing so. I’ve got a couple of ideas of thing I’ll try to add next. If you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see in a future update, be sure to let me know!

Watch History Journal →

Alongside this week’s Magic Rays of Light—our first as part of MacStories—we debuted Watch History Journal, a shortcut I made for logging what you watch in your favorite journal app.

From my writeup in the latest edition of MacStories Weekly:

Watch History Journal uses your Trakt profile to generate images of titles you’ve watched on a given day and share them to your journaling app of choice. Run it once a day when you’re finished watching (or set it up as a personal automation that runs in the background before bed), and it will create a journal entry that includes everything you’ve watched. It integrates with Day One, Everlog, and the Journal app…

This shortcut rounds out Apple’s journaling suggestions system for me and turns my journal into a true one-stop shop for what I’m doing, experiencing, thinking, and making. I love journaling in this way.

If you’d like to try Watch History Journal for yourself, you can download it here. And for more details about how it works and how it was made, check out MacStories Weekly: Issue 401 featuring my article along with a lot of great writing from my new colleagues.

Thank you for following along with what has been just an incredible week. I’m so grateful to be where I am, and the best part is that this is only the beginning.

My Favorite Movies and Shows of the Year

Let the end-of-the-year lists continue! Yesterday, I shared my favorite apps of 2023. Today, it’s TV shows and movies.

I’ve already discussed my top film list on the latest episode of Magic Rays of Light, but Sigmund and I aren’t getting into our top shows until the podcast returns in January. I guess you can consider this an exclusive preview. 😉

Without further ado, these are the best movies and shows of 2023 according to yours truly.

Movies

1. Killers of the Flower Moon: I left the theater speechless after seeing this film. It’s a masterpiece—such an important story so well executed. By far the best movie I saw this year. Give Lily Gladstone all of the awards, because her performance was beyond compare.

2. Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour: Hard as we tried, my wife and I couldn’t get tickets to see The Eras Tour live. But thanks to the magic of movies, we now feel like we were there. The show itself was a spectacle, and it was captured beautifully by the team at Taylor Swift Productions. This is Taylor at her best, doing the thing she loves most, and I had a wonderful time watching and singing along.

3. Barbie: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling embody these characters perfectly. They are Barbie and Ken in my mind. Diving into Barbie’s world was a lot of fun, and I laughed the entire time. I appreciated the movie’s message as well, reclaiming Barbie as the true icon of female empowerment she was always meant to be.

4. The Marvels: Two words: Iman Vellani. The superhero teamup was a good time, but Ms. Marvel stole show. She’s the future of the MCU franchise, and it’s a bright future indeed.

5. The Super Mario Bros. Movie: What can I say? It’s my childhood brought to life. My biggest hope with this one was that Illumination wouldn’t screw it up too badly; they far surpassed my expectations. Chris Pratt actually did a good job as Mario, but Anya Taylor-Joy’s Princess Peach had to be my favorite.

Shows

1. Lessons in Chemistry: I was expecting dry humor and the inspiring story of a woman overcoming societal expectations, but what we got was so much more than that. Lessons in Chemistry is about love, family, community, faith, and the way we’re changed by the people who come into our lives. And yes, there are a few chemistry jokes mixed in there, too. I was utterly surprised and delighted by this one, and I can’t wait to watch it again.

2. The Last of Us: Come for the zombie action sequences and post-apocalyptic landscape, stay for one of the most beautiful portrayal of chosen family I’ve ever seen. I went in with no previous knowledge about the video game this show is based on, but having seen it, I understand why people loved the game so much. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey give grounded, award-worthy performances against a twisted and chaotic landscape.

3. Loki: Everyone’s favorite antihero is back in what could well be Tom Hiddleston’s last outing as the god of mischief. Around him is situated a well-rounded ensemble cast including the addition of Key-Huy Quan this season. If you’ve been rooting for Loki all along or if you’re curious about the underpinnings of Marvel’s Multiverse Saga, this show is for you. (Note: Jonathan Majors does feature prominently in this season. After its release, Majors was convicted of domestic abuse and immediately fired by Disney from future projects. I applaud their decision and stand with all survivors of abuse.)

4. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: I still can’t believe they got the entire cast of the original film back together for this anime adaptation. It was so cool revisiting the world of Scott Pilgrim, and I love the new story the show tells featuring characters I’ve loved for years. I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil it, but if you enjoyed the 2010 film, I think you’ll like this show, too.

5. The Changeling: This series debuted on Apple TV+ right after my wife and I came home from the hospital with our newborn son. The show features LaKeith Stanfield and Clark Backo as new parents trying to keep their son safe in a dangerous world riddled with dark magic. It’s an intense and difficult watch, but I resonated strongly with the main character, whose only motivation is trying to be a good dad. The Changeling a modern fairy tale worth watching to the end.

It’s always hard putting together lists like this. There are so many other titles I considered including, like The Crowded Room, Fargo, Silo, Flora and Son, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. But you have to draw the line somewhere, so we’ll just call those honorable mentions.

Do any of these picks stick out as something you enjoyed this year? What did I miss? I’d love to hear your favorite shows and films of 2023, so let me know in the comments section or on social media.