30. September 2026
Thirteen years, and the biggest release yet
Filmlog: A big leap for your movie watchlist
The latest Filmlog update is out today for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. It is the largest release in the app's thirteen years — and I have never worked on an update this long, or this hard. But why?
For the first time I saw a chance to realise the complete product vision I had for Filmlog, my film diary for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV — and even to bring it to the Mac. The Mac app is finished — I would have loved to show it to you today, but it is still stuck in App Store review, so we will both need some patience. If you want to know when it lands, the studio crew or the newsletter are good places to stay up to date. Anyhow, I am happy to say that Filmlog is now a fully featured product, full of small niceties and lovely details.
The short version of what changed: Filmlog now carries its own film catalogue — around 315,000 films and 464,000 people — inside the app. No network needed. It sounds crazy, but it is perfectly possible to carry nearly every film in the world in your pocket. You can look up a director in a cinema basement in airplane mode, and you will find people — including roughly 110,000 cast and crew who have no entry in the usual film database at all. And the best part: it let me build features I haven't seen anywhere else. Find every film set in Paris. Find every actor who has played the Joker, and the films they played him in. Believe me, there is a lot to discover. An onboarding will never have room for all of it, but the walkthrough does, if you're curious.
Beyond the catalogue: challenges — film lists with a progress bar. Planning to watch a set of films, or setting yourself the goal of a complete filmography? Easy. You can also share one as a single link that carries the whole list, with nothing stored on a server, whether for your friends or for the public.
I love listening to soundtracks. They carry so much of the emotion tied to a story or a character that I wanted them in Filmlog too. Now you can feel the film: mark it as watched and Filmlog plays its soundtrack. (This needs Apple Music, and the soundtrack has to be on Apple Music, of course.) It also plays from the film's own page, so Filmlog works as a regular soundtrack player, too.
I could go on for hours: ratings and notes attached to each individual viewing, so a rewatch twenty years later is its own entry. The cinema you sat in, as a place with a page and a history. Rebuilt statistics with eight widgets. And a new two-pane iPad layout. But let's stop here for now.
Thirteen years, one person, paid for by the people who use it. What a ride! Thank you to everyone who tested, wrote back, or filed the bug that made today better. A small dream came true: to build one piece of software, properly and completely. It did not come without struggle, and sometimes a fight — but today I am happy, and if Filmlog brings you joy, that would make me proud.
Give it a shot