Refract - Movies, TV & Anime

As a TV Time refugee, it was traumatizing to see one of my favorite apps going under without much warning. I scrambled to find an alternative, and happened upon a rogue post that recommended this, so I gave it a shot. Took a while for my import history to be cleared but boy oh boy was it worth it…the devs make a point to listen to their community & are improving the app constantly. At this point I would say that for a team as small as they are, this app has the potential to surpass TV Time in the coming years, or sooner, given how fast it’s been growing. All the negativity you read is because people either aren’t patient or don’t understand that the Refract team was struggling to keep up with the demand because they’re indie devs, which means they’re a VERY small team. And they exceeded expectations. 11/10. P.S. these guys will get my money. If yall don’t want this to end the same way as TV Time did, I suggest a donation.

This is not a paid promotion or anything like that. As of the writing of this review, I found out TV Time was shutting down about two weeks ago. I love tracking my progress with media and needed an alternative. Went to the TV Time thread on Reddit and saw someone recommending Refract. Downloaded it…and it was a mess of bugs at first. Very slow. My tracked items would reset. Sometimes I would have to close the app and then reopen it just to get it to operate. It needed a lot of work, yet I saw the potential. In just two weeks, the app runs A LOT better. The devs are constantly at work creating a better experience for users. Just this past week alone, there has been 4 or 5 updates (two came in one night). A lot of the major bugs have been fixed. I like the direction they’re going in. Definitely fits what I was looking for and is my tracking app of choice.

This app has it all. Coming from TVTime I was very sad to have to move all my data from one app to another. I tried 5 other apps before deciding on tvtime after recognizing how community focused they were. If you join that discord you will see first hand just how much time they have spent since that initial announcement on TVTime about its closure working on improving absolutely everything about their app to scale it from a few thousand users to 150k in under a week. Just think about the time and cost of doing that, and then what it says about these developers that they meaningfully tackled that issue so quickly. Initially I was extremely skeptical about the long term usability of the app. It literally would not load effectively for 3 days straight you would just sit on waiting screen after waiting screen. As more improvements came along though things started getting faster and faster and now it’s to the point where the app actually feels seamless and is honestly already comparable to TVTime, and in my opinion is definitely better. The UI is super intuitive, the extra features and community framework of the app is refreshing and it just feels like given even more time that this app is going to become the biggest platform for keeping track of all your media. They intend on adding the ability to track games and books soon, and are super responsive to feedback so I could see this going in so many directions in the future with the help of their community. All in all I’m extremely excited for this apps future and I hope to see you refractors on the app :)