The Story Behind Left Off

In this post, I want to give some more background information on what Left Off is. As of this writing, there has been a short paragraph on the landing page explaining the story of the app (pasted here for reference):

It is always a pain when you are watching a show just to realize ... you had already seen that episode before! Left Off was created to change that by allowing users to easily save where they left off watching in their favorite shows, videos, and movies!

At its core, this is one of my main reasons for developing the app, but there are more details to the story.

What is Left Off? What does it do?

Left Off is a mobile app that allows the user to quickly save information about the shows and videos they watch and later reference that information in useful ways. It is a watch diary with an interface that enables the user to easily save where they stopped watching a show/video, see which episodes in a series they liked the most, and write notes about each episode. It is a tool to save the information all in one place, without having the data tied to the show's platform.

Saving information outside of the video platform used to watch that video is becoming more useful as more content companies continue to create their own streaming platforms. The benefit is that you don't lose your watch history in the case that Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, etc. stop airing your show or if you decide to stop using that service. Or, in another case, the app is beneficial if you watch shows on multiple platforms. The problem here is that each platform will save your history only for the shows you watch on that platform.

In addition to platform agnostic tracking, with Left Off you can view the entries in a beautiful grid format which I call the Episode Map. In this screen you can quickly see which episodes you enjoyed the most via the color saturation of each cell. There's also a checkmark that shows up on the cell if the episode is marked complete, making it easy to see which episodes you have finished watching. As you watch and save show data, you automatically build out the map that you can reference later.

With the Episode Map, it's easy to see that Season 2, Episode 8 was a banger in my book!

Where did the idea come from?

The idea for Left Off came from my own struggle to save where I stopped watching anime and longer (1hr+) YouTube videos. I am the type of person that gets frustrated when I unknowingly watch something that I've already seen, even if it's just a few minutes of re-watching. This is especially true when I am watching through a long anime series. To solve this, I created a table in my notes app on my iPhone. This worked for some time, but as I added more shows, it became harder to easliy see what I had not finished watching. Not only that, I started to want to see the data in ways that would be more informative. It made me wonder how I could save this data to answer questions like: which episode did I find the most entertaining and why?

Even though most times I want to avoid re-watching something, there are times when I want to intentionally re-watch something. For example, in one of my favorite anime series, Hunter X Hunter, there are over 140 episodes. It's great that there are a ton of amazing episodes in the show. The downside however, is there are a ton of details that I can't remember about each one, even less so what phrase to search online to find a specific episode I really enjoyed when I watched it five years ago. All I know is that each season (or arc) was great and I don't have time to re-watch the whole series to re-live the excitement. This is where the app comes in super-handy, because it can highlight the episodes that I loved (The screenshot shows an example for Attack on Titan, but the concept is the same).

What's the goal?

Ultimately, the goal is to create a high-quality tool that provides genuine value to the user (while learning new skills and having fun doing so :). I want to continuously mold the app into a product that user's enjoy using, so let me know your thoughts in the comments below or using the Contact Us section at Sudo-Solution.com. What feature(s) would you like to see and what tools do you use now to track shows if at all? I'm always open to constructive criticism and feedback. Thanks for reading!