Migrating from IMDb to Movie Tracker

IMDb lets you export each of your lists separately, so a full migration means downloading two or three files rather than one. Movie Tracker takes them together and works out what each one is from its name.

What gets imported

  • Your ratings, out of ten, exactly as IMDb keeps them. A rated title comes in as watched, using the date you rated it.
  • Your check-ins, also as watched titles.
  • Your watchlist, added but not marked as watched. A title that is on your watchlist and also rated counts as watched, because you clearly saw it.
  • Movies and TV shows, told apart by IMDb’s Title Type column.

What is not imported

Custom lists, reviews you wrote, and the IMDb rating other people gave a title. Movie Tracker keeps your rating, not the crowd’s.

How your titles are matched

By the IMDb code, the tt0083658 in the Const column. This is exact, so every title that IMDb identified arrives as the right one. It is the most reliable of all the imports Movie Tracker supports.

Before you start

The export is only available on the IMDb website, signed in on a computer or in a desktop browser. It is not in the IMDb app.

Download whichever of the three files you care about. You do not need all of them, and Movie Tracker will not complain about the ones you leave out.

Step 1: export your ratings

  1. Sign in to imdb.com.
  2. Open the menu under your account name and choose Your Ratings.
  3. Click the three dot menu at the top right of the list.
  4. Choose Export. IMDb prepares the file and your browser downloads ratings.csv.

Step 2: export your check-ins

  1. From your account menu, choose Your Lists.
  2. Open Your Check-Ins.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and choose Export this list. You get checkins.csv.

Step 3: export your watchlist

  1. From your account menu, choose Your Lists.
  2. Open Your Watchlist.
  3. Scroll to the bottom and choose Export this list. You get watchlist.csv.

Step 4: import into Movie Tracker

  1. Move the files somewhere Movie Tracker can reach them, such as iCloud Drive.
  2. Open Movie Tracker, go to Settings, then Import.
  3. Tap Choose Files and pick all the files you exported at once.
  4. Movie Tracker recognises them as an IMDb export. If it does not, choose IMDb from the list yourself.
  5. Tap Continue.

You can also add the files one at a time. Movie Tracker keeps the ones you have already given it and tells you which parts of the export it is still missing, so you can go back for the rest.

Do not rename the files. Movie Tracker tells them apart by the beginning of their names, so ratings (1).csv still works but my-ratings.csv does not.

During the import

The progress counts titles, not rows. A film that appears in both your ratings and your watchlist moves the number once, and comes into your library once, with everything both files knew about it.

After the import

You get a summary of everything that happened, including anything that did not come in. Because the matching is by IMDb code, this list is usually short: it happens when a title has been removed from the catalog, or when IMDb and the catalog disagree about which entry a code belongs to.

You can save the summary as a PDF, along with a spreadsheet of the rows to correct.

If something goes wrong

  • The app does not recognise the file. Check that you downloaded the CSV export and not a printed page. The file must have a Const column.
  • The app asks for files you do not have. It is telling you what a complete IMDb export contains, not refusing yours. Tap Continue to import what you have.