Getting started
You’ll need an iPhone on iOS 17 or later, signed into iCloud. There’s no account to create and nothing to sign up for. The app uses the Apple ID you’re already signed into.
First run asks for your name, which is how you’ll appear on bookings and reviews, and lets you name your cinema. The name is two parts, a title and a subtitle, which show as the marquee at the top of the app and print on every ticket. “Woodey’s” and “Place” gives you “Woodey’s Place”. You can change it later in Settings.
The library
The Library is what you can actually watch: films you own, or can get to without thinking about it. It’s not a list of things you’d like to see one day; that’s the watch list.
Adding films
Search by title and pick from the results. The poster, synopsis, cast, runtime, year and genres all come down automatically. If you’re sharing a library, only the owner can add and remove films. Everyone else can send a result to the watch list instead.
Where a film lives
Each film can be tagged with where you’d actually play it from: your NAS or home server, physical media, Apple TV, or anything you type in yourself, like “Amazon Prime” or “Dad’s hard drive”. A name you’ve typed once is offered back on every other film, so you’re not retyping it, and it appears in the location filter as its own row with a badge showing its initials.
To fix a name you’ve mistyped, long-press it in the location list and choose Rename. That renames it on every film at once, and renaming onto a name you’re already using merges the two.
Format badges
Tag a film with what it’s actually capable of: Dolby Atmos, TrueHD, Digital Plus, DTS:X or DTS-HD for sound; Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+ or 4K for picture; and 3D. These show on the poster and get counted up in your stats.
Finding things
Sort by recently added, title or year. Your choice is remembered between launches. Filter by genre or by location. The genre list is built from what your library actually holds rather than a fixed list, so it only appears once there’s something to choose between.
Press and hold a poster
A card with the poster, the synopsis and where the film lives comes up, with a short menu beside it: put the film on Now Showing, put it on your watch list, or, if the library is yours, remove it. The first two are toggles, so holding the same poster again takes the film back off whichever list you put it on.
If the film is already on your shopping list, adding it to the watch list uses the row that’s there rather than making a second one, and taking it off the watch list afterwards leaves it on the shopping list.
Now Showing
The banner at the top of the Library rotates through films you’ve featured. If something’s playing right now, it takes that spot instead, with the playback controls on it.
Booking a showing
Open a film and tap Book this. There are two steps.
When and where. Pick the date and time, and your seat. The app checks for clashes. You’ve got one screen, so a new booking can’t overlap another one that’s still coming up. It works the length of the film out from its runtime.
Extras. Choose snacks from your household’s list, tick who’s coming, add any guests who don’t have the app, and decide whether you want a reminder. Reminders arrive 30 minutes and 5 minutes before showtime, and tapping one takes you straight to the booking.
Once it’s confirmed, the booking appears under Coming up in the Bookings tab, and on everyone else’s phone too. From the booking you can reschedule it, cancel it, or add it to your own calendar. The last two are under the … menu in the top corner.
Seats
Set your room out the way it really is in Settings: named rows with however many seats each, plus extras like a beanbag or the floor. The default is a single sofa.
Everyone picks their own seat on their own phone, and you can see who’s taken what. Because each person only ever sets their own, two people choosing at the same time can’t overwrite each other.
The ticket stub
Every booking is a ticket. It’s the confirmation you get when you book, and it’s the row you see in the Bookings list, so the two can never disagree.
Tap it to flip it over. The back is blank space for a note: one per booking, not one per person, the way writing on the back of a real ticket works.
Save or share it. The stub is drawn on its own at high resolution, not a screenshot with the rest of the app attached. The saved copy leaves the poster art off deliberately, since that artwork isn’t ours to hand on.
Guests and invites
Not everyone coming will have the app. When you’re booking, type their name under Guests. They’ll appear on the ticket alongside everyone else, but they don’t get a seat, a review or anything to sync.
Once the booking is confirmed, each guest gets a Send invite button on the booking screen. That opens the share sheet with a short message naming them and a link to their ticket. Nothing is attached: email, Messages and WhatsApp all send exactly the same thing, and everything a guest needs is on the page at the end of the link, where they can get at it more than once.
Type a guest’s name and the + button beside it lights up. If you forget to press it and confirm the booking anyway, the name is taken as read rather than thrown away.
The link opens a web page showing their actual ticket, which flips over like the one in the app, with buttons to add the showing to their calendar and save the ticket. They don’t need the app, an account, or anything else. Invites expire after six months.
Reschedule after you’ve invited someone and their ticket keeps the old time. Their link is a snapshot from the moment you sent it, so the app now asks whether to send fresh invites whenever you move a booking that has guests on it. Say yes and it works through them one at a time.
Watching and reviewing
The Bookings tab sorts itself into four sections and moves things between them on its own:
- Coming up: showtime is still ahead.
- Awaiting watch: showtime has passed and nobody’s marked it watched.
- Awaiting review: watched, but somebody who was there hasn’t rated it.
- Previously watched: done and fully reviewed. Collapsed by default.
Mark a booking as watched and everyone who attended can leave their own star rating (half stars work) and a comment. They’re separate, so you don’t have to agree, and the film’s page shows everyone’s side by side.
History and stats
History is everything you’ve actually watched, newest first, grouped by month, with a running total of hours.
Stats is the lifetime picture: films watched, hours, average rating, which formats you’ve got most of, your genre breakdown, and which night of the week you actually watch films on. Tapping someone under “By person” filters the whole screen to them, not just that one section.
The watch list and the shopping list
Two lists behind one switch at the top of the tab.
The watch list is everything you want to see, whether you own it or not. Each film records who added it, where it is (NAS, Physical Media, Apple TV, or any name you type, such as Netflix), and any notes. Tap a film to open it, and book an evening from there. When you have watched it, Watched asks when and who was there, files the evening in your history, offers you the review form, and then asks whether to clear the film off the list.
The shopping list is films you want to own. Each one records how you’ll buy it: 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD, Steelbook, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or a name you type. Bought puts the film in your library, asks where you have put it, and takes the row off the list.
The shopping bag on any watch-list film puts it on the shopping list as well, so a film you are going to buy is still a film you are planning to watch. Only the library’s owner decides what goes on the shopping list, though everyone can see it.
Swipe a row left to remove it, right to put the film in your library. Tap Reorder to drag either list into the order you want, and use the menu above the list to see only what one person has added.
Sharing your library
Settings → Share Library sends an invite link. Whoever accepts sees the same library, bookings, lists and history as you, on their own phone, and writes their own reviews under their own name.
Your own second device doesn’t need an invite. Anything signed into the same Apple ID already shares a library, so it’ll arrive on its own. Sending yourself an invite doesn’t just do nothing; it stops your library loading on that device and looks exactly like sync being broken.
Who can do what. The owner alone adds and removes films, moves films from a list into the library, and edits the cinema name, snack list and seat layout. Everything else is yours: your own name, your own seat, your own reviews, your own media server settings.
When someone else books something, everyone gets a notification, except whoever made the booking, who doesn’t need telling.
Playing from a media server
One Row can connect to a Plex, Jellyfin or Emby server, which does two things.
Import your films. Pull your server’s film list straight into the library rather than searching for each one. It’s a one-off import you trigger yourself, not a constant sync, and it merges rather than duplicates. A film that’s already there gains a location, it doesn’t become a second copy.
Press play. Start a film on a player in the house and control it from the app. Where a room has more than one player, you pick. If a particular player can’t be driven, the app says so rather than offering a button that does nothing.
Your server details are stored in your device’s keychain and are per person, not shared with the household. If connecting fails, the app tells you which stage it failed at, so a wrong address, a rejected key and a sleeping NAS all give different answers.
Settings
- Your name: how you appear on bookings and reviews.
- Cinema name: the marquee at the top of the app and the name printed on tickets. Owner only.
- Seats: your room’s rows and extras. Owner only.
- Snacks: the list you pick from when booking. Owner only.
- Media server: connect Plex, Jellyfin or Emby, and import.
- Share library: invite someone, or see who’s already in.
- Backup: export your films and both lists to a file, and load one back. Handy before a clean install. It doesn’t include people, who come back when they re-accept your share.
- Diagnostics: read-only detail about sync, useful if something’s not arriving.
If something goes wrong
Something isn’t appearing on the other phone
Check both devices are signed into iCloud with iCloud Drive on, and that the other person has accepted the share. Sync is usually seconds but can lag when a phone’s been asleep. Opening the app on both ends normally settles it. Settings → Diagnostics shows the last sync error, with the time it happened.
My library vanished after I sent myself an invite
That’s the one above. Don’t invite your own second device. It already has your library, and accepting an invite to it stops it loading. If you’ve already done it, decline or remove the share on that device.
“Add to Calendar” did nothing
Check the app is allowed to add events in Settings → Privacy → Calendars. If a guest is having the trouble on the web page, make sure they’re opening the link itself rather than a preview of it.
A film has no genres, so the genre filter is missing it
Genres fill themselves in in the background for films added before the app started tracking them. Leave the app open a while and they’ll arrive.
The film I want isn’t in the search results
Search matches the title as TMDb lists it, which is usually the original release title. Try the original-language title, or add the year.
Something here wrong or missing? Tell me: woodey.gundry@gmail.com