Make your watch history portable before an account change

Watch history becomes fragile when it lives only inside one account. An export may preserve titles and dates without preserving episode position, ratings, lists, or a format another service can import. The safest workflow is to keep the provider’s original archive and a small human-readable checkpoint before cancelling, transferring, or cleaning an account.

This is a backup procedure, not a ranking of tracker apps. If you want feature comparisons, see Keep track of the good stuff.

Decide what “progress” means

List the fields you would need to restart without guessing: series title, season, episode, completion state, last-watched date, rating, saved-list status, and any note about a special or alternate order. A service may export only some of them.

Netflix lets an account user view each profile’s activity and download the list as a CSV readable by spreadsheet software (Netflix viewing activity). That is useful evidence, but Series Desk does not claim the file is a complete cross-service migration package.

Export before changing the account

Use the provider’s official export or data-access path while the account is active. Save the untouched download with the provider name, profile, and export date. Also record the request date because large privacy archives can take time.

Netflix says its personal-information copy can include content interaction history, ratings, profile playback preferences, and other account data, and that a requested copy can take up to 30 days after verification (Netflix data request). Google Takeout similarly creates an archive for selected products and warns that changes between request and archive creation may not appear (Google Account Help).

Do not delete the source account while an archive is pending.

Preserve the raw file and make a checkpoint

Keep one read-only original archive. Work from a copy. Never upload the full archive to an unknown converter: it may contain viewing habits, account metadata, or device information beyond the rows you intend to move.

Create a simple checkpoint table for active series only. Use one row per series with “next episode to watch,” last confirmed date, source service, and notes about ordering. Mark uncertain rows instead of inferring progress from a single activity event. A viewed episode can have been sampled, replayed, or watched by someone else using the profile.

Test any import with a tiny batch

If a destination offers an official import, first read its supported fields and identifier requirements. Import three deliberately different records: a normal episode, a special, and a namesake or remake. Then compare the destination against your checkpoint.

Look for season-number drift, duplicate series, missing specials, wrong completion dates, and ratings mapped onto the wrong edition. The series identity workflow helps resolve those mismatches. Only scale up after the small batch is reversible or can be deleted cleanly.

Maintain a recovery pair

Keep both artifacts: the dated raw export for provenance and the compact checkpoint for practical recovery. Store them somewhere private with an ordinary backup. Schedule a fresh export before cancellation, a household split, or a major cleanup—not because the service promises permanence, but because your last copy is the only state you control.

After moving, verify several recent series on the destination and retain the source archive until you are confident the result is usable. “Exported” means a file was obtained. “Portable” means you proved that the important fields survived the move; those are not the same claim.