Importing from Other Apps

Sofa can import your existing watch history, watchlist, and ratings from other tracking services. This lets you switch to Sofa without losing your data.

Supported Services

Importing via OAuth (Trakt & Simkl)

The fastest way to import. Sofa uses a device code flow — no passwords are shared.

1. Go to Settings → Import and click Connect next to Trakt or Simkl
2. A code is displayed — click the link to open the provider's website
3. Enter the code and authorize Sofa
4. Sofa fetches your library and shows a preview
5. Choose which categories to import (watches, watchlist, ratings) and confirm

The authorization token is used only for the one-time data fetch and is not stored.

Importing via File Upload

For Letterboxd (which has no public API) or if you prefer not to use OAuth:

Letterboxd

1. Go to letterboxd.com/settings/data and click Export Your Data
2. Download the ZIP file
3. In Sofa, go to Settings → Import and click Upload next to Letterboxd
4. Select the ZIP file — Sofa reads diary.csv, watched.csv, watchlist.csv, and ratings.csv

Trakt & Simkl

You can also upload a JSON export file instead of using OAuth. Export your data from the provider's account settings, then upload the file in Sofa.

Preview & Options

Before importing, Sofa shows a preview of what was found:

• Item counts — movies, episodes, watchlist items, and ratings detected in the export
• Category toggles — choose which types of data to import (watches, watchlist, ratings)
• Warnings — any issues found during parsing (e.g. missing files in a ZIP, unrecognized ratings)

Items without external IDs (like Letterboxd exports, which only include title and year) are resolved via TMDB search. The preview notes how many items will need title-based matching, which may be less accurate for ambiguous titles.

How It Works

When you confirm the import, Sofa creates a background job that:

1. Resolves each item to a TMDB title using available IDs (TMDB, IMDB, TVDB) or title search
2. Fetches metadata for any titles not already in your Sofa library
3. Logs watches, sets watchlist status, and stores ratings using the original timestamps from the source
4. Reports progress in real time — you can close the tab and come back; the import continues server-side

Deduplication

Imports are safe to re-run. Sofa checks for existing data before writing:

• Watches — skipped if you already have a watch record for that movie or episode
• Watchlist — skipped if a status already exists for that title
• Ratings — skipped if you already have a rating for that title

Rating Conversion

Different services use different rating scales. Sofa converts to its 1–5 star scale:

Timestamps

Sofa preserves the original watch dates and rating dates from the source export. If the source only provides a date without a time (e.g. Letterboxd diary entries), the date is stored as-is.

Troubleshooting

Check the import results summary for details on any failures:

• "Could not resolve movie/show" — the title couldn't be matched to a TMDB entry. This is more common with Letterboxd imports (title-only matching) or obscure titles.
• "Season/episode not found" — the show was found but the specific episode doesn't exist in TMDB's data. This can happen with recently aired episodes or special episodes.
• Large imports are slow — imports with thousands of items may take several minutes due to TMDB rate limits. The progress bar shows real-time status.
• Import job disappeared — if the server restarts mid-import, the job will show as failed. You can safely re-run the import; existing data won't be duplicated.