Best iPhone Apps for Tracking Personal Interests in 2026: Movies, Books, and More

Most “best iPhone apps” lists focus on productivity and work tools. But what about tracking your personal interests? The movies you want to watch, books you’re reading, podcasts worth revisiting, or games you’re halfway through?

You could use a different app for each category—Goodreads for books, Letterboxd for movies, GameTrack for games—but that means managing multiple apps, accounts, and often, sharing your data with third parties.

The Problem with Specialized Apps

Dedicated apps for tracking movies, books, or games often come with trade-offs:

• Privacy concerns: Your viewing habits, reading lists, and gaming history are valuable data
• Feature bloat: Social features, recommendations, and ads you didn’t ask for
• Platform lock-in: Moving your data elsewhere is difficult or impossible
• Subscription fatigue: Many require premium subscriptions for basic features

What Makes a Great Personal Interest Tracker?

When choosing an iPhone app to organize your personal interests, look for:

1. Privacy-first design: Local storage, no tracking, no ads
2. Multi-category support: Track everything in one place
3. Rich metadata: Automatic details from TMDB, Spotify, and other sources
4. Offline access: Your data works without an internet connection
5. Clean, intuitive design: Easy to use, not cluttered with social features

Listy: One App for All Your Interests

Listy takes a different approach. Instead of juggling multiple specialized apps, you organize everything—movies, books, podcasts, games, recipes, places—in one unified app.

How It Works

• Automatic metadata: Add a movie and Listy pulls poster art, director, cast, and ratings from TMDB
• Custom lists: Create lists like “Movies to Watch,” “Favorite Sci-Fi Books,” or “Tokyo Restaurants”
• Status tracking: Mark items as “To Watch,” “Watching,” “Completed”—or create your own statuses
• Privacy by design: All data stored locally on your device via iCloud, synced across your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch

What You Can Track

• Movies & TV shows (with TMDB integration)
• Books (manually or imported from Goodreads, Letterboxd)
• Podcasts (Spotify metadata)
• Videogames (manual tracking with custom properties)
• Recipes, places, links, notes—basically anything

Listy vs. Specialized Apps

Privacy Features That Matter

In 2026, privacy isn’t optional. Listy’s approach:

• No user accounts required: Your data stays on your devices
• iCloud sync only: Apple handles sync—we never see your data
• No tracking or analytics: We don’t know what you’re saving
• No third-party SDKs: No hidden data collection

Getting Started

1. Download Listy from the App Store
2. Create your first list: Tap the “+” button
3. Add items: Search for movies, books, or add custom content
4. Organize: Use folders, tags, or custom properties to structure your collections

Power User Tips

• Use the Share Extension: Save links, articles, and videos from Safari directly to Listy
• Import existing data: Bring your Goodreads library, IMDb ratings, or Pocket links via CSV import
• Custom properties: Add your own fields like “Borrowed from,” “Finished date,” or “Rating”
• Widgets: Quick access to your lists from your home screen

Track Everything in One Place

Whether you’re managing a backlog of 1,000 movies or organizing recipes for the week, Listy gives you the tools to stay organized without compromising your privacy.

Stop juggling multiple apps. Start tracking what matters—on your terms.

Download Listy for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch →

Looking for alternatives to Pocket, Raindrop, or Notion for link saving? Check out our import guides to bring your data to Listy.