Guide

How One Row works

One Row treats a film at home the way a cinema treats one: something you keep in stock, put on at a set time, sell a ticket for, and hear back about afterwards. Everything below follows that order.

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 wishlist.

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 wishlist 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.

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 their ticket as a picture, a short message naming them, a calendar file, and a link.

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 calendar keeps the old time. Their entry is a snapshot from the moment you sent it. Send a fresh invite if the time moves.

Watching and reviewing

The Bookings tab sorts itself into four sections and moves things between them on its own:

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 wishlist

Films you want but haven't got. Each one records who added it, which UK streaming service it's on (Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, NOW, iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, Paramount+, Discovery+, MUBI, BritBox, Sky Cinema, or anything you type in), and any notes.

When you get hold of one, the owner can move it straight into the library.

Sharing your library

Settings → Share Library sends an invite link. Whoever accepts sees the same library, bookings, wishlist 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 wishlist items 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

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