A lot of the Cool Tools we feature here are about maximizing productivity, but this week, let’s focus instead on a way to budget your precious downtime.
As someone who watches the streaming TV space closely, I’m well aware of how many choices exist when you sit down in front of the TV. Between Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, and more, there are endless things to watch, and not nearly enough time to get through them.
So before you commit to a new show, here’s a resource to figure out how many hours (or days) of total watch time you’re in for. After all, there’s nothing worse than being stuck on a cliffhanger.
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Estimate watch times the easy way
To see how long it’ll take to get through the next show you’re streaming, check out a resource called Bingeclock.
➜ Bingeclock is a free website that lists the total runtime of any TV series or movie.
⌚ Looking up a show takes just a few seconds; there’s no login or registration required.
✅ To find a total watch time, just type the name of the show or movie into the search box.
Directly on the search results page, you’ll see how many days, hours, and minutes it’ll take to watch. You can also hit the “Cut credits” button to see what the watch time would be if you skipped that part of the presentation.
Clicking on a show title leads to a page with more options, including a handy “Daily planning” button that asks how many episodes you intend to watch per day. Choosing a number will update the watch time, showing how many days you’d need to get through the entire series.
While you don’t need an account to use Bingeclock, creating one unlocks some interesting extra features—including a watchlist, a log of your past binges, and a way to plan “Marathons” of multiple movies or TV shows. (You can also head to the “Leaderboards” tab to see popular Marathons from others, like the two-day Marathon of every Godzilla movie.)
The site has a few other charming oddities. The Bingerdie game is essentially Wordle, but with terms from popular TV shows, and the Are We Trek Yet? subsite shows how many fictional Star Trek advancements have become reality.
And if all this leaves you feeling even more indecisive about what to watch, just head to the “Your Antennas” menu. Here, you’ll be given a virtual tube TV with dozens of seemingly random streaming “channels” to flip through, from Grateful Dead concert footage and Disney theme park walkthroughs to recent robotics demos.
It’s nice to know that while Bingeclock can help meticulously plot your TV time, it can help you waste it as well.
- Bingeclock is completely web-based and will work in any browser, on any device, without any downloads—though the service does also offer an Android app and a beta-level, TestFlight-requiring iOS app if you’d rather go that route.
- It’s completely free to use without any limitations.
- And you don’t have to provide any personal info whatsoever to use it—though if you do opt to create an account, the site’s privacy policy is pretty standard and straightforward about how it does and doesn’t use any associated details.
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