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Prime Video is one of the world’s biggest streaming services. Next to Netflix and HBO Max, it’s one that I use almost every day for its huge library of content, but its interface is far from perfect. With so much on offer, one of the best ways to organize it all is through its Watchlist feature, but over time, mine has gotten so bloated it’s almost as frustrating flipping through it as it is finding something to watch in the library—until I learned of this simple way of keeping the Watchlist neat and tidy.
Understanding Prime Video’s Watchlist
If you’re like me, you scroll through hundreds of shows and movie titles daily, trying to find something go…
Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek | Prostock-studio/Shutterstock
Sign in to your How-To Geek account
Prime Video is one of the world’s biggest streaming services. Next to Netflix and HBO Max, it’s one that I use almost every day for its huge library of content, but its interface is far from perfect. With so much on offer, one of the best ways to organize it all is through its Watchlist feature, but over time, mine has gotten so bloated it’s almost as frustrating flipping through it as it is finding something to watch in the library—until I learned of this simple way of keeping the Watchlist neat and tidy.
Understanding Prime Video’s Watchlist
If you’re like me, you scroll through hundreds of shows and movie titles daily, trying to find something good to watch. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t, and sometimes you find something you like but want to watch later. This is where the Watchlist feature comes in handy. It can also serve as a sort of “Top” list for your most frequented titles. Handy.
Adding stuff is easy: Just click or tap that “+” symbol on the title that’s piqued your interest, and boom, it’s relegated to your Watchlist for quick reference later. Another benefit (or detriment, depending on who you ask) of populating your Watchlist is that it also helps train your algorithm, telling it things you’re into so it can serve you up better suggestions.
Depending on whether you’re using Prime Video on a smartphone or tablet app, an app on a streaming device like Apple TV (like I do), or through a web browser, the experience slightly differs, with the streaming device or smart TV apps being the worst. And herein lies the problem. The Prime Video Watchlist, while a bit primitive, does the basic job of separating your saved titles into either TV Shows or Movies. Over time, as your Watchlist builds up, often with hundreds of tiles to swipe through, the streaming device version that most people use to access Prime Video offers no additional filtering options or any way to quickly manage it apart from painstakingly clicking through to each title and deselecting it from the Watchlist.
Luckily, I learned of a way to do this much faster.
The best way to manage your Prime Video Watchlist
OK, so it’s still not perfect, but when I learned of this obvious way of managing the Prime Video Watchlist, after slogging along on my Apple TV, it was like a ray of sunshine: Use a web browser.
Unlike the streaming device, mobile or tablet app versions, using a web browser in Prime Video allows you to simply hover your mouse or cursor over each title in your Watchlist, bringing up an overlay with the option to remove many of them much more quickly. Here’s how.
On your web browser:
- Go to primevideo.com and log in.
- Click or tap the “My Stuff” icon at the top of the page.
- From the dropdown menu, select “Watchlist.”
- Filter your titles how you like—All, Movies, or TV Shows
- Simply hover over the title and from the overlay, deselect the “Checkmark” symbol, removing it from the Watchlist.
- Repeat for each title you want to remove—you can breeze through and purge them so much faster.
- Once removed, you’ll see a tile that also gives you the option to undo.
- Doing it here will sync on Prime Video across all your devices.
And while it isn’t nearly as efficient as the web browser method, the Prime Video smartphone app is still much better than the streaming device app. And you can do it in front of the TV while you watch something, and get the instant satisfaction of seeing your newly cleaned Watchlist on screen almost instantly. Here’s how.
The steps for removing titles from your Prime Video Watchlist might be slightly different from one device to another.
On your smartphone:
- On the Prime Video smartphone app (iOS in the example), tap the “Profile” icon in the top right corner.
- In the Watchlist section, here you can also see either all of your saved titles or you can “Filter” your movies or TV shows, too.
- With the list in view, tap the “Three Dot” menu to the right of the title to bring up the menu.
- Deselect the Watchlist “Checkmark.” The title will be removed, and you’ll be returned to the list.
- Work your way down the list and repeat for any other titles you want to remove.
- Unlike the web browser, though, there’s no “Undo” option, so choose wisely.
- Again, the changes will sync across all your devices.
The changes might not take effect across your devices immediately, but should after a refresh. If not, you can also try clearing your device’s cache or restarting your device.
It may not be perfect...
Now that your Watchlist is tidied up, if you’re an obsessive clicker of that tempting plus symbol, you might want to practice some restraint or regular maintenance until Amazon does users a solid by giving us a proper bulk-delete option, or at least some better filtering.
A cluttered Watchlist might not seem like a big deal (and it isn’t, really), but take it from me, when it gets out of hand it makes the whole interface look like a digital graveyard of things I’ve watched, that looked good at the time, or expired from Prime Video three years ago. Prime Video has some great and helpful features, but until they deliver us better Watchlist management options, I’ll be breaking out the laptop.
Prime Video is the world’s second most popular streaming video service by subscribers, second only to Netflix. It features a regularly rotating stream of new and older movies and TV show titles, with hits such as The Boys, Generation V, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Fleabag, Invincible, and more.
Subscription with ads Yes, via Prime membership or $9/month
Simultaneous streams 3
Live TV No
Price Included with Amazon Prime subscription ($15/month or $139/year) or $9/month standalone
Prime Video has a large volume of content to watch. The other Amazon perks are a bonus as well.