WatchBack

WatchBack is a self-hosted companion app for your media server. While you watch a TV show or movie, it automatically fetches Reddit threads, Trakt comments, Bluesky posts, and other community discussions about the exact episode you're watching — and surfaces them in a clean, single-page UI.

Features

• Automatic sync — detects what you're currently watching and fetches relevant discussions
• Time Machine — filters results to only show reactions posted close to the original air date, so you get the authentic first-watch experience
• Multiple sources — Reddit threads (via PullPush), Trakt comments, and Bluesky posts, all in one place
• Reddit search shortcut — one-click search for the episode you're watching
• Multiple themes — dark, light, Solarized Dark, Solarized Light, and Monokai

Quick Start

Docker Compose (recommended)

services:
  watchback:
    image: watchback
    build: .
    container_name: watchback
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    volumes:
      - watchback-data:/app/data
    environment:
      Jellyfin__BaseUrl: http://jellyfin:8096
      Jellyfin__ApiKey: your-api-key
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  watchback-data:

Then open http://localhost:5000 — you'll be prompted to set a username and password on first run.

Running locally

dotnet run --project src/WatchBack.Api

Configuration

All provider settings can be configured in the UI under the gear icon, or via environment variables / appsettings.json. Environment variables use double-underscore as the section separator (e.g. Jellyfin__ApiKey).

Watch providers

Variable	Description
Jellyfin__BaseUrl	Base URL of your Jellyfin server
Jellyfin__ApiKey	Jellyfin API key

Thought providers

Variable	Description	Default
Reddit__MaxThreads	Maximum number of Reddit threads to fetch	3
Reddit__MaxComments	Maximum number of comments per thread	250
Trakt__ClientId	Trakt API client ID
Trakt__Username	Trakt username to fetch comments for
Bluesky__Handle	Bluesky handle (e.g. you.bsky.social)
Bluesky__AppPassword	Bluesky app password

App preferences

Variable	Description	Default
WatchBack__TimeMachineDays	Days after air date to include in Time Machine	14
WatchBack__WatchProvider	Active watch provider (jellyfin)	jellyfin
WatchBack__SearchEngine	Search engine for Reddit shortcut (google, duckduckgo, bing, custom)	google
WatchBack__CustomSearchUrl	URL prefix for custom search engine

Forward auth

If you run WatchBack behind an auth proxy that passes a trusted header (e.g. X-Remote-User), you can enable forward auth in the Security section of the config UI. When active, the login screen is bypassed entirely.

Adding a new provider

WatchBack is built around a provider pattern. To add a new watch state source or thought source:

1. Implement IWatchStateProvider or IThoughtProvider from WatchBack.Core
2. Register it in Program.cs

See the existing implementations in WatchBack.Infrastructure for reference, and the interface XML docs in WatchBack.Core/Interfaces for the full contract.

Building

# Build
dotnet build

# Run tests
dotnet test

# Publish (production)
dotnet publish -c Release

The Docker build handles Tailwind CSS compilation automatically as a separate stage.