Callsheet: Find Cast & Crew Reviews

by JoshRighter

I want to love Callsheet, because I can’t overstate how much better it feels to use than IMDB. But on multiple occasions it’s given me credits for an actor that are egregiously wrong (as one example, showing that someone appeared in shows/movies produced years before his birth). The same lookups on IMDB—while painfully slow and user-hostile—contain no such errors. If I have to double check IMDB, there is sadly no point to this app. In a perfect world, we’d have IMDB’s back end with this app’s front end. In the real world, I have to go with Callsheet that is more correct more often.

by BNWINSF

Callsheet seems well-designed. I’ve been using for the past couple days, and it works as-advertised. IMDB provides more info. And while it can be somewhat exasperating at times, IMDB works fine for me since I only use it sparingly. And it’s free. Given my seldom need for this kind of info, it doesn’t make sense for me to pay for Callsheet on an ongoing basis. But if you need this kind of info often, and you really don’t like IMDB, and you don’t mind subscribing (and paying), then Callsheet might worth a go.

I’ve noticed that a number of other Apple bloggers and podcasters have penned glowing reviews. While I don’t doubt their genuineness, it’s worth noting that these folks are friends of the developer, another well-known tech-podcaster.

by RPS90483

I really have enjoyed the overall funcationality of Callsheet over its first year. I've only now just decided to cancel the subscription.

The reason for the cancellation is because Callsheet relies upon a database of film/tv/movies that I've noticed has so many holes and inaccuracies so I end up just going to wikipedia or other web sources to confirm info from tv shows or movies or about actors.

Just watched all 10 seasons of Friends and unfortunately the database that this app is using was missing so many guest actors and side characters. Also, I just looked up some information about Kumail Nanjiani and also Joel Kim Booster and things like birthdates and shows they're in were inaccurate or not listed at all.

It's not the fault of Callsheet per se but I just find myself not going to Callsheet as much when wanting to look something up. The ultimate solution would be challenging but would be to build its own database, no small feat, I realize.

by Dfabs

The experience of digging through a show episode to pinpoint actors and credits per show is very good. There is a ‘where to watch’ feature buried in the ‘more’ button on movies and shows—I think it could be more prominent on the show page, and the large size of the ‘more’ button doesn’t quite look right. Adding trailers would be nice.

I can see why one might subscribe to an app like this, but not convinced it has enough features at present to make it essential and worth it.

by Shane O'

I really like Callsheet . In fact, it’s fantastic, but a few design nitpicks keeps my OCD from allowing me to sub. Once again, these are super minor, enough so many wouldn’t notice or care, but they bug me all the same.

Corner radius on the purple buttons is quite a bit sharper angle than most built-in iOS UI elements and the IMDB/Trivia speech bubble glyph looks out of place in its big and boxy home.

Also, lowering the rating symbols a few pixels to bring them into alignment with the center of the score text and bar. The score has nice spacing between its title and number, whereas the rating symbols look like they’re glued to their titles.

by NathanGugliotta

I love Callsheet and would LOVE to give it 5 stars but it’s a little weird how there are no widgets nor shortcuts support at all. Definitely needs an update to modernize it, which is a weird thing to say about a brand new app. It also definitely needs an update to be a better iOS citizen, which—again—is a weird thing to say about an app made by a guy who talks about Apple platforms for a living.

by Drummstick

I’ve been using Callsheet for about a week with a paid membership. (A very inexpensive $9 a year.) I’ve been very much enjoying it over IMDb‘s app, because of its lack of distracting videos, ads, and other Clickbait.

this app still easily takes you to IMDb for doing deeper dives for photos of actors or photos from particular movies, and for the trivia and quotes, but for the lion’s share of “who is that, and what else have they been in” questions, Callsheet is tops.

The display of the ages of actors/writers/directors/crew at the time the movie was made/released is also a treat.

by Berlingoff

I insta-purchased Callsheet and sub to support indie app development thinking it would be there opened once or twice a year. OH HOW I WAS WRONG. Callsheet is now my trusty companion when watching content at home and away. Indicators for mid and after credit scenes, check. Awareness of Plex content being played, check. Clean design that stays out of the way, check. Callsheet is amazing and worth every single penny!

by Dontknowwhyineedanickname

I have heard the author speak to how many people told him they didn’t even think they needed an app like this, and frankly, I was convinced it was some thing that was not for me. I was playing with it my wife and I already found several movies that we didn’t know existed and found places to watch them without fooling around and jumping through every streaming app we own. Well worth the nine dollars per year.

by Bronxred

The first edition of The Verge’s Installer newsletter suggested Callsheet, which was a home-run recommendation for a brand new publication.

Everything about this app is great. I use it every day. It doesn’t have a lock-screen widget, so to open it faster, I made a Shortcut myself.

The generous trial meant I used it many times while checking it out. It grew on me so much, I wanted to pay for it long before I had to. It’s that good.

by Dgp1

About 15 years ago you could get an “IMDB” app which was designed to make looking stuff up quicker and easier than the website. Soon, that app and their website became crapped up and packed with so many ads that it became impossible to do the only mechanic anybody wanted to do on there: click actor, see their movies and shows. Click show, see its actors.

Well, Casey Liss has brought us back to that place, with an app free from garbage ads, that offers that primary, necessary functionality front and center*! I don’t even need to “enable notifications” or “allow location access”!

The pricing is great, and I’m happy to pay the cost of 1 ½ Starbucks drinks per year to never have to look at IMDB again. Thanks!

*Not affiliated with Front and Center, registered trademark John Siracusa

by As8302

Callsheet is amazing. Finally there is an easy place I can go and look for movies and tv shows. Also, lots of times I want to stream a show or movie and being able to look it up and find where to see it in Callsheet! Also, you can add the “where to watch” button to the main page of the title. I wish I could give it 20 stars!

by Imacdavey

I constantly play the “where have I seen them before” game when watching something on TV. I check the IMDb app and every time I do I have to click through a request to login or make an account. Plus, that app is so tough to find the info I want among all the ads. Call Sheet seems clutter free, quick, and clean. I need to use it a few more days but right now it’s exactly what I want. Plus, I want to support the ATP guys but can’t bring my self to become a member. My guilt is gone now that I bought a subscription to Callsheet.

by Kgview

Callsheet retains the speed and simplicity of the phone version, and is also a good fit for this platform. Callsheet looks very nice with the new glassy semi-transparent material look, and the movie poster thumbnails are high enough quality that they look fine when presented as quite large. The “touch” targets and buttons are big enough that it’s relatively easy to activate them without making mistakes. The main search bar now adorns the bottom of the window.

There’s a search history panel that makes it easier to access past searches through large buttons instead of trying to type. I couldn’t correctly clear out the search history in that panel, but I expect that it may be a feature that’s coming soon.

The features here don’t require augmented or virtual reality, but it’s great to have Callsheet here because many people are using their devices to watch movies and television. Generally, if you’re happy with Callsheet on other platforms, you’ll probably also be happy with it here because the quality is similarly very high and it follows native platform conventions.

by Mdwittenberg

Fantastic app that “finally” gives me a pleasant way to search for tv shows.

I am a heavy Letterboxd user which is great for movies, but lacks tv shows. In the past, I would muck around with IMDB for tv shows. Today, this app is my dream companion app to Letterboxd.

Humble feature request: Button to “search in Letterboxd” for people+movies results. Even if it only brought up a simple webview, this button would make this app all that much more amazing. For movies, Letterboxd holds my canonical watchlist etc. so I frequently want to bounce into to Letterboxd from this app.

by Quantumbyte

I’ll be honest. I downloaded Callsheet because I genuinely wanted to support Casey (he’s a good guy), and figured I’d subscribe even though this app is ‘just’ a front end to a website. Oh, was I wrong! Callsheet is fast, responsive and, more importantly, a delight to use. Every screen has the information I care about, but no more. I went to the source website to see if I’d been missing out on the best movie site ever. Nope. There’s so much clutter there that this app has swept away leaving me in a figurative zen garden of movie information. I think I’ve spent the last hour or so just browsing, and searching, and browsing some more. Learning about a bunch of actors I just couldn’t be bother to go spelunking on Wikipedia (or worse… the other ‘mdb’) because they are right there, with their age, and their photo. Seriously Casey, if you’re reading this, I’ll double down on my offer: come back to Austin and I’ll buy you as many beverages as you want. Thank you for this amazing app, and thank you for caring about good UX.

by TuCats

I love Callsheet. It is everything you would want, and not all the junk you don’t want or need.

I think this is an excellent example of what I hope is a trend towards providing good value for the money in offering a top quality app, a graceful UI, and an ad-free experience for those who would rather pay to get value than be sold as the product themselves. Well done, Casey!

by Solmaker

Great job on this very well-designed, responsive, handy, and useful app! My only qualm regards underlying data, as my first look-up was for the 60’s TV show “Lancer”, featured in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”… its series info was missing the show’s 4th regular Elizabeth Baur, who was in every episode! But clicking the convenient “…” balloon button brought her up in additional IMDB info. So my hot take is that this underlying data is not complete and has puzzling omissions, but is still quite helpful and good enough for the purpose of Callsheet at its very reasonable price. After playing with this app for a couple minutes, I was sold and subscribed for a year. For less frequent usage, having it free on one’s phone is a no-brainer, and I expect many like me will find themselves happy to subscribe for convenient unlimited usage.

by Adollar28cents

I deleted IMDB from my phone about a year ago. I tried using TMDB as a web app, bookmarked on my home screen, but the quality of that experience was poor. So I went back to using IMDB, just by searching in Safari. Then I heard Casey talking about this new app on his podcast ATP. I could not wait. Fast forward to August 2023 and I downloaded on release day. It’s exactly Callsheet I was hoping for. So glad to be rid of IMDb for real now.

by Ellipsical

I’m a subscriber to Callsheet and I plan to continue.

Overall a clean app that’s already gotten better / sanded down some rough edges since it was released.

Two things I hope improve:

1. The sort order of search results is baffling. There doesn’t seem to be any rank order signaling for stuff like popularity, release date, etc… this is the biggest thing for me since I hit it on most uses. I know the API/data is from a third party which makes this more complex but mixing in other signals, either from Callsheet itself like popular searches or from external sources is doable and could have a huge impact.

2. My pinned items keep disappearing. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they do not.

Hope it keeps improving.

by Bill Schy

Callsheet is a fantastic replacement for IMDb. It’s so fast, so respectful, so clean. I was watching a movie tonight and wanted to look someone up, remembered that Callsheet was available and downloaded it. One search and I bought it straight away.

I love the fact that the search bar is prominently placed. However, I kind of expected it to search within the actor or movie you’re currently looking at, rather than searching the whole site. I think it would be cool if it did both. Also, if you tap it accidentally there’s no way to escape back to your current page. Pressing Cancel takes you to the home page of Callsheet and you can’t otherwise collapse it again.

by Chancerubbage

One thing I automatically started doing since it loads so fast is to ‘link surf’ -something I wouldn’t even think about on Bezos owned IMDB. I had already switched to Wikipedia for film info long ago. You can quickly go down a 7 degrees if bacon rabbit hole with any film or cast member now.

Future feature request- combined cast search. List two actors, find films in which they appear together.

by TechandRamen

This is an excellent alternative to the IMDB app, which has become ad- and distraction-riddled over the years. Although the data source isn’t as robust, it’s worth the clean and snappy interface. The developer has also added several nice touches that are missing from other apps. I love the age timeline in actor profiles. How old was that actress when she was in this movie? Instead of doing the math in my head, Callsheet tells me directly. I can’t wait to see what other details the developer adds over time. If you’re always looking up movie and tv show data, Callsheet is an absolutely must download.

by Aaron Leavitt

Thankful for a simple quick app without a ton of things tacked on, and without the clutter!

by Nosillacast

this app is on my main home screen of my iPhone and iPad because I use it daily. I mostly use it for looking up actors in movies and TV, and I love how I can get a big image of them with a tap. For shows I'm watching with a lot of seasons, I love being able to pin them to the top. The recent enhancement to add "you may know them from" is great. An easy subscription for me.

by IPhone_3GS_was_best

Fantastic app that “finally” gives me a pleasant way to search for tv shows.

I am a heavy Letterboxd user which is great for movies, but lacks tv shows. In the past, I would muck around with IMDB for tv shows. Today, this app is my dream companion app to Letterboxd.

Humble feature request: Button to “search in Letterboxd” for people+movies results. Even if it only brought up a simple webview, this button would make this app all that much more amazing. For movies, Letterboxd holds my canonical watchlist etc. so I frequently want to bounce into to Letterboxd from this app.

by Dlangendorf

I love the clean interface and it's a delight to use. We can't watch any show without going to IMDB or Just Watch ... and those are super informative but cluttered. this app gives us the basics but also links to other sources if we need more info. this app is fairly priced, too, so I hope a subscription will encourage future features. Best of luck to the developers.

by Tarrout

Most of the time, I just want to look something up. I want a nice interface that doesn’t get in my way and I want all the info clearly presented.

this app performs this so well, I’ll be using it as my example for what a app should be.

I’ve only had it a short amount time, but I now have the habit of opening it immediately whenever my TV is on.

by G_ChipT

To get information about the movies & TV shows I watch I have had to search through Wikipedia pages for the material I want to see or worse yet, through the IMDB website.

Callsheet brings all the info I want right to my screen. It is quick and I can pin the content I am actively watching to minimize searching until I am done with it.

by Cyberpunk Librarian

A movie and TV information app, written by someone who actually cares about the data, the information, and the presentation thereof. I switched to TMDB ages ago because the alternative… isn’t good. This is the best app to compliment TMDB and to use it outside of the website. And as a librarian, this is exactly the kind of thing I need for working the reference desk.

by Joe Goullaud

Great app for looking up Movie and TV Show info. I was so sick of IMDB constantly asking me to sign up or log in so it could track me better. Nothing like that for Callsheet. Simple and fast access to info in a great interface. And if you run out of free searches, then you’re probably getting enough value from it to throw the indie developer a few bucks a year.

by PTibz

Greatest client for IMDB and film info searches out there. If you’re always wondering what other show or movie someone was in or where you’ve seen an actor before this is the perfect app for you. Searches are incredibly fast compared to literally anywhere else. Extremely worth the subscription fee, which is very cheap.

by A Talking Duo (C&J)

Super clean and free of clutter and junk. Love the ability to hide spoilers and customize quick buttons… I set it to the Wikipedia page so I can quickly pull up the wiki for any movie, tv show, actor, etc and I love that feature! I’m always diving into Wikipedia when I’m watching a movie and want to learn more about the cast or crew!

by Bertschtim

You ever have an app category where you find yourself using multiple apps to serve a singular purpose because no single app fits your need? That was me for years in the tv/movie companion app category until now. Respect to Casey for entering a market that has a lot of choices but no standouts and making a standout.