Marking a film as ‘watched’ (using the ‘eye’ icon on the film’s poster or controls, or by rating the film if you haven’t already marked it as watched) tells Letterboxd you’ve seen the film at some point in the past. It’s the best way to ‘back-fill’ films on the service, without having to recall exactly when you watched them. Marking films ‘watched’ adds to your overall tally of films, is useful when browsing lists (we show the percentage of each list you’ve watched) and allows you to optionally hide the films you’ve seen when browsing some screens.
Logging a film (via the ‘+ Log’ button on web, and the ‘+’ button in our app) allows you to record that you watched a film on a particular date. Adding films in this manner builds up your Diary (a record of when you saw each film) and the Recent Activity section of your profile—films are also marked as watched when you log them, if that flag is not already set. A minimum of ten diary entries in a given year is required to generate a Year in Review page (Pro members only), or the email summary that we send in January (to all members who choose to receive our general news emails). Most members keep an up-to-date Diary only from the time they join the platform, but it is possible to import your viewing history if you have that data from another service or spreadsheet.