Guide

How One Row works

One Row Home Cinema helps you create the perfect cinema experience at home. It allows you to build a library of all your favourite films, no matter where they live.

Getting started

You'll need an iPhone on iOS 17 or later, signed into iCloud. There's no account to create and nothing to sign up for. The app uses the Apple ID you're already signed into.

First run asks for your name, which is how you'll appear on bookings and reviews, and lets you name your cinema. The name is two parts, a title and a subtitle, which show as the marquee at the top of the app and print on every ticket. "Woodey's" and "Place" gives you "Woodey's Place". You can change it later in Settings.

The library

The Library is what you can actually watch: films you own, or can get to without thinking about it. It's not a list of things you'd like to see one day; that's the watch list.

Adding films

Search by title and pick from the results. The poster, synopsis, cast, runtime, year and genres all come down automatically. If you're sharing a library, only the owner can add and remove films. Everyone else can send a result to the watch list instead.

Where a film lives

Each film can be tagged with where you'd actually play it from: your NAS or home server, physical media, Apple TV, or anything you type in yourself, like "Amazon Prime" or "Dad's hard drive". A name you've typed once is offered back on every other film, so you're not retyping it, and it appears in the location filter as its own row with a badge showing its initials.

To fix a name you've mistyped, long-press it in the location list and choose Rename. That renames it on every film at once, and renaming onto a name you're already using merges the two.

Format badges

Tag a film with what it's actually capable of: Dolby Atmos, TrueHD, Digital Plus, DTS:X or DTS-HD for sound; Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+ or 4K for picture; and 3D. These show on the poster and get counted up in your stats.

Finding things

Sort by recently added, title or year. Your choice is remembered between launches. Filter by genre or by location. The genre list is built from what your library actually holds rather than a fixed list, so it only appears once there's something to choose between.

Press and hold a poster

A card with the poster, the synopsis and where the film lives comes up, with a short menu beside it: put the film on Now Showing, put it on your watch list, or, if the library is yours, remove it. The first two are toggles, so holding the same poster again takes the film back off whichever list you put it on.

If the film is already on your shopping list, adding it to the watch list uses the row that's there rather than making a second one, and taking it off the watch list afterwards leaves it on the shopping list.

Now Showing

The banner at the top of the Library rotates through films you've featured. If something's playing right now, it takes that spot instead, with the playback controls on it.

Booking a showing

Open a film and tap Book this. There are two steps.

When and where. Pick the date and time, then choose where the group should start. One Row allocates consecutive available seats to everyone attending. The app checks for clashes. You've got one screen, so a new booking can't overlap another one that's still coming up. It works the length of the film out from its runtime.

Extras. Choose snacks from your household's list, tick who's coming, add any guests who don't have the app, and decide whether you want a reminder. Reminders arrive 30 minutes and 5 minutes before showtime, and tapping one takes you straight to the booking.

Once it's confirmed, the booking appears under Coming up in the Bookings tab, and on everyone else's phone too. From the booking you can reschedule it, cancel it, or add it to your own calendar. The last two are under the … menu in the top corner.

Seats

Set your room out the way it really is in Settings: named rows with however many seats each, plus extras like a beanbag or the floor. The default is a single sofa.

Everyone receives a seat when the booking is made. People sharing the app can open the booking and change their own seat and snacks. Guests choose through their personal invite link, while the booker can adjust a guest's seat from the booking screen. Known occupied seats are disabled, and the app checks again when a choice is saved in case somebody else moved while the picker was open.

The ticket stub

Every booking is a ticket. It's the confirmation you get when you book, and it's the row you see in the Bookings list, so the two can never disagree.

Tap it to open the booking. That works on the confirmation you get straight after booking as well as on the rows in the Bookings list, and both land on the same screen, where you can reschedule it, cancel it or mark it watched.

Swipe across it to turn it over. The back is blank space for a note: one per booking, not one per person, the way writing on the back of a real ticket works.

Press and hold for the rest. Turning it over, saving it and sharing it all live in that menu, and on a booking still to come, so does cancelling it. The stub is drawn on its own at high resolution, not a screenshot with the rest of the app attached. The saved copy leaves the poster art off deliberately, since that artwork isn't ours to hand on.

Changing a review. Open the booking, from Bookings or from History, and tap your own stars. A pencil beside them marks which row is yours. It opens the same form with what you wrote already in it, so saving changes the review rather than adding a second one.

Guests and invites

Not everyone coming will have the app. When you're booking, type their name under Guests. They'll appear on the ticket alongside everyone else and receive an allocated seat. They don't need an account or the app: their seat and snack choices come back to the booking through their personal invite link.

You can add guests later too. Open the booking and tap Add or remove guests under Guests, so somebody deciding to come on the day doesn't mean redoing the evening. The same screen takes names off again.

Two things keep the names they were made with: a ticket you've already saved as a picture, and an invite you've already sent. Neither one goes back and updates itself. Send the new guest their own invite, and if it matters that everyone sees the full list, send the others a fresh one as well.

Once the booking is confirmed, each guest gets a Send invite button on the booking screen. That opens the share sheet with a short message naming them and a link to their ticket. Nothing is attached: email, Messages and WhatsApp all send exactly the same thing, and everything a guest needs is on the page at the end of the link, where they can get at it more than once.

Type a guest's name and the + button beside it lights up. If you forget to press it and confirm the booking anyway, the name is taken as read rather than thrown away.

The link first shows the seats still available and the household's snack list. The guest chooses their seat and any snacks, then taps Save choices & view ticket. Their finished ticket appears with those choices printed on it. They can change their choices again later, add the showing to Calendar, save the ticket, or use the TestFlight link to download One Row. They don't need the app or an account to respond. Invites expire after six months.

Guest choices are imported when One Row opens or returns to the foreground. They then appear beside that guest on the booking and sync to the rest of the household through iCloud like the booking's other changes.

Reschedule after you've invited someone and their ticket keeps the old time. Their seat and snack choices remain editable, but the film and showtime are a snapshot from when the link was sent. The app asks whether to send fresh invites whenever you move a booking that has guests on it. Say yes and it works through them one at a time.

Watching and reviewing

The Bookings tab sorts itself into four sections and moves things between them on its own:

Mark a booking as watched and everyone who attended can leave their own star rating (half stars work) and a comment. They're separate, so you don't have to agree, and the film's page shows everyone's side by side.

History and stats

History is everything you've actually watched, newest first, grouped by month, with a running total of hours.

Stats is the lifetime picture: films watched, hours, average rating, which formats you've got most of, your genre breakdown, and which night of the week you actually watch films on. Tapping someone under "By person" filters the whole screen to them, not just that one section.

The watch list and the shopping list

Two lists behind one switch at the top of the tab.

Getting something onto the watch list. The heart on a search result, the "..." menu at the top of a film you own, the button on a film's own page, or a press and hold on a poster in the Library. All of them are toggles, so going back the same way takes the film off again. If the film is already on your shopping list, it uses that row rather than making a second one, and taking it off the watch list afterwards leaves it on the shopping list.

The watch list is everything you want to see, whether you own it or not. Each film records who added it, where it is (NAS, Physical Media, Apple TV, or any name you type, such as Netflix), and any notes. Tap a film to open it, and book an evening from there. When you have watched it, Watched asks when and who was there, files the evening in your history, offers you the review form, and then asks whether to clear the film off the list.

The shopping list is films you want to own. Each one records how you'll buy it: 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD, Steelbook, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or a name you type. Bought puts the film in your library, asks where you have put it, and takes the row off the list.

The shopping bag on any watch-list film puts it on the shopping list as well, so a film you are going to buy is still a film you are planning to watch. Only the library's owner decides what goes on the shopping list, though everyone can see it.

Swipe a row left to remove it, right to put the film in your library. Tap Reorder to drag either list into the order you want, and use the menu above the list to see only what one person has added.

Sharing your library

Settings → Share Library sends an invite link. Whoever accepts sees the same library, bookings, lists and history as you, on their own phone, and writes their own reviews under their own name.

Your own second device doesn't need an invite. Anything signed into the same Apple ID already shares a library, so it'll arrive on its own. Sending yourself an invite doesn't just do nothing; it stops your library loading on that device and looks exactly like sync being broken.

Who can do what. The owner alone adds and removes films, moves films from a list into the library, sets a film's formats and location, and edits the cinema name, snack list and seat layout. Everything else is yours: your own name, your own seat, your own reviews, your own media server settings. Anyone can book a film night and write a review, and everyone sees those.

If you accepted someone else's invite, the people icon on the library screen opens a status rather than the owner's sharing controls: whose library you're in, who else is in it, and what you can change. Inviting people and managing the share belong to the owner, and iCloud only lets the owner do them.

When you first invite someone, the app makes sure every film already in your library is included, and tells you when it's finished. Films added before the share was created don't always get swept in by iCloud on their own, which is what left a recipient with part of a library. If you ever want to run that again, "Resync existing library to share" on the Share Library screen does it.

When someone else books something, everyone gets a notification, except whoever made the booking, who doesn't need telling.

Playing from a media server

One Row can connect to a Plex, Jellyfin or Emby server, which does two things.

Import your films. Pull your server's film list straight into the library rather than searching for each one. It's a one-off import you trigger yourself, not a constant sync, and it merges rather than duplicates. A film that's already there gains a location, it doesn't become a second copy.

You choose which libraries to import from, and each one shows how many films it holds, so a folder of test clips or demo material is easy to spot and leave unticked. If a count can't be read, the app says so rather than showing zero. That library can still be imported: the count is the thing that failed, not the library.

Press play. Start a film on a player in the house and control it from the app. Where a room has more than one player, you pick. If a particular player can't be driven, the app says so rather than offering a button that does nothing.

The address can be as short as the box's own. Type 192.168.1.50 and the app fills in the port your server normally uses: 8096 for Jellyfin and Emby, 32400 for Plex. It then shows you the full address it settled on, so if your server is somewhere else you can correct it. If you're reaching the server through a web address of your own, type that in full and it's left exactly as you wrote it.

Your server details are stored in your device's keychain and are per person, not shared with the household. If connecting fails, the app tells you which stage it failed at, so a wrong address, a rejected key and a sleeping NAS all give different answers.

If it says it can't reach the server, check local network access first. Your server is on your home network, and iOS makes an app ask permission before it can look there. This is the one failure worth knowing about in advance, because iOS doesn't report it honestly: with the permission off, it tells the app there is no connection at all, which is indistinguishable from the server being switched off. One Row works out when that's the real cause, says so, and offers an "Open Settings" button that takes you to the switch. Coming back from Settings re-tests the connection on its own.

Two things about that switch. It can quietly stop working after you've already allowed it, in which case it still looks on and the fix is to turn it off and back on again. And if you've ever tapped "Don't Allow", iOS won't ask a second time, so Settings is the only way back. Both are why the app sends you there rather than trying to ask again.

Settings

If something goes wrong

Something isn't appearing on the other phone

Check both devices are signed into iCloud with iCloud Drive on, and that the other person has accepted the share. Sync is usually seconds but can lag when a phone's been asleep. Opening the app on both ends normally settles it. Settings → Diagnostics shows the last sync error, with the time it happened.

My library vanished after I sent myself an invite

That's the one above. Don't invite your own second device. It already has your library, and accepting an invite to it stops it loading. If you've already done it, decline or remove the share on that device.

"Add to Calendar" did nothing

Check the app is allowed to add events in Settings → Privacy → Calendars. If a guest is having the trouble on the web page, make sure they're opening the link itself rather than a preview of it.

A film has no genres, so the genre filter is missing it

Genres fill themselves in in the background for films added before the app started tracking them. Leave the app open a while and they'll arrive.

The app opens on "The library couldn't be opened"

Rare, and most likely straight after an update. Restart the iPhone and open the app again, which clears it nearly every time. If it comes back, get in touch before you delete the app: everything that has synced is safe in iCloud, but anything added since is only on that phone, and a reinstall would take it too.

The film I want isn't in the search results

Search matches the title as TMDb lists it, which is usually the original release title. Try the original-language title, or add the year.

Something here wrong or missing? Tell me: [email protected]