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98 Points

Monday, April 13th, 2026

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Show notes in Advanced Search results

When browsing your Watchlist you can see the notes at a glance that you left for individual entries. The problem? The regular Watchlist view is very limited. For example, it doesn't let you exclude genres. This problem is solved by using Advanced Search and adding your Watchlist as a source, e.g.:https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?genres=comedy,!animation&lists=watchlist

But here's the problem: those movie notes I talked about earlier? Gone. Not a thing in Advanced Search results.

So the way things are currently is you either get powerful filtering or you get your notes. A subpar experience in either case. To aid that, I suggest showing notes in Advanced Search results.

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Champion

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4 days ago

While I agree with you and have upvoted your idea, your example can actually be achieved on your Watchlist page.

The big blue down-arrow near the top of the Watchlist page has filters, including genres. By selecting both genres, viewing the results, but then modifying the url to include a "!" immediately before the 2nd genre, you get properly filtered result, including the notes for each title.

3 Messages

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98 Points

I did try that before posting the idea but it didn't work. Just to make sure, should the final URL look something like this? https://www.imdb.com/user/p.blabla123/watchlist/?genres=comedy%2C!animation

For me, that just lists all the Comedy entries in the Watchlist, Animation included.

(edited)

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5.1K Messages

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Interesting. I've confirmed that the ! just makes it ignore that genre.

I wonder if that's intended. I thought it would remove that parameter if it wasn't valid.

For instance, if I start with this a second parameter (rather than a second value for the same parameter):

https://www.imdb.com/user/yadayada/watchlist/?genres=comedy&title_type=tv_series

and then insert the ! before "tv_series" (or before "title_type"), it comes back with

https://www.imdb.com/user/yadayada/watchlist/?genres=comedy

But this second example suggests the ! operator is not supported on the Watchlist. Nor on custom lists according to what I just tried.

Oh well.

Your Idea would be the better solution, since ATS has more options than the Filters on lists.

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13.3K Points

Confirmed OPs and bderoes's experiment, the "not" (!) operator does not work on Watchlists.

Employee

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42 Messages

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486 Points

3 days ago

Hello @jackiej,

Thank you for the feedback. 

Currently, the notes on your watchlist will not appear in the advance search results. However, this is an interesting suggestion so I will move your post to an idea, so other users can vote on it and our staff can track your suggestion. I also passed the commends on your post and the work around the other users suggested to our tech team to make sure they are aware of this. if they have more insight in this matter i will let you know.