Spotify Wrapped-style annual roundups have spread to several apps, offering an overview of your activity for the past 12 months. However, some notable tools still lack this feature, and if they introduced a yearly roundup, I’d be absolutely thrilled.
1 YouTube
With over two billion monthly active users, I’ve always found it surprising that YouTube doesn’t have a yearly roundup feature. This is even more so when YouTube Music has seasonal recaps.
I use YouTube to learn more about different topics, and in the past, I’ve also used it for sports highlights. Knowing what my watching behaviors were like over the year would, in my opinion, be very interesting; going through your watch history doesn’t have the same effect.
Besides being curious about my yearly YouTube watching habits, I would also find a YouTube yearly roundup genuinely useful. For example, if you’re trying to cut down your content consumption or waste less time on social media, you could use these metrics to determine where you should be more restrictive.
2 Instagram
I don’t use Instagram anywhere near as much as I used to, but I would still be interested to view my app usage over the year. You can see which accounts you’ve interacted with the most and the least when you go onto your following list, but this isn’t just compiled over the course of a single year.
It would be fascinating, for example, to see which accounts’ posts you’ve liked the most. Moreover, I’d find it interesting to know what my most-liked post and Reel were—along with the types of accounts I’m more likely to interact with.
Instagram is already my favorite social media site, but I would rather see this implemented than features like Notes. The latter is one of many ways that social media apps are becoming too bloated.
3 TV Streaming Services
We see plenty of music streaming services with yearly roundups, with Spotify Wrapped being the most obvious one. You can even view your old Spotify Wrapped playlists. I think it would be entirely logical if a TV streaming service like Netflix or Disney+ introduced a similar feature.
Netflix’s yearly roundup would work similarly to Spotify’s. I’d like it to show the genres you like the most, along with your total watch hours. It would also be cool if you could see how you ranked compared to other service users.
While many TV streaming services don’t have the same social features as Spotify, I’d also be interested to see how my statistics compare to those of my friends. You could even find ways to increase your viewing hours in the same way that you can boost listening hours to win Spotify Wrapped.
4 Todoist
Todoist is one of my all-time favorite to-do list apps. It also has the most gamified interface, and for this reason, I’m surprised you don’t have a yearly roundup. Well, at least you don’t anymore.
Todoist used to have an annual roundup but has since pulled the feature. As Doist CMO Brenna Loury said on X (Twitter), creating these kinds of features requires significant resources. The developers also need to spend a lot of time on making these roundups.
When Todoist had its yearly review, you could see how many tasks you completed compared to other users. Moreover, the app showed you the time of day you ticked off the most assignments. The roundup showed you how many tasks you completed on average per day, week, and month.
I’d also love for Todoist to bring back its feature that shows you how productive you were through different points in the year. I don’t know if this would be possible, but it’d be interesting to see which projects of yours required the most tasks to be ticked off as well.
5 Instant Messaging Apps
Have you ever wondered who you send the most messages to each year and when you’re the most active in WhatsApp, Messenger, iMessage, or your app of choice? I have, and I would be really interested in seeing what my ordinary statistics are like.
I would use protocols similar to those of Todoist here. I’d like to know who I received the most messages from, and who I responded to the most. Moreover, it’d be interesting to see what my message-sending frequency was throughout the year.
I’d also like to see when I was the most active in my messaging app. Like YouTube, this would be great for identifying trends and also to work on cutting down my screen time if this was an issue. Email clients could do this, too, and these statistics could help reduce stress and build healthy email habits.
6 My Banking App
I’ve had to re-learn all the good lessons I learned about personal finance, and tracking how much I spend has been one of the most important factors. You can use budgeting apps that are cheaper than YNAB, but seeing a spending roundup would be good for many people’s spending literacy.
I’d like to know how much money I’ve spent over the year, and more importantly, this roundup would show which categories you spent the most on. The roundup would also include which companies you were the most loyal to.
Some banking apps, such as Revolut, offer a yearly review. However, I only use Revolut for traveling. As a result, I’d like to see a similar feature included in my everyday banking app.
7 Notion
I probably use Notion more than any other app. It has plenty of features to keep overwhelming task lists in check, and I also like how easy it is to type notes. Notion has a place in my daily work tasks, but it’s also an excellent tool for organizing my personal life and planning out my goals.
Since I use Notion for many things, it would be cool to see a yearly roundup showing what I spent the most time on. I’d be interested to know how many new pages I created, the number of hours I spent in Notion, and which workspaces I used the most.
It would also be cool to see more niche aspects, like which emojis were my most popular. This would nicely complement Notion’s position as being one of the best apps for a personal yearly review.
Yearly roundups have become more commonplace, but many interesting apps still don’t use them. Since this requires a lot of data and resources, I’m not too surprised. Nonetheless, I’m hopeful that more of my favorite tools will introduce annual roundup features before too long.
