A few years into my relationship with Samm, we got into a (friendly, innocent) disagreement over how many films we had watched together. They insisted that it couldn’t possibly be more than a hundred, while I was sure it was well over two hundred. Thankfully, I had been keeping tabs: in my Letterboxd logs, I’d used a tag— with samm —for every single one, and it took mere seconds to check the facts and reveal the truth.

Who was right? That’s not important. (Me, it was me. I was right.) What does matter is that this was simply one instance of Letterboxd tags proving invaluable.

Whether it’s winning an argument with a loved one or something far more practical, tags can improve your life (and save you money, more on that soon). Like Letterboxd itself, how you use tags is entirely up to you. Tracking who I was watching movies with started as a Samm-exclusive thing, but after a recent Journal feature about our mothers’ favorite films, I was inspired to go back through my decade of diary entries and beef up those tags to include other film-watching buddies.

This task got me nostalgic for hour-long car rides with my mom to see art-house films that weren’t playing near us, and I cracked up as I recalled watching The Witch a whopping four times in theaters with my friend Courtney. We brought different groups of friends with us every time and our love for Robert Eggers’ film only grew as we saw how much everyone else hated it.

My other primary tag usage is to track how I’m watching things. As an Rob to comment “there’s a Blu-ray of this?” The system works! Rob can experience a film he loves in better definition than ever before.

Collectors can additionally make handy use of our tags by marking any list of their collection with the owned tag. Doing so will enable you to filter through films across the site to quickly see which ones you own and which ones you don’t. I can’t tell you the number of times I save myself a rental fee by double-checking and discovering that I actually own a movie I was about to stream on iTunes—or stopped myself from purchasing something I already have! (Fully aware that I am checking my privilege, or revealing a collecting weakness—I love me a good Criterion sale.) 

The numbers can be enraging, but tags also help us be the change we want to see (in movies). Mia has essentially created a handy resource through her personal mission, so if you want to take an exploration into films specifically scored by women to see what aural influence that can take, you now know there’s a tag for that!

Another colleague, Movie in movie is one I like to keep track of to find movies referenced in other movies, like if a character is watching it.”

Since he likes to categorize “genres that we don’t detail on Letterboxd, like that tag, you’ve got three dozen other recommendations to check out.

Noir brings up another benefit of tagging, which is the way it can shine a light on community events, encouraging connection with other . Every November, for example, Noirvember lists abound, as tag the films they their quest to complete the challenge of watching great detective flicks. Follow those tags and you can see what everyone else is watching. This sort of excitement happens year-round, with Cinemonster’s annual Hooptober marathon—the tenth edition has just kicked off!—and Lise’s magnificent March Around the World month.

Want to use emojis in your tags? No sweat! We’re all set up for that, and even utilize it in some of our special Easter Eggs. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, go ahead and put a 🕯 (candle emoji) in your tags on a new diary entry for the Philippou brothers’ horror hit, Talk to Me, and keep your eyes on your Activity feed for a message from the other side. 

There are even financial motivators for getting your tags up to speed. If you’re like me and have subscriptions to practically every streaming service under the sun, tagging is here to help you get a little budgeting going on. If you tag your diary entries with how you watched the film, at the end of the month you can compare how many you watched on Netflix vs. Hulu vs. Criterion Channel, and then calculate the specific per-film cost by dividing the monthly fee against movies logged, to see if it’s worth the price (or to crow about how much you’ve saved on one-off rentals).

Along with being valuable for physical-media collectors, tagging can also be a fun tool for theater-obsessives, like his tags to keep track of which cinema he sees each film at, and in what format. A simple tag can transport you straight back to the physical place where you watched one of your favorite films with your child for the first time.

For those who have asked for the ability to sort your lists into folders, tags make that easy as pie! Simply head to the Tags section of your profile, click LISTS on the top bar and all of your folders are right there. You can utilize this to group your lists into sections, making it quite handy for someone like directors ranked.

Letterboxd is a place for you to share your love of film with others, while nourishing your own cinematic appetite. Tagging is just one of our many tools that can help facilitate that, whether it’s giving you an even more personalized diary of your many filmgoing adventures or another way to seek out recommendations for the next title to add to your watchlist.

Or, for like actress and comedian robert deniro if you see this i'm free friday night and sunday till 6 or so for Heat. Shoot your shot, Ayo. That’s what the tags are for.