News & updates
It’s August 30, so here’s the CLZ Newsletter for August 2025.
We started the month with the promised update for the CLZ Comics mobile app, in which we take the most popular feature, Adding Comics by Scanning Covers, to the next level.
For the rest of the month, most of the dev team (Pim, Bernard, Michiel and AJ) have been working on the upcoming updates for CLZ Movies, both mobile and web.
It started out as a relatively small update in which we would add some new fields (just like we did for the books and music apps recently). However, the update has grown into a huge major upgrade, with several big new features that have been on our “to do” list for many years.
It will bring: editable episode lists, add your own youtube trailers, a full watch history with multiple watch dates, and more! Check out the Sneak Preview below (with screenshots!).
Finally, lead developer Sven is preparing for the biggest CLZ Web project in recent years. Something users have been requesting for ages. But also a project we have been procrastinating for ages too, if only for the size and complexity. But it is finally going to happen this year.
I can’t tell you what it is yet, but if you have been with us for a while, you can probably guess what it is :-).
The topics today:
- CLZ Comics 10.3 (mobile): Easier and faster Adding by Cover!
- Sneak Preview: CLZ Movies updates (web and mobile) with many new fields
CLZ Comics 10.3 (mobile): Easier and faster Adding by Cover!
In December 2024, we introduced a cool new way to add comics to your app: just scan the cover! No more need to scan the barcode, no more need to find series by title and/or issue number… Just take a picture of the cover and the app shows you possible matches.
This month it was time for the next step. Let’s make this feature even faster and easier!
Here’s what’s new in today’s version 10.3 update:
- Easier and quicker match selection
- New queue mode for adding in batch
Easier and quicker match selection
The main improvement of this update is in the match selection screen. That is, the screen that shows after you take a picture of the cover, where you select your comic from a screen of possible matches. One small annoyance of this screen, in our opinion, was the “Confirm ..” popup after tapping your match. It felt a bit unnecessary, one tap too many.
So we sat down and re-designed this screen from scratch.
We flipped it up-side-down, with the possible matches now showing at the top, in a horizontal scroller, and the selected match showing full-width at the bottom, with a big cover and full issue details.
Tap the Add to Collection button at the bottom right to immediately proceed to the Pre-fill screen. One step less for every comic you add!
New queue mode for adding in batch
When we introduced the Add by Cover feature last year, we designed it as a one-by-one process, without a queue. Unlike the Add By Barcode feature, which always uses a queue. Our reasoning behind this: when scanning covers you have to manually select a match in most cases, so queuing would never be as quick and seamless as when scanning barcodes.
But we kept receiving requests for a Queue Mode, so here it is!
The add to queue is really quick, no confirmation popups whatsoever, just scan, add to queue, scan, add to queue… Then when done scanning, go to the queue and add all queued issues in one go, going through the Pre-fill screen just once.
Of course, using the queue is optional, you can still use the Cover Scanner to add your comics one by one!
Check out some Cover Scan screenshots here
Sneak preview: CLZ Movies updates with new fields
As explained above, this has turned out to be a bigger project than planned. Not because we ran into problems, but simply because we decided to *make* it bigger 🙂
It started out as a relatively small update in which we would add some new fields, but by now, the update has grown into a huge major upgrade, with several big new features that have been on our “to do” list for many years.
In the meantime, the Web software is almost ready, with the mobile app nearing completion too. Still have a lot of tweaking and testing to do though.
Here’s what will be new for both mobile and web:
- Editable episode lists for TV Series! Add or edit episodes, set titles, episode numbers, runtimes, first airdates.
- Add Discs to your movies, set their Title and separate episodes by Disc.
- Extra fields for Box Sets: Purchase Price, Date and Store.
- HDR field will allow multiple values, e.g. HDR10 *and* Dolby Vision.
- Watch history: track multiple viewing dates
- Add your own youtube trailer links
Check out a Sneak Preview of CLZ Movies Web here!
Enjoy!