The two watches
Same machine, two different questions.
One of them needs a showtime to exist before it can start. The other exists precisely because it doesn't. Between them they cover the whole of an opening weekend.
Seat watch
For a show that's listed — and full.
- You click
- The + on a showtimeEvery time on a listing gets one, sold out or not. Click the ✓ to take it off.
- It watches
- That one showing's seat mapRead from the rendered layout, seat by seat — not from the "sold out" flag, which lags.
- How often
- 30 min to 90 secondsOn its own clock, tightening as showtime approaches. Or pin it to one interval.
- It tells you
- "F 8–13 · 6 together · ₹240"The row, the block, the price, the cinema — once per block, not once per check.
- You filter by
- Size, position, rows, price bandFour together, dead centre, not the front five rows, bestseller seats only.
- It ends
- 15 minutes after the show startsThen it stays in the list for six hours so you can see how the evening went.
Booking-opens watch
For a film you can't book at all yet.
- You click
- The bell on a filmOn BookMyShow's upcoming list, or on the film's own page on either site.
- It watches
- Your cinemas, for that filmIt asks each cinema's own listing what's playing on release day — an exact comparison.
- How often
- Every 10 minutes, once awakeAsleep until a week before release, because booking doesn't open months ahead.
- It tells you
- "Open at AMB — Telugu, IMAX"Which cinema opened and in which language, not "somewhere in your city".
- You filter by
- Cinemas, languages, screensSkip the dub you'd never watch; wait for IMAX rather than the 2D that opens first.
- It ends
- A day after releaseWhether or not it ever fired — and it covers premiere night as a separate event.
And they hand over to each other. When a booking-opens alert is about a single showtime, it carries a Watch these seats button — so the film you were waiting on becomes a seat watch in one tap, and the second half of the evening is covered by the first half of the product.
Watch one · seats
You don't want a seat. You want those seats.
Four free seats in the front corner and four dead centre are the same price and the same row length, and only one of them is worth leaving the house for. So the filters are about size and position, not mere availability — per show, or as a default for all of them.
Friday, 6:40 pm
Your friends land on a Sunday plan. You open the 9:45 IMAX show and every seat worth having is grey. Normally that's the end of it — or you spend the evening refreshing a page in a tab you keep forgetting about.
Instead you click the + on the greyed-out chip and close the tab. At 8:12 pm your laptop buzzes: row F, six together, ₹240. You tap the alert, the seat map is already open, you book normally.
- Seats together
- How many free seats side by side, with no aisle in between. Two of you, or six.
- Where in the hall
- Anywhere, the middle half, or dead centre.
- Rows to skip at the front
- The first few rows, where you spend the film looking up at a wall.
- Rows
- The ones you'd actually sit in —
F-K, orH, J. Ranges follow the hall's own row order, soF-Kin a hall that skips I means the six rows that are really there. - Bestseller seats only
- The ones the site marks as its best, which cost no extra. They're counted and marked ⭐.
- This show's own pace
- Leave it on auto, or pin one show to a fixed interval.
A show tonight is watched hard. One next week is barely touched.
Held-back seats come back late, so that's where the effort goes. Every interval is editable; nothing ever checks more than once a minute, whatever you type in the box.
Position comes from the drawn layout rather than from seat numbers, because seat numbers lie: a row numbered 24 down to 01 with no gap can still be two blocks with an aisle between them.
Sold-out shows get the button too
They're the ones worth using it on. And a listing's own "sold out" flag isn't reliable — shows marked sold out have had free seats on the seat map. So availability is read from the layout itself, every time, with no shortcut in front of it.
The popup draws what it found
Pale grey taken, slate blue free, green and banded for the runs that match. Plus a countdown to showtime, a bar filling toward the next check, and a line of free seats over time — which is where you can actually see a release land.
Snooze, or stop, from the alert
Snooze quiets one show for fifteen minutes without unwatching it, and the block it stayed quiet about still counts as new afterwards, so nothing gets silently swallowed.
One tap, and you're where you can act
One show at one cinema opens that seat map. One cinema with several shows opens that cinema's day. More than one cinema opens the film's listing — on whichever site the watch belongs to. You never land on a home page and start navigating.
The seat map isn't a web page
It's a canvas, and the data behind it is encrypted on the wire — so the extension reads the seats the site has actually drawn: where each one sits, whether it's free, what it costs. That's why it can tell six together from six scattered about.
It uses your own tab when you have one
If that seat map is already open in front of you, it reads your tab and no window appears at all. Otherwise a small window does the looking, because the site only draws the seat canvas when its page is visible.
Watch two · booking opens
The show you can't click yet.
The + needs a showtime to exist, and that's exactly the problem on an opening weekend: by the time a first-day show is listed, the good rows are gone. A booking-opens watch attaches to a film instead of a showing, so it can be set weeks earlier — on the upcoming list, where there's nothing to book at all.
Eleven days before release
You're scrolling the upcoming list and there it is — the one you've been waiting on since the teaser. Nothing to book, no showtimes, no date confirmed. There's a small bell on the card. You click it, pick the three cinemas you'd actually drive to, and forget about it.
Eleven days later, at 11:04 on a Tuesday morning, your phone goes: booking is open at AMB Cinemas — Telugu, IMAX. Not "somewhere in Hyderabad". That cinema, that language. You're in the queue before the group chat has found out.
Pick your cinemas — it's worth two minutes
With cinemas chosen, each check asks those cinemas' own listings what's playing on release day. That comparison is exact, and the alert names the one that opened.
Each film keeps its own picks, remembered per city — so watching something in Hyderabad and something else in Mumbai doesn't make the two collide.
Premieres and preview shows
A big film's first shows are often the night before release — benefit shows, paid previews, 1 am screenings — and they're frequently the first thing to go on sale. So the watch covers the night before too, tells you which one opened, and takes you to that day's listing rather than always to release day.
It sleeps until it matters
A film three months out isn't checked at all. The watch wakes a week before release — your call, and it always wakes before its earliest premiere — then checks every ten minutes. A film whose release date couldn't be read is never held back: not knowing when it opens is a reason to start early, not late.
One film, many codes
A film can carry three different listing codes for the same language, and which one goes on sale isn't knowable in advance. The watch matches on the group all of them share, so it can't miss the one that actually opens — and each language gets its own alert as it opens.
Only the language and screen you want
Set a film to alert for Telugu but not the Hindi dub, or for IMAX but not the 2D that opens first. Before a film has listed any screens, it offers kinds of screen instead — Dolby Cinema, EPIQ, HDR by Barco — so the filter works before there's anything to read.
Honest about not knowing
With no cinemas chosen there's no exact check available, only the film's own page — so it reports three states, not two: open, not yet, and can't tell. A detector that quietly read "no" would go silent through the one moment it exists for.
Already-selling films can be watched too: put a bell on something that's partly on sale and the first check quietly latches what's already open, then tells you only about what opens next — the extra language, the extra cinema, the premiere.
Watch: nine hours late, from a friendBoth counters
The same cinema sells the same show on two sites — and doesn't hold back the same seats.
A show that reads sold out on one can have a row free on the other. So the same showing is worth watching on both, each watch says which site it belongs to in words, and every alert opens the app it came from. Both watches work on both sites.
Worth knowing about District
District publishes no upcoming list anywhere — no Coming Soon section, nothing under any genre. A film that isn't selling yet appears in no listing on the site at all, and its search box is the only route to the page. So on District the bell lives on the film's own page and you get there by searching for it. That isn't a gap in the extension; it's how the site works, and the demo video shows the search because otherwise you'd never find it.
Away from the desk
You're at the mall. Your laptop is at home. That's fine.
Share a film from the BookMyShow or District app straight to your own Telegram bot — the share button that's already in both apps. The bot asks the things a shared link never carries, and the watch starts. It works for both kinds: share a film that's on sale and it asks which showtime; share one that isn't and it starts a booking-opens watch.
Those questions aren't a form in front of the feature — they are the feature. Neither app will share a showtime; their share sheets carry the film and nothing finer. The same film answered with 54 cinemas in Telugu and 2 in Hindi.
The bot is yours
You make it with Telegram's @BotFather in about a minute. There's no service in the middle: the token sits in your own browser and the messages go from your Chrome to Telegram. Nobody has to trust us with anything, because we're not there.
Or tell the whole group
A Telegram chat id can be a group as easily as a person, so one machine watches and six friends hear about it — each alert carrying a tappable Book now. Fair warning: everyone is told at the same moment, and on a first-day scramble that means racing each other.
Prefer no bot at all?
A webhook works instead — a Discord channel or an ntfy.sh topic works
as-is, and anything else gets plain JSON. Chrome asks permission for that one address,
so the extension never holds network access it isn't using.
Desktop alone is fine too
None of this is required. Out of the box it's a desktop notification and a count on the toolbar icon, and that's the whole setup.
When nothing happens
Silence you can explain.
A watcher can't say "I'm not running" while it isn't running. So it says it afterwards:
how long nothing ran, how many checks were missed, and whether a show started meanwhile.
Ask any time with /status.
The laptop slept
Reported once it's over, in the popup and unprompted in Telegram. This is the commonest reason it looks broken, and it's now the one thing it can prove.
A filter is holding out
If seats are selling but none of them are what you asked for, it says so once — naming what's on sale and what the watch is waiting for.
Nothing has opened
The plainest answer, and the countdown and check bar show it without a word: it's checking, and there's been nothing to report.
The rest of it
Small things you'd otherwise find out later.
A badge that counts
The toolbar icon shows how many matching blocks are open right now across every watch — green when something's there, a grey dot when it's watching quietly.
Check now
Forces an immediate pass on everything, including shows that have retired.
Pause
Stops the schedule — both watches — without losing a single setting.
Free seats over time
A line under the hall, once there are a few readings. Its x axis is elapsed time, so the points bunch up as checks tighten near showtime, and a release shows as the line jumping.
Aisles are real
Adjacency comes from seat coordinates on the canvas, so an aisle breaks a run. Nothing ever promises you a block that a walkway runs through.
Retired shows linger
A show that has started stays in the list for six hours, then clears itself out with its history.
Two shows, one minute
One cinema can run the same film at the same minute on two screens. Each button claims its own session, and a chip that can't be resolved gets no button rather than the wrong one.
Every interval is yours
All five bands of the seat ladder, the booking-opens interval, how early a watch wakes, and how many nights before release to cover.
Formats named in the alert
Saved per listing, so an alert can say Telugu · EPIQ rather than just naming the film.
Works signed out
Booking-opens checks carry nothing that identifies you and open no window at all — they're plain requests with credentials omitted.
Reduced motion honoured
In the extension as well as on this page. Focus stays visible, and nothing loads from a remote host.
1,728 tests
Run offline, with no browser and no network — including the rule that a "sold out" flag is never trusted and that your account details are never read.
Watch it work
Videos
Start with the 90-second explainer; the walkthrough under it shows every panel. The three after those are mine, recorded on an earlier version — everything they show still works exactly that way; what has been added since is in the walkthrough. A new one in my own voice is on its way.
Being straight with you
What it will never do.
It doesn't book anything
It doesn't pick seats, hold them, queue for them, or touch your payment details. It watches, and it tells you. You open the link and book normally, as yourself.
Chrome has to be awake
The checks run in your own browser on your own machine. A laptop asleep at 8 pm watches nothing — which is the single most common reason it seems to do nothing, so the settings page tells you how to keep the machine up, and the extension tells you afterwards when it missed a spell.
Seat checks need a visible window
The seat map is only drawn when its page is on screen, so seat checks run in a small window in the corner that you can bury behind everything else but shouldn't minimise. Booking-opens checks have no such requirement — they need no window at all.
It can't create seats
If a show genuinely sells out and nothing is ever released, you'll get no alert, because there was nothing to alert about. What it removes is the refreshing, not the arithmetic of a full house.
It isn't affiliated with either site
Not with BookMyShow, not with District. It reads the pages you're already allowed to read, in the browser you're already signed into, at a pace no tighter than a person clicking refresh.
Laptop shut? · District and BookMyShow
@FDFSAlertsBot keeps watching from a server.
The extension checks from your own browser, so it stops when your laptop sleeps. The Telegram bot does the same District checks — booking opening, seats coming free — from a server, all day and all night. Share a film from the District app to @FDFSAlertsBot. Your first film is free.
BookMyShow works too, with limits, because BookMyShow caps how often one server may ask: Hyderabad only, booking opening only (seats stay in the extension), up to 6 theatres you pick, release day, checked about every 10 minutes. The server watches 20 theatre-days at a time across everyone. Joining a theatre someone already watches is always possible; when all 20 are taken, the bot tells you which ones you can join.
- Send
/accountto the bot. It answers with your account code, likeFDFS-7KQ2X. - Pick a pack above and enter that code on the payment page. UPI, cards and net banking all work.
- The bot tells you when the credits arrive — usually within a few minutes.
One credit is one film in one city: its booking-opens alerts and seat watches on any of its shows. Credits don't expire. Payments are processed by Razorpay and show as SignalSky, Seat Watch's parent product, on the payment screen and your statement. Prices include taxes. All sales are final — see refunds, terms and what the bot keeps. A BookMyShow film takes its own credit, separate from the same film on District. For any other city, or BookMyShow seats, use the free extension.
Privacy
There is no server behind the extension.
Nobody operates a service behind the extension, so there's nowhere for your data to be collected or breached. Your watch list lives in your own browser's storage and uninstalling deletes it. (The optional Telegram bot above is different — it runs on a server, and this page lists everything it keeps.)
No account
Nothing to sign up for, nothing to log into, no email asked for.
No browsing history
The tabs permission — the one Chrome describes as "read your browsing history" — is deliberately not requested, and a test keeps it that way.
Your ticketing account is never read
Your name, email, phone and session token sit in the same page data as the showtimes. The code doesn't descend into those branches at all, and a test trips if anything ever touches them.
Open to read
It's a Chrome extension: the code that ships is the code that runs, and you can read all of it. The full privacy policy is one page.
Questions people actually ask
FAQ
Is this legal? Will my account get banned?
It reads pages you're already allowed to read, in your own logged-in browser, and it never books anything. It's closer to you pressing refresh than to a bot: intervals are deliberately relaxed, nothing checks more than once a minute whatever you type in the box, and checks are staggered so they never land in lockstep.
Does it work if my laptop is closed?
No. Nothing runs while the machine is asleep, and evening releases land exactly when a laptop has nodded off. Keep it plugged in and awake — the settings page has the one command for macOS and the one setting for Windows.
Can I run both watches at once?
Yes, and that's the normal way to use it: a few shows on seat watch this weekend, a few films waiting for booking to open next month, across both sites and several cities, each with its own filters and its own pace.
I set a watch and heard nothing. Is it broken?
Open the popup: it will tell you which it is. Nothing ran, because the machine slept — it says so, with how long for. Something is selling but not what you asked for — it says that too, naming what's on sale. Or it's simply checking and there's been nothing to report yet, which the countdown and the check bar show plainly.
How early can I set a booking-opens watch?
As early as the film appears on the upcoming list — months, if you like. It won't check anything until a week before release (or whatever you set), so an early bell costs nothing and can't be forgotten.
Do I need Telegram?
No. Desktop notifications work on their own with no setup at all. Telegram is for alerts that reach you away from the desk, for starting a watch from your phone, and for telling a group of friends at once.
Can I install it from my phone?
No — and no browser lets you, because Chrome on Android and iOS doesn't run
extensions at all. There's also no way to send an install from a phone to your
laptop: extensions sync between desktop Chromes signed into the same account, and a
phone isn't one of them. Copy tinyurl.com/seat-watch, open it on the
computer you'd actually leave running, and install there. After that your phone is
very much involved — that's what the Telegram half is for.
Which browsers?
Chrome, and the Chromium browsers that install from the Chrome Web Store — Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera. Not Safari, not Firefox.
What does it cost?
Nothing. There's no paid tier, no upsell and no ads — there's no server to pay for.
Next Friday's show is already half sold. Next month's isn't on sale at all.
Put a watch on each and go and do something else.
Reading this on a phone? The watching happens in Chrome on a computer.
Copy tinyurl.com/seat-watch and open it there.