You can know exactly where you stopped in every webtoon you read, across every app, in one sitting. Here’s the move: keep one row per series with five columns — Series, Unit, Latest release, Where I am, and Minutes per unit.
If you track your place in your head, the head eventually loses. Follow six weekly series across three apps, add a season break or two, and within a month you are opening an episode you already read, or skipping one you didn’t. The Webtoon & Light-Novel Tracker is a spreadsheet built to fix exactly that, and it does the math for you. But the method below works with any blank sheet.
Why webtoons are hard to keep track of
Webtoons are hard to track because the finish line keeps moving. A webtoon is usually released one episode a week on a fixed weekday, so the question is never “how much is left?” but “how far behind am I?”
Three things make it worse:
- Your place lives inside each app. Each app remembers your place inside that app, and nowhere else.
- Breaks erase your memory. A series that goes quiet for three months comes back to a reader who has no idea whether they finished episode 61 or 64.
- The units don’t match. Webtoons count episodes, web novels count chapters, light novels count volumes. “Twenty behind” means something different on each one.
The five columns every webtoon tracker needs
A webtoon tracker is a list with one row per series and five columns you type in. Everything else is optional.
| Column | What it records | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Series | The title, plus the app you read it on | Title, app name |
| Unit | What the series is counted in | Episodes |
| Latest release | The newest one out | 84 |
| Where I am | The last one you finished | 71 |
| Minutes per unit | How long one takes you to read | 5 |
The two columns people skip are Unit and Minutes per unit, and they are the ones that make the list useful. With them, “13 episodes behind” becomes “about an hour”, which is a thing you can decide to do tonight.
How to set up a webtoon tracker
- List every series you have started. Open every reading app you use and write down every series you have started and not dropped. One row each, with the app you read it on.
- Fill in the Unit. Write down whether the series is counted in episodes, chapters, volumes or parts.
- Fill in Latest release and Where I am. Copy the latest release number from the app, then the number of the last one you finished.
- Fill in Minutes per unit. Time the next one you read in each series, or the next new release if you are caught up. Until you have, estimate: a webtoon episode usually takes a few minutes, a novel chapter longer.
- Add two calculated columns. Beside the five, add Behind, which subtracts Where I am from Latest release, and Hours, which multiplies Behind by Minutes per unit and divides by 60.
With the five columns in A to E, put Behind in F and Hours in G. In row 2 that is =C2-D2 and =F2*E2/60. Copy them down.
Then keep one habit: update Where I am the moment you stop reading, not later. Ten seconds at the end of a session is what keeps the list honest.
If you would rather not build it, the free Webtoon & Light-Novel Caught-Up Starter is a ready-made one-tab version: it works out the hours and a total for you, and opens on example rows. Clear just the cells you type in, not whole rows, since its calculated columns sit between them.
What to do when you are behind on a series
When you are behind on several series, sort by Hours, not by how many episodes you are behind, and read the smallest number first.
Ninety-six chapters of a web novel can be a full weekend, while twenty episodes of a webtoon can be one evening. The raw counts point you the wrong way; the hours don’t. (Why the units never line up is laid out in what is a webtoon, and how it differs from manhwa and manga.)
Bonus level: update days, breaks and unlocks
Once the five columns are a habit, three more are worth adding:
- Update day. The weekday a series releases. Now you know which apps are worth opening on a Tuesday.
- Status. Reading, on break, or on hiatus. A season break is planned and announced in advance; a hiatus isn’t.
- What you paid. Fast passes and coin packs add up quietly. Divide the cost by the hours of reading it bought, and you can see which habit is expensive.
This is the point where a blank sheet starts needing more formulas. The Webtoon & Light-Novel Tracker already has them: a catch-up queue ranked by hours, a reading pace worked out from your own session log, a drop-day grid for the week, and an unlock ledger that prices every coin pack per hour read. If you are juggling anime too, anime and manga tracking for completionists covers the same problem from the watching side.
Common questions about tracking webtoons
Can I track manhwa, manga and light novels in the same list?
Yes — that is what the Unit and Minutes per unit columns are for. Once every row carries its own unit and reading time, a manga counted in chapters and a light novel counted in volumes sit on the same scale.
Don’t reading apps already track this?
Each app remembers your place inside that app, and nowhere else. If you read on more than one, or a series moves apps, or you switch to a physical volume, the app’s memory stops helping.
Own the list, not just the app
Apps come and go and series get moved; a list in your own file stays put. Start with the five columns tonight, and when you want the math done for you, the Webtoon & Light-Novel Tracker opens in Excel and Google Sheets. You buy it once, and there’s no subscription.
