Build your own Game Pass backlog tracker without writing a line of code
Other By TXH - November 5, 2026 Our HubsGame Pass adds new games every month and takes others away on a schedule that’s easy to miss. Most players keep their backlog in their head, in a phone note or in a…
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November 5, 2026Our Hubs
Game Pass adds new games every month and takes others away on a schedule that’s easy to miss. Most players keep their backlog in their head, in a phone note or in a screenshot of a monthly roundup, and none of those will warn you that the 40-hour RPG you were saving for Christmas has a departure date.
A personal tracker fixes that, and you don’t need to write code to make one. AI app builders turn a few lines of plain English into a working web app, and the free tier of the builder linked here hands out five build credits a day, capped at 30 a month. That covers a first version. If you want your own domain name or more room to tinker, look up Lovable coupons before paying for the $25 monthly Pro plan.
Work out what the tracker needs to remember
Before you worry about how it looks, work out what’s going in it. A tracker worth opening tells you four things at a glance: what the game is, where you’re playing it, how far in you are and when it’s leaving. Where you play matters more than you’d think. Game Pass Ultimate covers console, PC and cloud, and a game you can stream on a laptop during a lunch break is a different proposition from one that needs the Series X in the living room. Add a status field with four options (playing, paused, finished, dropped) and a rough length in hours. Five fields is plenty.
Write the first prompt, then tweak one thing at a time
Type the brief as if you were explaining it to a mate. Something like: “Build a simple web app to track my Game Pass backlog. Each game has a title, platform (console, PC or cloud), status, estimated hours and a leaving date. Sort by leaving date and highlight anything leaving in the next 14 days.” That one message is enough for the builder to produce a first version you can click around in.
From there, change one thing per message. A small tweak such as a button colour costs half a credit, while a planning message costs a full one, so ten small fixes fit inside a day’s free allowance.
Microsoft’s own introduction to vibe coding describes the approach as explaining the experience you want in everyday language and letting the AI handle the code, and it points beginners towards hobby projects and prototypes.
Sort by leaving date, then work out what’s worth buying
Xbox announces departing games ahead of time, and the moment a title you care about appears on that list, its date goes in the tracker. Sort by that column and your play order sorts itself out: the shooter that’s sticking around for another year can wait, while the story game leaving in a fortnight jumps to the top.
You know the feeling: you’re two hours from the credits, you switch on the next evening, and the game’s vanished from the Game Pass library. Once the date is in front of you, there’s time to decide whether it’s worth buying before it goes. Members on Ultimate, Game Pass for Console and PC Game Pass get a member discount of up to 20% on select library games, a perk that doesn’t apply to the Premium or Essential tiers. If the tracker shows 30 hours sunk into something that leaves next week, buying it at the member price means you can keep playing after it leaves the library.
Bring the rest of the squad in
The builder’s free and paid plans both let you share a project with up to ten invited people, which suits a regular co-op group. Your mates see the same list as you, leaving dates and all, so nobody suggests a co-op game that drops out of Game Pass before the weekend. Add a column showing who wants to play what.
Keep it a list and it’ll last
A home-made tracker works best when it stays small. Keep account details out of it: it has no business knowing your Microsoft password, and nothing it does needs one. Microsoft’s guidance on AI-built code also says a person should review it before it handles anything critical, so the tracker stays a list of games, dates and hours.
If your backlog has outgrown your free evenings, giving up one of them to build a tracker is a fair trade. The next time a game you care about gets a leaving date, you’ll spot it while there’s still time to play it.
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