I hate how so many of the arr apps don't describe what they do in a way that people who don't already know can understand.
Even the tutorials and guides are frustratingly vague.
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
377 points (98.0% liked)
Selfhosted
56658 readers
416 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
-
No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I hate how fragmented they are. I've given up on various guides out there for 'setting up the arr stack' because of getting bogged down in since miniature detail that, IMHO, shouldn't even be a thing. I get that hosting seperate services has advantages. But the disadvantage of giving up on the whole thing because you have to sort out networking and file permission issues between the service that downloads video files over an hour long and the service that downloads video files under an hour outweighs those advantages.
Spoiler: I am deeply into the arr "ecosystem" and love the shit out of it.
I think I finally understand Linux fans. Yes it's confusing for new people, but because I'm so into the weeds on this stuff I love how much choice I have. And if one of the projects doesn't have what we want, someone makes a fork.
To point: you really only need Sonarr and Radarr. Get those set up and working how you like. I recommend the Trash Guides. Once that's working how you like, get Prowlarr for easy management of your usenet and torrent indexers. Most people should stop there.
You're not alone. It's super frustrating when things don't work and you have to search through 4 apps to figure out what is wrong. This architecture makes the whole setup brittle.
Fortunately, there are all in one alternatives to the arr stack. I found a couple, but I think Cinephage is the most mature.
You said it's the most mature, but it's only about 2 months old and coded partially with AI.
I'm interested in this but paranoid about security, and don't know how much I can trust something newish they also has some code the developer might not understand.
Oh thanks, I hadn't even noticed that. I did some research into *arr alternatives a few weeks ago. I found 3 and this one looked like it had the most features. I will look up the other two contenders again then.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Do you know how it compares to bobarr?
Ikr like... Give me a docker compose file and tell me what env vars need to be set to what. Why is it so complicated?
Completely agree. If the *arr stack had environment variables for key settings, I'm sure we'd see Compose files instead of TRaSH how-to guides. It's frustrating everything is configured in the GUI.
the service that downloads video files over an hour long and the service that downloads video files under an hour
Huh. That sounds overly complicated. I just link everything with my torrent client. Tracker (prowlarr) into media managers (sonarr/radarr) into torrent client. That's it.
I have jellyseer in there too but that's a separate service that just works. The core stack is the other paragraph.
Everything is installed in my local server using the install script, no docker.
I think avoiding containers is the way I'm going to go on my next attempt. I'll still have to put it in an lxc or a VM on my proxmox, but all in one will hopefully reduce some problems. The sonarr/radarr split was what I was referring to with the above or below an hour comment.
load more comments
(4 replies)
I'll be honest, only the first setup gave me some trouble as I was tackling docker compose too. After you gain familiarity setting up a new arr is basically copying the provided yaml service then filling in the envs with yours
I am very familiar with a decent amount of the words used in this comment.
load more comments
(3 replies)
ok, but why do I want to use this? what does it do? what is its purpose?
The arr stack is for downloading media in an automated matter, for example sonarr will scan the inderxers you give them for the series you want and automatically download them. Then you can use a service like jellyfin to watch your media
I'm aware of what the arr stack is for generally, but not with overseerr and jellyseerr
It's basically like https://thetvdb.com/ & https://www.themoviedb.org/ with buttons to auto download the media and automations on the backend to make that all happen.
Maybe thats by design. Some sort of gate keeping
I agree it took many months to figure out my arr stack and the configuration with API keys and server ip addresses. I used countless resources and guides and it didn't help. Now I can do a fresh install of jellyfin and the arr stack in less than an hour after finally figuring it out but wow was it a hard learning curve. I have paper notes trying to decode which tools does what I was so confused
Given it's a suite of tools designed specifically to download copyrighted content, why are you surprised that descriptions are coy and elusive?
Is it for downloading illegal content? i can't tell
I assume some of it is related to torrenting, but I can't tell which ones and how much. They can't all be for torrenting, right????
They're all for downloading copyrighted content or for performing auxiliary functions to downloading copyrighted content (e.g. Bazaar downloads subtitle files, which aren't copyrighted), not for torrenting specifically. You can use Usenet clients or torrent clients as backend.
there goes the opportunity to call it Joeverseerr
No idea what either of these were in the first place. Feels like it could have been worth a mention in the post.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I could have sworn I read this announcement a couple of months ago.
Yea they announced it months ago, but the first release of seerr just dropped today.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption |
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.
[Thread #98 for this comm, first seen 16th Feb 2026, 17:21] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good news!!
I’ve missed both projects. What were they? Are they like Jackett or Prowlarr?
Media requester for Plex and Jellyfin. But also tells you where things are streaming. A mix between IMDB and JustWatch.
Overseer was for Plex
Jellyseer was for Jellyfin
Now we have Seer one platform to do both.
If you just host for yourself, you don’t gain that much by using Seerr, besides having a nicer UI and you have more search filters compared to Sonarr and Radarr.
However, if you have multiple users, you benefit a lot of it. Users, which have individual user accounts, can request media. Depending on the configuration, those requests have to be accepted manually, which gives you a way to still be in control of what ends up on your server. The user then gets notified about what has happened and if the media was downloaded.
Honestly the UI is so slick even a one-user setup will benefit in my opinion. Even when not requesting media I use it extensively to look up actors and directors.
Possibly the best foss UX I've ever used.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
The fact it recommends popular stuff is a useful addon feature, its a good way to look at what others are watching.
view more: next ›