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
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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.
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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.
Either you misconfigured something or you are very new to this.
Keep it up.
As for good guides: Trash-guides
They provide a very in depth set-up that works really well.
The only thing you'll need after this, is a source for the files.
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
ok, but why do I want to use this? what does it do? what is its purpose?
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I am very familiar with a decent amount of the words used in this comment.
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Maybe thats by design. Some sort of gate keeping
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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.
Ah right, that makes sense!
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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.
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Good news!!
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]
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.
+ on this. Seer has better search than many popular movies/tv sites out there.
I also submit issues through there when I'm not in a position to resolve it immediately.
I still prefer it as the only user so I don't have to switch between Radarr and Sonarr. I also find the search to be much better than either of those
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The fact it recommends popular stuff is a useful addon feature, its a good way to look at what others are watching.
Can this be used with i2p and anonymous torrenting?
This is a requesting client.
What you want is solved by torrenting (and other) clients.
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Moved from overseerr to jellyseerr. Now from jellyseerr to seerr.
That was one smooth transition! 🚀
No kidding! Copy and paste the contents of the previous container to a new directory for the new container, sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /path/to/new/directory, docker pull the new image, and Bob's your uncle. I'm so relieved I didn't have to reconfigure all the *arr integrations and whatnot within the web GUI all over again
I just changed my compose reference to update the volume and base image. Worked a treat.
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yea that would have been a pain indeed! I feared that too, pleasantly surprised now 😁
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