Sonarr – General Configuration Guide

Purpose: Sonarr manages automated TV series acquisition and lifecycle management in this environment. The goal is not cinephile perfection or archival remuxes, but efficient, reliable, highly watchable media that scales cleanly across large libraries.

This environment prioritizes:

• Reasonable file sizes
• Broad playback compatibility
• Minimal manual intervention
• Predictable automation behavior

High quality is important — excess is not.

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Sonarr is installed natively on the Automation / Acquisition VM.

• Installed from official Sonarr repositories
• Runs as a dedicated service user
• Integrated with Prowlarr for indexers
• Integrated with qBittorrent for downloads

Containerization is intentionally avoided to keep filesystem paths simple and predictable.

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Enable:

• Rename Episodes
• Replace Illegal Characters
• Episode Title Required: Always
• Analyse Video Files
• Use Hardlinks Instead of Copy
• Propers and Repacks: Prefer and Upgrade
• Rescan Series Folder After Refresh: Always
• Unmonitor Deleted Episodes

Disable:

• Create Empty Series Folders
• Delete Empty Folders
• Import Extra Files
• Skip Free Space Check

Minimum Free Space:

• 100 MB

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All naming formats are intentionally simple and Plex-safe.

Standard Episodes: {Series Title} - {Air-Date} - {Episode Title} {Quality Full}
Daily Episodes: {Series Title} - {Air-Date} - {Episode Title} {Quality Full}
Anime Episodes: {Series Title} - S{season:00}E{episode:00} - {Episode Title} {Quality Full}

Series Folder: {Series Title} ({Series Year})
Season Folder: Season {season}
Specials Folder: Specials

Multi-Episode Style: Prefixed Range

This structure ensures:

• Plex compatibility
• Easy human readability
• Safe upgrades and replacements

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This environment explicitly avoids:

• Remuxes
• Disc images
• Full UHD pipelines
• Upscaled or padded releases

A clean 1080p WEB or Bluray encode is the practical upper bound.

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Create ONE profile only. Remove all others.

Profile Name:

• All Acceptable

Upgrades:

• Enabled
• Upgrade Until: HDTV-1080p

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These limits are critical to enforcing efficiency.

see All 4K and Remux qualities are effectively blocked by both quality disablement and custom format penalties.

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Scoring is based on information from TRaSH Guides, though the scores are intentionally modified to fit our use case in lieu of building archive quality libraries.

Positive Scores:

• WEB Tier 01: 1000
• WEB Tier 02: 750
• WEB Tier 03: 500
• WEB Scene: 400
• Repack v3: 100
• Repack v2: 75
• Repack / Proper: 50

Negative / Blocked Scores:

• LQ: -100
• LQ (Release Title): -100
• BR-DISK: -10000
• Extras: -10000
• Upscaled: -10000

Minimum Custom Format Score:

• 500

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Single hard-block release profile:

• Name: Hard Block
• Enabled: Yes
• Must Not Contain: MeGusta
• Indexer: Any

This acts as a final safety net against known low-quality encodes.

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Sonarr does not manage indexers directly.

• All indexers are provided by Prowlarr
• Jackett supplements unsupported edge cases
• Sonarr indexer logic remains minimal by design

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qBittorrent is recommended.

Completed Download Handling:

• Enable: Yes
• Redownload Failed: Yes
• Redownload Failed (Interactive): Yes

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• Unmanic is responsible for post-download optimization.
• Size limits and scoring are intentional, not conservative.
• This configuration is designed to run unattended for long periods.

If Sonarr is drawing your attention frequently, something upstream is misconfigured.

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This page documents a real-world, production Sonarr configuration, not a theoretical ideal.