Sonarr on QNAP

Overview

• 1Automatically download TV-Series with Sonarr
• 2Pro's and Con's versus SickBeard and SickRage
• Sonarr Pro's
• Sonarr Con's
• 3Step 1 - Files we Need to install Sonarr on a QNAP
• 4Step 2 - Installing Sonarr and Mono on your QNAP
• 5Step 3 - Start Sonarr and Initial Settings
• Update to the latest version
• Doing some initial settings
• Sonarr - Media Management Settings
• Other settings
• Sonarr - Quality Settings (optional)
• Sonarr - Defined Profiles (optional)
• Removing all profiles
• Creating your profiles
• Delay Profiles
• Sonarr - Setting the right Indexers
• Indexers
• Options
• Restrictions
• Sonarr - Download Client
• Download Client
• Priority
• Category
• NZBGet Category Settings
• Other Download Handling Options
• Sonarr - Connect or Notifications Settings
• Sonarr - Episode and TV Show Meta Data
• Sonarr - General Settings
• Sonarr - Basic User Interface settings
• 6Step 4 - Adding Existing or New TV Series
• Import Existing TV Series
• Adding New TV Series
• 7Some Additional Coolness
• Tab: Series
• Add Series (occasionally used)
• Season Pass (rarely used)
• Series Editor (rarely used)
• RSS Sync (rarely used)
• Update Library (occasionally used)
• Tab: Calendar
• Tab: Activity
• Tab: Wanted
• Tab: Settings
• Tab: System
• Tab: Donate
• Show Details

Automatically download TV-Series with Sonarr

The purpose of this article is to introduce you to Sonarr and show you how to install Sonarr on a QNAP NAS.

The sole intend of Sonarr is to download episodes of your favorite TV series, fully automatically. You could see it as your personal super PVR.

It can retrieve episodes from Usenet NZB’s or Torrents, names them properly, adds the appropriate information, thumbnails, etc, and renames and organizes your files as well. Typically, but not required, you’d use an application like Kodi or Plex to playback those downloaded episodes.

Note: Sonarr is not [yet] able to retrieve subtitles.

It’s just my opinion, but if you’re a Plex user … give Kodi a spin, you might like it better and it’s free.

In this article we only focus on a QNAP NAS installation, and since one of the packages appears to be Intel dependent (Mono), this will only work on an Intel CPU based QNAP. It’s unfortunate that QNAP still manufactures AMR based NAS devices, too often these users are left out in the cold with zero support for some of these great tools. (as far as I know!)

Anyhow: you’ll need an Intel CPU based QNAP.

Pro’s and Con’s versus SickBeard and SickRage

First of all, all 3 of these applications do a marvelous job!
And when I talk about the pro’s and con’s, then please keep in mind that a lot of these aspects are based on personal preference!

So the bottom line is personal preference … here are my personal impressions … and by the looks of it my selection would be in this order of preference:

• Sonarr
• SickRage
• SickBeard

Sonarr Pro’s

• Very nice User Interface

The first thing I noticed is how clean the User Interface looks. SickBeard and SickRage are not ugly either, but Sonarr comes a cross a little bit more elegant.

• Less Confusing

Of course, this is very personal, but with SickBear and SickRage make me search quite often where the heck “that particular option” can be found. In Sonarr this seams easier …

• Supports Torrents

SickBeard does not (at the time) support the use of Torrents, and if you like Torrents, well, then this is a nice option to have. This does not apply to SickRage!
An advantage of Torrents is that episodes seem to “live” longer on the Internet. With Copyright Trolls and the watching eye of your ISP, Torrents might not be the best choice.

• Better integration with NZBGet

Since I would use NZBGet, this can be important. It seems that integration and communication with NZBGet is just better.

• Seemingly better Queue management

Again, probably a personal thing, but I feel like Queue (wanted, backlog, searches, etc) management seems just better.

• Support seems better and more responsive

This is what I have experienced and heard all over the Internet: Support by the dev team of Sonarr is just great and fast. Unlike my experiences with SickBeard and SickRage. Then again, keep in mind that these folks do not develop this as a day time job, so we should allow them some “life” outside of Sonarr, SickBear or SickRage as well.

Sonarr Con’s

• Large Install

Well, not that I would notice much of it, but using Mono as a development tool on a QNAP is a little nuts. But that is just my opinion, and it’s solely based on the ludicrous size of Mono. When it comes to performance it most certainly can keep up with Python and such.

• Show Detection

Now, this can be personal as well, but I have the impression that for example SickRage does a slightly better job at detecting shows.

• Does not look into the past
  Unlike SickBeard and SickRage, Sonarr only looks at RSS feeds for downloads that newly became available. To hunt for missing episodes, you’ll have to manually click the magnifying glass in show details to start looking for old episodes that are still missing.

Step 1 – Files we Need to install Sonarr on a QNAP

Again: this will only work for Intel based QNAP’s!

  Please pay attention here: UNZIP the downloaded files after downloading!

Naturally we will need Sonarr … the best way to get a QNAP QPKG for that is through the QNAP forum, where you will find the most recent version. I really highly recommend getting the latest version there, here is the link: QNAP Forum Sonarr QPKG (many thanks to QNAP-Stephane for creating and maintaining the QPKG).

  Please note that the two QNAP Forum links that I’ve posted in this paragraph are a great resource for when you run into problems with either Sonarr or Mono!

Just for purpose of convenience, just incase the file magically disappears, we do offer a copy at Tweaking4All as well. This copy is not maintained by us, and therefore might be outdated by the time you read this article.

Sonarr is build using Mono, a .NET (dot NET) implementation for multiple platforms like Windows, Linux and MacOS X. I honestly have no clue why it’s developed using Mono. Anyhow, we need it, but it’s a monstrosity (in line with Microsoft tradition, so on that part it’s already doing a great job in mimicking Microsoft’s dot NET approach).

Again, we recommend strongly that you look at the QNAP Forum Mono QPKG page for the most recent version, and again we offer a not-maintained copy at Tweaking4All, just in case.

Step 2 – Installing Sonarr and Mono on your QNAP

The screenshot here are based on QTS 4.1.4, so if you have a newer QNAP OS running, things might look a little different. But as always with QNAP, the same functionality can still be found.

The first thing we should install is Mono, since Sonarr depends on it.

Go to the web-interface of your QNAP, and go to “App Center” where we click the “Install Manually” button in the upper right corner.

QNAP App Center – Install Manually

A window will popup, where we click the “Browse…” button, locate the file Mono QPKG (in this example: Qmono_4.0.4.1_x86.qpkg) and click “Open” (might be different on your operating system or web browser), and finally click “Install“.

After clicking “Install”, you will be asked to confirm that you want to install this QPKG where we click “OK” and patiently wait. It takes a while for your poor QNAP to process this huge QPKG.

QNAP Manual Mono QPKG Install

Once installation has been completed you will see a message saying “The App has been installed and is ready to use.“, click “OK“.

Normally the “Install Manually” window should remain open, if not click the “Install Manual” button again to open it.

Again click “Browse…“, now select the Sonarr file (in this example: QSonarr_1.150412.qpkg), click “Open“, and click “Install” …
Once the “The App has been installed and is ready to use.” appeared again and you clicked “OK“, click the “Close” button of the “Install a new app manually” window – we’re done installing the needed files.

QNAP Manual Sonarr QPKG Install

Allright, Mono and Sonarr are now installed on your QNAP, time to do some configuring …

Step 3 – Start Sonarr and Initial Settings

Now that we’ve installed Sonarr, you should see the Sonar “tile” in your “App Center” window, and it should be turned ON.

If not: switch it ON now. If this fails, then you might have forgotten to install Mono, or the downloaded QPKG(s) might be corrupted. Please try again.

Sonarr is running on your QNAP

Click the “Open” button to open the Sonarr web-interface, where you will be welcomed …

For future reference, the link will be http://<IP address of your QNAP>:8989/
As an example, mine is: http://192.168.1.100:8989/

Sonarr will look something like this in your browser:

First time we start Sonarr

Update to the latest version

This window is kind-a useless at this point, this is also a good point to update Sonarr to the latest version (optional but recommended).

Click “System” and click the tab “Updates“. A list with recent changes will appear, with a small button “Install this version” (if you do not see this, then you’re in luck and your Sonarr is already up-to-date.

Sonarr will download and install it’s updates and will restart Sonarr. Once restarted you can continue with this guide …

export TMPDIR=$WebShare/SONARR_CONFIG

Doing some initial settings

Click the “Settings” icon …

Sonarr – Settings button

At first the settings screen might be overwhelming, but no worries, we will go through each step.

Sonarr – Media Management Settings

After clicking on the “Settings” button, and the first tab appears: “Media Management” …

Sonarr Settings – Media Management

The first thing we will do in this screen is to make the advanced settings visible by clicking the “Advanced Settings” toggle in the upper right cornet so it says “Shown“:

Sonarr – Show Advanced Settings

Below, a screen shot of the settings I have used, but maybe it’s easier to just read the text below even though the picture is pretty large.

Sonarr – My Media Management Settings

In the section “Media Management” we have to tell Sonarr how to handle our media files, including post-processing (after a download completed), etc.

 Tip : For the now following fields, you can use the “+” button next to the field to insert predefined fields.

 Tip : Changing these fields will right away produce examples below these fields.

 Tip : If you’d like you can use my Rename My TV Series tool as well.

  Migrating from SB/SR : Match your file and folder names with the settings of SR/SB under “Post Processing” – “Episode Naming”

OK, so before we begin, my preferred file and folder format is something like this (yours can be different of course):

Name of the Show Season 01  Name of the Show – 01×01 – Episode Title . AVI

and for multiple episodes in one file (for example episode 1 and 2 have been broadcasted as one “episode”):

Name of the Show Season 01  Name of the Show – 01x01x02 – Episode Title . AVI

So let’s get crackin’ on that one. First we enable the “Rename Episodes” option by setting it to “Yes“.

Now we need to set the fields as follows:

For the other two formats, Anime and Daily episodes, which I never use, I used the following (which could be horribly wrong – up to you what format you prefer):

“Daily Episode Format” to “{Series Title} – {Air-Date} – {Episode Title}” and
“Anime Episode Format” to “{Series Title} – {season:00}x{episode:00} – {Episode Title}“.

These settings should produce a list of examples as such (just play a little with the settings and see what you’ll get):

Other settings

First of all, leave all settings as they default are, and only change the following (if you’d like to):

“Folders – Create Empty Series Folder” can be set to “Yes“.
So when you add a show, but have no episodes yet, a folder will be created.

“Skip Free Space Check” can be set to “No“, on a NAS I’d expect the file to be on the same disks for both download and storage. So your download manager should have already ran into any diskspace issues.

“Use Hardlinks instead of Copy” should be set to “No” unless you are using torrents, where Sonarr might start fumbling with a file that has not been downloaded completely yet.

“Ignore Deleted Episodes” could be set to “Yes”, but I actually intentionally leave to on “No“. This way a deleted episode will automatically be downloaded again. Up to you, how you save, watch and handle episodes.

“Download Propers” should probably be left at “Yes“. It happens that an uploaded episodes has flaws in it and that it’s being reposted, maybe a day later, without the flaws. These corrected versions are called “Proper” and you might want to have that one instead of the broken one.

“Analyze Video Files” is a neat feature that should stay on “Yes” as well, unless you notice that the CPU load is too much for your NAS. It analyses the video file, the codec, etc.

“Change File Date” is something I set to “Local Air Date” which sets the file date and timestamp to the date this episodes was aired.

“Recycling Bin” can be left blank, unless you’d like episodes that are being delete will not be deleted permanently. Might be practical, when you want a safeguard against accidental deletion of files.

I’d leave all settings under “Permissions” as they are, unless you really know what you’re doing.

When done with these settings, click the “Save” button in the upper right corner.
A short message at the bottom right will briefly popup confirming that settings have been saved.

Sonarr – Quality Settings (optional)

The next tab would be “Profiles“, but in order to use Profiles properly, we should probably first look at the “Quality” tab. The settings in quality are used to create profiles after all.

Note that this one can be a bit overwhelming in the beginning, don’t worry, most of the default settings are already good and functional. So tweaking these settings is optional.

Under the tab “Quality”, we define each named quality type based a part of the filename (of the file that we might want to download) and the file size. The latter is actually a nice feature where we can set minimum and maximum size of a file.

I’ll illustrate these settings based on one of them, SDTV, and I’ll show you the settings I have used my self.
It’s up to you if you’d like to divert from the default settings, were each file can be between 0 and 3.15Gb for a 30 minutes episode.
Since I do not want those huge files with my slow dinky Internet connection, I’ll fine tune these.

The default settings for “SDTV” is:

Sonarr – Default SDTV settings

This means that a 30 minute episode can be between zero bytes and 3.15Gb, a 60 minute episode between zero and 6.39Gb.

First problem I have with that, is those silly tiny episodes that have been compressed well below 100Mb. I don’t like those, so we’d like to avoid those. So (and you’ll need to try this out for yourself) I’m setting the minimum size for a 30 minute episode to 120Mb.

Since SDTV isn’t always the best quality, we’d like to cap it at a certain size as well. So in this case I chose that a 60 minute episode should not exceed 500Mb, since at that point, we could already get a HDTV version.

Unfortunately, we cannot manually enter these values, so we have to start playing with those tiny sliders. The closest I could get was 94.37Mb and 503.32Mb. Close enough … which results in the following:

Sonarr – My SDTV settings

Please note though that through trail and error, you might have to tweak these to your preferences.

Below the settings I finally ended up with, I might still tweak these even more in the future as they might still not be perfect, but as you can see: I like to avoid ridiculous large files. It does not only take forever to download an episode, but it also takes a lot of disk space. This is definitely one of the cool features of Sonarr compared to SB/SR.

Don’t forget to click the “Save” button (upper right corner).

Sonarr – Quality Definitions

Sonarr – Defined Profiles (optional)

Now that we have our “qualities” defined, we can actually create some profiles.

In a profile we can define which qualities are allowed, and which one is our final goal or minimum requirement.

Removing all profiles

Let’s start by removing all the profiles, which is optional, I just like to work with a clean slate.
Repeat for each profile:

Click the profile, and in the popup window click “Delete” and in the confirmation window click “Delete” again.

Creating your profiles

Now to create a profile, click the big “+” in the profile list and give your profile a name.

For my default TV-Shows, I’ll just call it “TV Shows Default“. I see this as the profile I will always, by default, use for any TV Show.
Later you could make an other one, say for a show that you really want to save in very high quality, or something like that. Or maybe you’d like a given show to be only for mobile use. Either way, the steps to create a profile is the same.

So let’s say and episode becomes available today, typically this would be SDTV, but we’d be happy with the Qualities HDTV-720p, DVD, Bluray-720p and WEBDL-720p as well. Obviously the DVD and Bluray versions will not be available at the date it’s being aired, but … but SDTV and HDTV-720p are something we do not mind watching initially.

However, for archiving we would like to have at least the HDTV-720p one (Cutoff). But … in the list we see, we need to make sure we order things the right way. In my case, I’d like the formats we use, but for archiving we can stop downloading and finding episodes once we have the 720p version. The list is ordered in such a way, that the highest listed quality is the most preferred quality.

I prefer my shows in the original language, and in my case that would be “English”.

So our profile “TV Shows Default” will download anything up to 720p, preferably in English, and will stop looking for episodes as soon as it has found at least HDTV-720p.

So let’s see what that would look like, when done click “Save“.

Sonarr – Profile example

After clicking “Save” you will see it as such in the profiles list. Here the dark blue box indicates the preferred language, gray boxes the allowed qualities and the light blue box the quality as of which we stop trying to find better quality episodes.

Sonarr – Profile example

Now if you would set “Cutoff” to “SDTV”, Sonarr will try to download anything, but will be happy if it found at least an episode in SDTV format. This can be practical in cases where you prefer small files (SDTV) but want to make sure you get those episodes anyway even though SDTV might not ever become available.

Bottom line: All these setting depend on your preferences. Do you want the highest quality, or do you have to be careful with dis space.

If you’d like, you could make multiple profiles, matching specific needs. At a later time you can assign such a profile to a TV Show, so Sonarr will use the set profile specifically for that show.

Delay Profiles

Delay Profiles, just below the defined profiles, allows you to set which protocol you prefer (Usenet or Torrents) and how many days of delay you’d like. So for example: We’d like to use Usenet only, then the default settings are already good.

Note that these settings apply to ALL profiles! It’s not specific for one or the other quality profile that we just created.

You might also change that and say: we prefer Usenet, right away as of day one. But if it cannot b found on Usenet, or downloads keep failing, then after 7 days revert to Torrents. That would look something like this (after you clicked the   icon):

Sonarr – Protocol Preferences

Note : The delay is entered in MINUTES … so number of days x 24 hours x 60 minutes per hour. So 7 days = 10,080 minutes.

Note : I cannot really recommend the use of torrents, so I’d actually use the “Only Usenet” option at the “Protocol” field.

Sonarr – Setting the right Indexers

Indexers

Indexers are services that help Sonarr (and similar applications like SickBeard, SickRage, Couch Potato) find episodes.
It’s definitely required to add at least one index service.

Keep in mind that some of these index services require a membership, some are not free, etc. Those would typically come with a so called API key. You’ll have to enter that API key in the settings of that indexer, and you find the key on the website of that indexer (after you logged in).

Please enter your preferred indexers here, I do recommend using more than one. For example “Wombles” is free and is probably one of those you should enable by default.

Note : A list of Usenet indexers can be found here and here.

Note : You can even build your own indexer, with for example Newznab, but … this is probably for the more experienced users.

Note : Torrent users should definitely add KickAss Torrents and EZTV.

Options

Under “Options” we can set things like minimum age, and retention. Retention, for Usenet, indicates how many days your Usenet provider keeps articles. These days most of them claim retention in the thousands of days, so I set this to zero (= unlimited).

The RSS interval is definitely an important one as well, which is default set to once every 15 minutes.
I’d take a higher number, as there is no need to add excessive strain on these servers.
A good number is maybe 60 minutes.

Restrictions

This section can be pretty important. It allows you to make sure certain “garbage” is not picked up.

Here we can add phrases that MUST be included, or ARE NOT ALLOWED.
For example:
I prefer English shows, so not German, Swedish, Dutch, Hebrew or French.
I hate it when subtitles are “burned in”.
I’ve had bad experiences with files that had these phrases in it: core2hd, reenc, MrLss,.FR

So this would be an example of a list of phrases that might accomplish that (add to “Must not contain“):

german, french, core2hd, dutch, swedish, reenc, MrLss, .FR., ingebakken, NL subs, nlsubs, hebrew

This works the same way for “Must Contain“.

Don’t forget to click the “Save” button!

Sonarr – Download Client

Download Client

Now that we have done some of our basic settings, time to make the link to something that actually downloads our episodes.

There are several download clients you can use with Sonarr.
The rows marked green would be my choice, and the ones marked yellow would be my second choice.
Completely up to you which one you want to use of course, Sonarr supports all of these.

Note : you can add one manager for NZB files and one for Torrent files.

As an example, we will setup NZBGet as our download manager.
NZBGet can reside on your QNAP, which I highly recommend, by installing the needed NZBGet and Python QPKG’s – see this QNAP Forum Post.

Add the download manager you wish to use by pressing the big “+” and choose “Nzbget”. A window will popup which is easy to complete.

Typically you’d only have to enter “Username” and “Password” … if NZBGet resides on the same machine (your QNAP) as Sonarr.
If NZBGet is to be found elsewhere, then I’m sure you know what you’re doing, and filling in this form will be easy as well.

Sonarr -NZBGet settings

As you might have noticed, there are 3 additional fields of interest.

Priority

“Recent Priority” is the priority given to episodes that recently have been broadcasted (in the past 14 days).
I typically want those really fast, so I’m setting this to “VeryHigh“.

“Older Priority” is used for retrieving older episodes, ie. older than 14 days. Since I’m not in a hurry with those, as they are often backlogged anyway, I set those to “Normal“.

Category

The field “Category” I have set to “tv“.

This is a category defined in NZBGet! So make sure it matches perfectly!
So make sure it exists there and make sure the post processing script is set right.

 Migrating from SB/SR – With SB/SR you’ve used a category as well. It’s best to define a NEW category for Sonarr, otherwise the scripts will get confused.

NZBGet Category Settings

To create this category, in NZBGet, go to NZBGet, and go to “Settings”  “Categories“. Click the “Add Category” button. The new category will be added at the bottom.

Enter the desired name in the “Name” field, for example “tv”, “TV”, “SonarrTV”, or which ever you like. Just make sure to enter that exact same name in Sonarr!

Leave “PostScript” field EMPTY – Sonarr handles this automatically.

Finally click the “Save all changes” button in the lower left corner of NZBGet. NZBGet will restart.

NZBGet – A category for Sonarr

Other Download Handling Options

After adding a download client, we need to verify or set a few additional settings:

“Completed Download Handling” should be Enabled (Yes), so Sonarr handless fresh downloads.

The “Remove” option should be set to “No“, otherwise they’d be removed from the download client history. Not sure how and what, but we will stick with the default setting, which happens to be “No”.

“Failed Download Handling” should have “Redownload” set to “Yes“, so Sonarr looks for another version in case the download failed, and “Remove” should be set to “Yes” as well, so failed downloads get cleaned up.

“Drone Factory Options” is a function that scans content of a given folder to see of anything in that folder might be a episode we would like to have. This download typically has not been handled by Sonarr or your download client, unless it’s a result of one of the “Blackhole” options.
Here we enter a path to a directory in the field “Drone Factory” which we would use to dump these files in – I recommend this to be a dedicated directory for this purpose only.

 Caution: this may not be any of the directories used by your Usenet or Torrent download client, or the directory where the TV shows are stored!

To make Sonarr scan frequently, we should enter an interval at “Drone Factory Interval“. I’ve set mine to every 15 minutes, which is plenty fast. Do no take a too low number as it might interfere and/or cause unneeded CPU loads on your QNAP.

Sonarr – Connect or Notifications Settings

Under the tab “Connect” we can set all kinds of ways that Sonarr can notify us about:

• When a new episode has been found
• When a new episode has been downloaded
• When a better version of an episode has been downloaded

Depending on the type of notification, you can tell for example XBMC/Kodi to show a notification or update their Library.

Sonarr – Episode and TV Show Meta Data

Sonarr does not just rename your TV episodes, it can also add meta data (data about the data).
This means it can add thumbnails, and TV Show and Episode information automatically.

Check which of the devices you have and enable it. If unsure, just pick XBMC and enable it.

Sonarr – General Settings

Be careful what you do here, and make sure to take good note of changes you make.

On this tab we can change things like port number, login method, log level, etc.
When you’re just starting: leave all as is. For now.

If you’d like you can change the “Security” settings, but honestly: get familiar with Sonarr first.

Sonarr – Basic User Interface settings

Under “UI” you can set all kinds of basic UI settings like date and time formats – which should be pretty self explanatory.

Step 4 – Adding Existing or New TV Series

Now that we have done some of the basic settings, time to add TV Series.

Let’s start by clicking the “Series” button (upper left):

Series button

We will be show the initial screen again, which we saw when we opened Sonarr for the first time.

Click the “+ Add Series” button.

Note : It is said, that Sonarr by default skips the “Specials”.

You must be new here …

After clicking “+ Add Series” we see a screen that allows us to manually add a show, or import existing show(s).

Sonarr Import Existing or Add New Show

Import Existing TV Series

If you’ve used something like SickBeard or SickRage before, or if you manually maintained your TV Series, then you’d like to start with importing your existing TV Series.

Click the “Import existing series on disk” button. A file dialog will open asking you to point to the directory that holds all your TS Shows.

Note that on a QNAP, you’d want to start browsing from the “share” directory. Most QNAP’s will have a “MD0_DATA” directory. This is where you’ll find your shares.

Click the checkmark button (  ) on the right.

Right away a new window opens, where one after the other show will appear.
For each show we must now verify if it’s the right show Sonarr picked up (click on the picture of the show to see TheTVDB details).
The settings by default look OK, but you might want to double check.

Monitor = Missing
Profile = <the profile we created earlier>
Series Type = Standard (unless it’s a “Daily” or “Anime” show)

And click the “+” button to add, or the “  ” button to add and right away start looking for missing episodes.

You’ll have to repeat that for ALL the shows you want to import.

All in all, I had to go through importing a few times, either I was clicking too fast or Sonarr didn’t recognize the show name correctly. But in the end it was relatively easy.

Adding New TV Series

The process for adding a new TV Show is pretty similar.

Click the “+ Add Series” button, and enter the name of your show in the “Start typing the name of series you want to add …” (you can enter “tvdb:12345” if you know the TVDB ID as well).

Sonarr will show what it found, and you can either click the “+” button to add, or the “  ” button or add and search for episodes.

Some Additional Coolness

Now that we have Sonarr running, lets take a look at some additional coolness that Sonarr offers.

Tab: Series

Under the “Series” tab you will find a full list of all shows you have or are following.

Add Series (occasionally used)

We already have seen and used the “Add Series” button. But there are more buttons.

Season Pass (rarely used)

On the “Season Pass” page you can quickly change the way Sonarr looks at a TV Show. For example, you can select one or more shows and set monitoring to “None” so Sonarr no longer looks at them (to change and apply, look at the bottom).

Series Editor (rarely used)

The “Series Editor” allows you to quickly change settings of a show. For example change quality profile, monitored or not, path of the TV Show, etc.

RSS Sync (rarely used)

This button forces Sonarr to update the RSS feeds it’s reading, in case the scheduled update is not keeping up.

Update Library (occasionally used)

This will “force” and update of the entire library – the only practical use I have seen so far is when you decided to change the quality profile definition of the profile you used for all your TV shows, or when you bey accident cleared your entire download manager queue.

Tab: Calendar

This one I do really like. It shows a calendar with expected upcoming TV Show Epsiodes. It even can produce an iCal link so you can hook it into your Calendar.

Mind you that using the iCal link requires you to be able to access Sonarr from the outside world, unless you only intend to use this at home.
An iCal link will look something like this (I made up the API key, so it does not really work):

http://192.168.1.100:8989/feed/calendar/NzbDrone.ics?apikey=71ac85a6543be210a0e318f7cfddc181

Depending on your Calendar App (on your computer, phone or tablet), this can be added so you can always see in your calendar when to expect the next episode of your favorite show.

As you can see, it refers to an IP address in your local network … to get access when you’re on the road, you will need to do some port mapping and use your public IP address to access the link. Your public IP address can be found through websites like GetMyIP or by looking to the left, under “Statistics”, or bij opening our Browser Info page. Keep in mind that your IP address might be subject to change. In such a case you can consider a service like DynDNS.

In the list you can click an episode to see the details of the clicked episode.

Tab: Activity

The “Activity” tab shows you which episodes, at what quality, have been pushed to what download manager (ie. nzb vs torrent). You can even remove it there so it will be removed from the download manager as well. This might not always work, as it depends on the functionality of the download method and application you’re using.

In this tab, you can click the Show Name, or Episode Name to see the details of the show or episode.

I noticed when I cleared my NZBGet queue that Sonarr somehow picked this up automatically – nice!
(unlike SB/SR which keep the status at “snatched”)

Tab: Wanted

On this tab you will see a list of episodes that have been missed and are still “wanted”. Options like manual import and doing a forced scan of the “dump” directory are available here as well.

Tab: Settings

This tab has been discussed in the steps of setting up Sonarr.

Tab: System

The “System” tab show quite a lot of interesting options.

First of all, there is the “Status” tab, which shows us Sonarr version info, possible config issues, and available disk space.

The tab “Updates” shows us new updates and previous updates including change log.

Under “Tasks” we find some function that normally are handled automatically, but here we can force them to do them right now.
This includes application updates, rescanning for episodes, etc.

The “Backup” tab shows you the most recent back that has been made.

The “Logs” tab shows logs (duh!) which is great when trying to trouble shoot. Log files can be downloaded here as well.

Tab: Donate

This is where you can show your gratitude to the developers of Sonarr … please consider donating, even if it’s just a little bit.
Wouldn’t you give these guys a beer …?

Show Details

When you click a Show to see it’s details, something like this appears:

Sonarr – Show Details

Let’s review this screenshot … note that these icons appear on the show name level and on

  First of all, we see this solid bookmark icon in front of the title, which indicates this show is being monitored.

Notice that the book mark is SOLID. If it would be an outlined bookmark icon (not solid) then this would mean that the show is NOT monitored.
We see this with “Season 1” (  = monitored) and with “Specials” (  = not monitored).

  On the right side of the title we see this icon. It’s the button to press if you’d like to modify or edit the show or episode(s). You can also set quality here and remove files.

  When we click this icon, then we trigger an update which also scans the files on your hard disk and update the meta-data. Practical when you’ve done some “manual” work with your TV Show files.

  This button is supposed to preview you the renaming of your Episode files. I have yet to find a purpose for that though … but I assume it works … 

  When we click this button, Sonarr will start looking for all episodes of this show or season.

  With this button we can edit the show, so for example we can set the Quality Profile, etc.

Now when you click the “Show Episodes” link, below a season, then we see some more details:

Sonarr – Episode details

First we see the expected air date, followed by a status.
The clock icon indicates that Sonarr is still waiting for this one to appear, the purple bar means that it’s downloading this episode, the warning sign indicates that this episode is missing, and the little cloud indicates that that episode has been downloaded and is available.

The other 2 icons can initiate an automatic or manual search for that given episode.

There is much more to be found in Sonarr, and so far I’m very impressed by it … I hope you enjoyed this article, and enjoy the use of Sonarr on your QNAP.