Radarr

Radarr is Sonarr for films. Same codebase, same concepts, same settings screens — if you have already set up Sonarr, this will take ten minutes. The differences are all in how films behave compared to TV: no episodes to track, but a long gap between a film existing and a good copy existing, which Radarr handles with availability settings.

Radarr is a movie collection manager for Usenet and BitTorrent. Version 5 is current.

1. Monitors films and grabs them when a release meeting your standards appears
2. Minimum Availability — stop it grabbing a cinema cam three months before the digital release
3. Lists — import from TMDB collections, IMDb lists, Trakt, or "everything by this director"
4. Quality profiles and custom formats, including automatic upgrades
5. Renames and files into a layout Plex and Jellyfin understand
6. Collections — add one Bond film, get an offer for all of them

1. The container

  radarr:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:latest
    container_name: radarr
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - PUID=99
      - PGID=100
      - UMASK=022
      - TZ=Europe/London
    volumes:
      - /mnt/user/appdata/radarr:/config
      - /mnt/user/data:/data
    ports:
      - 7878:7878

docker compose up -d radarr

2. Authentication and API key

http://<host-ip>:7878. Set Forms (Login Page), then copy the API key from Settings → General — Prowlarr, Bazarr and Seerr all need it.

Set Updates → Mechanism: Docker while you are on that page.

3. Root folder

Settings → Media Management → Root Folders → Add: /data/media/movies

Container path, not host path. Same rule as Sonarr.

4. Media Management

Turn on Show Advanced Settings, then:

The folder format matters more for films than for TV. Both Plex and Jellyfin match on title and year; leaving the release group's naming in the folder name causes mismatches, and you end up with a library full of "unknown movie".

The TRaSH recommended naming scheme is worth copying wholesale for the file format.

5. Download clients

Settings → Download Clients → +, identical to Sonarr but with the movies category:

Both use container port 8080 — SABnzbd is only on 8081 from the host's point of view.

The category must match what the client has configured, or downloads land in the wrong folder and never import.

6. Minimum Availability — the setting that matters most

Settings → Profiles → Quality Profiles, or per-film when adding.

This is the one Radarr-specific concept:

Set it to Released. Otherwise Radarr dutifully grabs a camcorder recording the week the film opens, marks the film as complete, and stops looking. You then have to notice, delete it, and force a re-search.

7. Quality profiles

Same logic as Sonarr, but films have a wider size range, so the size limits matter more.

Settings → Quality — the max size per quality is defined in MB, not MB/min, for movies. Some sensible caps:

• WEBDL-1080p: max around 15 GB
• Bluray-1080p: max around 25 GB
• Bluray-2160p: leave high if you have the disks, or you will reject every real 4K release

Set the profile cutoff where you stop caring, or Radarr will keep upgrading a film forever.

8. Add a film

Movies → Add New, search, select.

Tick Start search for missing movie to grab immediately.

9. Import an existing library

If you already have films on disk, Movies → Import Existing Movies points at /data/media/movies and matches folders to TMDB entries.

Review the matches before confirming. Anything ambiguous gets flagged, and a wrong match here means Radarr will "upgrade" a film by replacing it with a different film entirely.

10. Lists, if you want them to arrive automatically

Settings → Import Lists → +

TMDB collections, IMDb Top 250, a Trakt watchlist, or another Radarr instance. Each list can auto-add and auto-monitor.

Updating

cd /opt/docker/media
docker compose pull radarr
docker compose up -d radarr

Backup

docker compose stop radarr
sudo tar czf /mnt/user/backups/radarr-$(date +%F).tar.gz -C /mnt/user/appdata radarr
docker compose start radarr

Also enable System → Backup → Scheduled in the UI.

Troubleshooting

Grabbed a cam three months before release. Minimum Availability is not set to Released. Fix it, delete the file, blocklist the release, search again.

Nothing found for a film that definitely exists. Use Manual Search on the film — it lists every release found and the specific reason each was rejected. Usually a size limit or a quality the profile excludes.

Downloads complete but do not import. Category mismatch between Radarr and the client, or permissions. Same debugging as Sonarr.

Import creates a copy rather than a hardlink. Volume mount layout. See the media stack page.

Plex shows the wrong film, or "unknown". Folder naming. It needs Title (Year). Fix the format, then Movies → Select All → Rename.

A film keeps re-downloading. No cutoff on the profile, so every marginally better release triggers an upgrade. Set a cutoff.

"Movie already imported" but the file is gone. Radarr's database and the disk have diverged — usually after a manual delete. Movies → Select → Refresh re-scans.

Where this sits in my lab

Radarr runs alongside Sonarr on the Unraid box, same download clients, same Prowlarr indexers, different category. Requests come in through Seerr.

The only setting I have changed since setting it up is the size caps. The default profiles happily accept a 60 GB remux of a film I will watch once, and disks are the constraint in this lab.