One thing I always get asked is: How does it all work?!
And here is the answer:

We’ll start when a TV Show is requested.
Users log into Overseerr using their Plex login. (Fun fact, I don’t store any credentials as everything is handled via Plex). They can search and request a TV Show (or Movie). Once they submit the request, I get a message on Telegram.

TV Show requests are then routed to a service called Sonarr.
Sonarr is really cool as it is the central point of the automation process.

Sonarr adds the series and flags for the episode(s) and/or series that has been requested to be downloaded.

Sonarr then goes to the Indexers (Torrent sites) and searches them via an API to see if those shows are available.

Now, I would have access to some Private Torrent Trackers, which tend to have a better selection and higher quality versions of some TV Shows & Movies that Public Torrent Trackers wouldn’t have. In order for Sonarr to search those particular Private Torrent Trackers, we have to pass the requests through another application, Jackett. Jackett can log in on my behalf using my credentials and its own Search API to find the torrents.

Sonarr returns with a list of torrents from all different torrent trackers. From here, it looks at the ‘rules’ that are in place, so it can select the correct torrent.

For Podgeflix, we only look for TV Shows & Movies that are 720p in either a WEBrip or a DVD/BLUrip quality. Sonarr is told to not bother with CAM footage or 1080p/4k versions unless otherwise stated so.

Once it has acquired a torrent, it passes the torrent off to the Download Client, so it can actually download the content. For TV Shows, I recently changed over to qBittorrent from ruTorrent.

qBittorrent downloads the files to a particular download folder away from everything else. Once it has completed the download, it reports back to Sonarr. When it reports it to Sonarr, qBittorrent will keep seeding the torrent back to the internet.

Sharing is caring. It’s very important to share your completed torrents. Don’t seed on your home connection, though, You will get a letter from your ISP.

For me personally, for every 1 copy of a torrent I download, I seed a maximum of 5 copies. This is a fair ratio. It used to be 1:2.5 but I increased it to 1:5 at the start of 2023, but obviously more is better.

Sonarr is told that qBittorrent has completed the download and Sonarr now copies the files from the qBittorrent folder and places it into the proper TV Show folder with the correct naming scheme.

As soon as this is placed here, Plex automatically notices the changes and adds the show to Plex, ready for everyone to watch.

Sonarr now checks to see if those files are in the correct location, and if it does, Sonarr relays the message back to Overseerr to tell the user who requested the TV Show that it is now available.

But that is not all, Once qBittorrent reaches 1:5 ratio or a full month has passed since the torrent was added (whichever comes first), it gets removed from qBittorrent to save on disk space.

To keep track of what people are watching (or better yet not watching), I use a tool called Tautulli. This gives me granular analytical information about the Plex server. I use this information to see what is not being viewed. If a TV Show or Movie has not been viewed in a year, they are quietly removed.

For movies, it’s the exact same process but replace Sonarr with Radarr (Made by the same developers) and replace qBitorrent with ruTorrent.

Any questions, yell at me