Jellyseerr

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 819 words

Jellyseerr is the piece that stops a shared media library from being a job. Once it is up, every family member and friend with a Jellyfin login can search for a film, press Request, and have it arrive in the library without you touching anything; you get a notification, and if you have set auto-approval for people you trust, not even that. It does none of the fetching itself. It talks to Sonarr and Radarr, which do the work, so if you do not already run that stack, start with the arr stack explained and come back. If you do, Jellyseerr is the last container you add and the first one everybody else sees.

What it does and what it does not

Jellyseerr's front page is a discovery grid pulled from TMDB: trending, popular, upcoming, with an "available" badge on anything already in Jellyfin. Users request a film, a whole series or specific seasons; requests go into a queue you approve, or get auto-approved per user; the approved request is sent to Radarr or Sonarr with a quality profile and root folder; and the library scan flips the item to available and notifies the requester. It also serves as a light issue tracker ("wrong audio track on episode 4") and a place for users to see the state of what they asked for, which removes the "did you get my message" pings entirely.

It does not download, index or play anything. It is a front door with a queue. The listing's "companion tool only" con is accurate and is also why it is easy: there is no library to manage, just a SQLite database in /app/config.

Compose: one container, port 5055

services:
  jellyseerr:
    image: fallenbagel/jellyseerr:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "5055:5055"
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/London
    volumes:
      - ./config:/app/config

Open port 5055, choose Jellyfin, Emby or Plex, and sign in with the server admin account. The setup wizard then asks for the Jellyfin URL (use the internal Docker address so requests do not loop out through your proxy), which libraries to scan, and the Sonarr and Radarr connections. The listing's 512 MB is generous; it idles at well under that.

Wiring Sonarr and Radarr correctly the first time

For each, Jellyseerr wants the hostname, port, API key (Settings > General in each app), a default quality profile, a default root folder, and whether this is a 4K server. The mistake I see most is entering localhost when the apps are in separate containers; use the compose service name. The second is not adding a separate 4K Radarr when you have one, which sends 4K requests to your 1080p profile. Test each connection with the button before saving; a green tick here saves an hour later. Tags pass through, so a requested tag in Radarr lets you see at a glance which items came in through Jellyseerr rather than your own lists. Prowlarr stays where it is; Jellyseerr never talks to the indexers.

Permissions and quotas are the whole point for a shared library

Users are imported from Jellyfin (or Plex), so they sign in with the credentials they already have; local accounts exist for people without a media login. Per user or by default, you set what they can request (movies, series, 4K), whether requests auto-approve, and quotas: 5 films and 2 series per week is a sane starting default for a family, unlimited for the two people who curate. The quota is the feature that turns "can I have everything Marvel" into a conversation that happens with the software rather than with you. Notifications go to Discord, Telegram, email, Pushover, Gotify, a webhook or the web UI, per user, with the requester told on approval and availability and the admin told on each new request.

Jellyseerr or Overseerr

Jellyseerr started as a fork of Overseerr that added Jellyfin and Emby support, and today it is the more active project and the one I install even for a Plex-only setup: same interface, same TMDB backend, more server types, more notification agents, and an MIT licence with roughly 12,400 stars. If you already run Overseerr on Plex and it works, there is no urgency; if you are starting fresh, there is no reason to pick the parent.

What I'd do

Jellyseerr behind your reverse proxy at a friendly URL, connected to Jellyfin over the Docker network, Radarr and Sonarr wired with service names and tested, a requested tag on both. Auto-approve for the household, quotas for everyone else, Discord notifications for me and email for the requester. Then tell people the URL and stop being the person who takes requests over text messages. It is the single container that changes how the whole stack feels for everybody except you, and for you it is 20 minutes, once.