Done in Draw it took about 200 ms per new poster (BiLinear scale to the box plus PNG encoding), so each step to another title stalled the UI. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
arr-tui
A terminal UI to search for movies and series with Radarr and Sonarr, pick releases by hand, and follow the downloads in SABnzbd.
- Movies / Series: search as you type, add titles with a quality profile and root folder, optionally start the automatic search.
- Trending, most watched, anticipated: while the search box is empty, Movies and Series show
lists from Trakt: trending now, most watched this week, anticipated, popular,
and the US box office for movies.
[and]switch lists; titles already in your library are ticked, the others can be added right there (Enter). Needs a free Trakt client ID (see Configure). - Library: movies and series with their status; the dot before a title turns blue while it is downloading, and the details say how far.
- Cache: posters (30 days, at most 200 MB), casts (7 days) and the Radarr/Sonarr lookups of
Trakt list titles (3 days) are kept between runs in
~/.cache/arr-tui($XDG_CACHE_HOME;~/Library/Caches/arr-tuion macOS), so they show at once after a restart. Deleting the folder is always safe. - Season posters: in a series' seasons and episodes, the poster follows the selected season.
- Cast: with a Trakt client ID, the details pane also lists the director (or the creators of a series) and the cast with their roles, below the plot, in every view.
- Interactive search: list the releases Radarr/Sonarr find (approved or rejected, with reasons), sort and filter them (by approval, quality, x265 / x264 / AV1, HDR, Dolby Vision, audio format, language), and grab one. Series: pick a season or a single episode first.
- Posters: the detail panes show the poster at the top right; title, facts, path and plot
flow along its left side and continue at full width below it. In kitty and Ghostty it is a real
image at the terminal's full resolution (Kitty graphics protocol with Unicode placeholders, so
popups and dialogs cover it like text). Everywhere else it is drawn with colored block characters,
which works over SSH and in any terminal with colors. Library items use the copy stored in
Radarr/Sonarr; search results are downloaded from the metadata provider's image host (TMDb,
TheTVDB). Turn it off with
"ui": {"covers": false}."ui": {"cover_style": ...}picks the drawing:auto(default: real images where the terminal is known to support them, otherwise plain cells in macOS Terminal, sextants on terminals known to have the glyphs or when fontconfig finds an installed font with them (not over SSH), else quadrants),kitty(force real images),sextant(2x3 pixels per cell, needs a font with the Symbols for Legacy Computing block) orquadrant(2x2, every font has them) orcells(one colored cell per pixel, no glyphs; for terminals whose block characters come out uneven, like macOS Terminal). Inside tmux or screen the block styles are used. If a poster looks wrong, setquadrant, orcellsif the rows look shifted. - Calendar: the next two weeks of movie releases (cinemas, digital, physical) and airing episodes in one list grouped by day, with poster and plot. Move by weeks, include unmonitored items, search for releases or start an automatic search from there.
- Downloads: SABnzbd queue and history plus the Radarr/Sonarr queues. Pause/resume, delete, retry failed downloads, remove from the arr queue and blocklist.
- Config (F6): edit everything in the config file from inside the program, in one list you move
through with the arrow keys: service addresses and API keys, the add-form defaults (quality profile and root folder, picked from the lists the server has), refresh interval, posters, theme, notifications. Test
checks the values you typed before saving; Save writes the file (permissions kept,
0600for a new file) and applies the changes at once, no restart. Values that come fromARR_TUI_*environment variables are greyed out and are never written to the file. - Log (F7): actions report through popups that fade away; the log keeps the history.
- Download notifications: a popup (and a log entry) when a SABnzbd download finishes or fails,
whichever view is open. SABnzbd's history is checked every 15 seconds; downloads that finished
before arr-tui started are not announced.
"ui": {"notify_downloads": false}turns it off,"bell": truealso rings the terminal bell. - Themes: fixed dark and light color sets that look the same in every terminal, whatever its
color theme.
"ui": {"theme": ...}isauto(default: light when the terminal reports a light background, else dark),darkorlight; it can also be switched in the Config view, which recolors everything at once. - Connection indicators for all three services in the top right;
F9shows every key.
Requires Radarr/Sonarr v3+ API (Radarr 5/6, Sonarr 4) and SABnzbd 4+. Only Usenet releases are shown for grabbing, torrents are hidden.
Screenshots
The screenshots show a made-up library (invented titles, generated posters), taken in Ghostty, where posters are real images.
Install
go install git.stinnesbeck.com/nils/arr-tui/cmd/arr-tui@latest
or build from a checkout (make build), or make dist for cross-compiled binaries in dist/.
Configure
Just start arr-tui: on the first start it creates $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/arr-tui/config.json
(usually ~/.config/arr-tui/config.json, or the file given with --config path) and opens the
Config view (F6), where you enter the address and API key of each service and save. API keys are in
each app under Settings → General. A service left empty is not used (e.g. no SABnzbd), its indicator
stays grey. You can also write the file yourself, starting from config.example.json:
{
"radarr": { "url": "http://localhost:7878", "apikey": "...", "default_quality_profile": "HD-1080p", "default_root_folder": "/movies" },
"sonarr": { "url": "http://localhost:8989", "apikey": "...", "default_quality_profile": "HD-1080p", "default_root_folder": "/tv" },
"sabnzbd": { "url": "http://localhost:8080", "apikey": "..." },
"ui": { "refresh_seconds": 3, "covers": true, "cover_style": "auto", "theme": "auto", "notify_downloads": true, "bell": false }
}
default_* are optional preselections in the add dialog. URL and key can also come from the
environment: ARR_TUI_{RADARR,SONARR,SABNZBD}_{URL,APIKEY}, which takes precedence over the file.
The trending, most watched and anticipated lists need a Trakt client ID (free, no Trakt account
of yours is touched): sign in at trakt.tv, create an app under
Settings → Your API Apps → New Application (any name;
redirect URI urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob), and enter its Client ID in the Config view under
Trakt, or as "trakt": {"client_id": "..."} in the file, or in ARR_TUI_TRAKT_CLIENT_ID.
Keep the file private (chmod 600); it holds your API keys.
Keys
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
F1–F7 |
switch view (Movies, Series, Library, Downloads, Calendar, Config, Log) |
Tab, Shift+Tab |
switch panel within a view |
F9 |
help |
/ |
focus search box |
[, ], r (Movies / Series, empty search) |
previous / next Trakt list, reload it |
Enter |
add selected title |
i |
interactive release search |
Tab, f, F, /, t, s, d, i/Enter, r (library) |
movies/series list, status filter, file-property filter, text filter, monitor, search, remove, releases/episodes, reload |
[, ], t, u, Enter, s (calendar) |
week back / forward, today, unmonitored, releases, search |
Enter, i, s, t (episodes) |
expand season / releases, release search, search, monitor |
Enter/g, s, f, F (release list) |
grab, cycle sort, hide rejected, filter by properties |
p, d, t, b, r (downloads) |
pause, delete, retry, blocklist, refresh |
Esc |
back / close dialog |
Ctrl+C |
quit |
Development
dev/ has a compose file with pinned Radarr, Sonarr and SABnzbd containers plus a fake indexer;
see dev/README.md.
make test runs vet and the unit tests. The screenshots are made with
dev/screenshots/take.sh (see its README). The design and
milestone history are in SPECS.md.
Releases: tag and push, then scripts/release.sh (or make release) builds the binaries and publishes
them on Gitea with the matching CHANGELOG.md section. It needs an access token with write access
to the repository in $GITEA_TOKEN or ~/.config/arr-tui-release-token; --check verifies
everything without publishing, --dry-run builds without publishing.
License
MIT, see LICENSE.








