If you landed here, it is likely because you must be a torrent and automation fanatic. You love torrenting and are probably looking for ways to automate your searching, filtering, and updating of your media content.
In this post, we’ll go through the top 16 media-automated downloader tools. Such tools can be used to automatically download torrents, search for your favorite TV shows, music, or books, and update your entire media library.
Below are the best media content downloaders and automation tools that you must try. Many of the tools belong to the “arr” family, while others get a different name termination but do a similar thing. Some of these tools are referred to as smart PVR (Personal Video Recorder) for newsgroups while others complement your content media systems. These tools can be set with a schedule or calendar to automatically search for, download, or update media content using BitTorrent or Usenet. Generally, many of these tools use torrent RSS feeds, which are simple text files with updated information.
The below tools reduce the manual torrenting, searching, and updating workload and overall improve your torrenting experience. For instance, they can help you find your favorite TV shows, music, or movies, grab the “query” and send them to your favorite torrent client without your intervention.
- CouchPotato.
A PVR application for torrents. It allows you to automatically download torrent movies as soon as they are available and according to your pre-defined parameters. Create a want-to-watch list, and CouchPotato will search from multiple sources, find the best match, and proceed to send it to your favorite torrent client.
- Radarr.
A similar tool to CouchPotato, Radarr is a movie collection manager (PVR) for BitTorrent and Usenet users. It monitors multiple torrent RSS feeds to find new movies and interfaces with your torrent client to automatically download them. It can be configured to find better quality content once available and replace it with the old.
- Sonarr.
Formerly known as NzbDrone, Sonarr is a PVR designed for BitTorrent and Usenet users. It monitors various RSS sources for new episodes of your favorite TV shows. It grabs, sorts, and updates their name. Sonarr is used to automatically download and update your TV shows. An alternative to Sonarr is Sick Beard.
- Sick Beard
An open-source PVR and episode tool that downloads and manages all your TV shows. Sick Beard keeps track of new episodes of your favorite TV shows, and once they are available, it downloads, sorts, gives them a new name and generates the metadata. SickBear is supported by various torrent and Usenet sites.
- Lidarr.
Similar to Sonarr, but for music. It monitors torrent RSS feeds for new music of your favorite artists, grabs them, sorts them, and sends them to your favorite torrent client. Lidarr is used for automatic music downloads.
- Headphones.
An alternative to Lidarr is Headphones, an open-source automated music downloader for NZB and Torrent clients. Headphones use public music databases to find and get artists and album information. With this information, Headphones performs a download from NZB and Torrents. It is supported by NZBget, Transmission, uTorrent, and Deluge.
- Bazarr.
An open-source tool for subtitles automation. Bazarr is frequently used as a complement to Sonarr and Radarr, as it can be used to manage and download subtitles based on your requirements.
- Readarr.
An ebook manager and automation tool for BitTorrent and Usenet users. Readarr works similar to the other “arr” tools, as it monitors different RSS feeds and interfaces with your torrent or Usenet clients to download your favorite books, comics, magazines, and audiobooks.
- LazyLibrarian.
Similar to Readarr, LazyLibrarian is also an open-source books and audiobooks manager and automation tool. It allows you to follow authors and grab the metadata for all your reading demands. LazyLibrarian uses a combination of LibraryThing and GoogleBooks (Optionally) to get author and book information.
- DuckieTV.
It provides a personalized TV shows calendar and ensures that its information is always updated. DuckieTV provides an integrated torrent search so that the TV show’s downloads can be easy and automatic. It comes with its own DuckieTorrent client, but it can also be integrated with other popular torrent clients.
- Ombi.
A web application that allows your Plex and Emby shared users to request media content and automatically sync with your media server. In addition, Ombi can be linked to other automation tools (TV shows and Movie DVRs) to improve the experience of users.
- Gaps.
An advanced media collection recommendation engine, Gaps goes through your Plex media server or local folders, searches for movies, and queries for similar movies within the same media collection. For instance, if you have Alien from (1979), Gaps would recommend you Alien 1986 and Alien 1992 to be downloaded into your movie collection.
- SickChill.
Another automatic video library manager designed for TV shows. SickChill keeps track of the new episodes from your favorite TV shows, and once it finds one, it proceeds to grab and send to your torrent client.
- Mylar3.
A tool that automatically manages and downloads your comics library. It can be used with NZB and torrents. With Mylar3, you can create a wish-list of comic series and let Mylar3 keep track of it, grab it, sort it, and rename downloaded content.
- Jackett.
A single app that looks for torrents across different torrent trackers. Jackett proxies the queries from most of the above tools, including Sonarr, Radarr, CouchPotato, Lidarr, DuckieTV, and more, and proceeds to translate them into HTTP queries for specific tracker sites. Jackett parses the response and sends the results back to the requesting tool.
- Nefarious.
An application that lets you automatically download movies and TV shows. Nefarious combines the features of Radarr, Sonarr, and Ombi. It also uses Jackett to search for torrents and the torrent client, Transmission to do the downloading.
- Trakt.tv.
A plugin that keeps track of all your movies and TV shows watching history. What’s amazing about Trakt.tv is that it integrates with your Plex media server to enable scrobbling. The Trackt.tv Scrobbler tracks your watching habits, ratings, and collection history within Plex. You can use additional fantastic automation tools alongside Trakt.tv, including:
- Traktarr: Add content to Radarr/Sonarr from Trakt.tv
- Listrr: Create personalized trakt.tv lists for movies and TV shows using different filters.
Popular Comparisons:
Unsure how to start? Below are a couple of popular media automated downloader tools comparisons.
- Sonarr vs Radarr? Both tools monitor multiple RSS feeds to find media, and both can interface with your favorite torrent client to automatically download the media. The big difference is that Sonarr downloads movies, while Radarr downloads TV shows.
- Radarr vs Couchpotato? Both tools are used for automatically downloading movies. Radarr uses RSS feeds to find and then sends it to your favorite torrent client, while Couchpotato requires more initial configuration.
- Couchpotato vs Sick Beard? Both tools do not use torrent RSS feeds. So, the biggest difference between these two tools is that Couchportato downloads movies while Sick Beard downloads TV shows.
Final Words.
The media content downloaders and automation tools allow you to save time building up your media collection. They can automatically download content and even replace older lower-quality content.
Plus, using a seedbox gives you the possibility to test all (or the majority) of these tools with a single online and high-performance VPS. A seedbox is a server located on the cloud and specifically designed for torrenting. Configure your seedbox server with your favorite automated media content downloaders and build your personalized media library today.