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Getting Started Guide

For more information about the tool, please visit the official webiste

What Scryer Is

Scryer is a self-hosted media management application for movies, TV series, and anime.

At a high level, it:

• monitors libraries and tracked titles
• searches for releases through indexers
• evaluates releases against quality and rules policies
• coordinates downloads and imports
• organizes your files for media servers
• manages subtitles (finds missing ones, time aligns when needed)
• deeply multi-lingual, interface and metadata (where available)
• helps you discover new media based on trends and what you already have All packaged inside one binary.

Conceptually it is "Sonarr + Radarr + Seerr + Bazarr, with some extra bits from other *arr tools", however Scryer is a single machine-code compiled binary that runs very efficiently compared to the *arr tools.

Scryer also handles Anime much better than the Arr tools, it uses multiple anime datasources (anidb, anilist, MAL, etc), understands the nuances of anime season and episode numbering, handles episode and multiseason packs cleanly, and even knows which episodes and movies are filler or canon!

Scryer was written from scratch and has no affiliation with the Servarr tools

Technical Overview

Scryer ships as a single Rust binary with:

• an embedded web UI
• a GraphQL API
• SQLite- or PostgreSQL-backed application state
• a plugin runtime for indexers, download clients, subtitle providers, and notifications

Architecture

Docker

Scryer publishes a first-party container image:

• ghcr.io/scryer-media/scryer:latest
• ghcr.io/scryer-media/scryer:<minor>-latest
  • <minor>-latest tracks the 0.<minor>.x release line it was built from

For Docker installation, Compose examples, environment variables, volumes, and deployment notes, see the Docker install docs.

Windows

Scryer publishes two forms of installation for Windows:

• scryer-windows-x86_64.zip, in which contains: scryer.exe | best ran as an nssm (the Non-Sucking Service Manager) service (Not Recommended)
• scryer.msi | Desktop install that's completely effortless. (Recommended)

The MSI installs a desktop wrapper. Launching Scryer from the Start menu puts an icon in the notification area, starts the Scryer server in the background, and opens the web UI in an embedded Microsoft Edge WebView2 window — no browser tab and no service to configure. Clicking the tray icon shows Scryer's status and the usual actions (open, restart, quit); you can also opt into starting Scryer when you sign in. If WebView2 is not installed, Scryer opens the web UI in your default browser instead.

Upgrading and uninstalling on Windows

Upgrades — whether from inside Scryer, from a new MSI, or through winget — keep everything: your database, settings, logs, backups and your sign-in preference.

Uninstalling removes them. The uninstaller deletes Scryer's data folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\ScryerMedia\Scryer), which holds the database, logs, runtime state and the WebView2 profile, and removes Scryer's Windows Credential Manager entry. A backups folder inside it survives if it still contains anything. Your media libraries and download folders are configured outside that folder and are never touched. Back up anything you want to keep before uninstalling.

macOS

Scryer publishes a disk image per architecture — scryer-darwin-arm64.dmg for Apple silicon and scryer-darwin-x86_64.dmg for Intel. Open it and drag Scryer to Applications. Scryer then lives in the menu bar: it starts the server for you and opens the web UI in an embedded WebKit window.

Scryer.app is not signed with an Apple Developer ID and is not notarized, so the first launch needs one extra step:

• On macOS 15 and later: open Scryer once and dismiss the warning, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway next to the message about Scryer.
• On macOS 14 and earlier you can instead right-click (or Control-click) Scryer in Applications and choose Open, then Open again in the dialog.

Either way you only do it once. If you would rather clear the quarantine flag from a terminal:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Scryer.app

Scryer updates an .app install in place. It downloads the signed replacement bundle, checks its signature before anything moves, and swaps it for the installed one — then the app restarts itself on the new version. The previous bundle is kept beside it until the new one has started successfully.

For that to work, Scryer has to be able to replace the bundle where it lives: drag it into your Applications folder (or any folder you can write to) and open it from there. Scryer will tell you to do that, rather than updating, if you are running it straight from the disk image or from the temporary copy macOS makes when an app is opened from your Downloads folder.

The scryer-darwin-*-portable.tar.gz archives still ship the plain scryer server binary for anyone running it headless.

Unraid

Scryer publishes a first-party unraid application, view unraid community appication here.

Installation Steps:

• Open your Unraid Dashboard.
• Navigate to the apps page.
• Search "Scryer" and click install!

Support

If you're facing any issues with installation or issues, feel free to use any of our social platforms (Discord, Reddit, Github) for support!

Development

• Contributing guide
• Architecture notes
• Issues

For installation, upgrade guidance, and end-user documentation, use the website links at the top of this file.