So for as long as I’ve been downloading episodes of TV shows, they’ve all come into my ‘Downloads’ folder unsorted so I can see what’s new/unwatched. After watching them, I copy them all to my external hard drive’s ‘TV’ folder (loose, not subfolders). After a few months of episodes build up, I copy them all into their particular subfolders, based on series and then season.
It seems that using Sonarr if I want my files renamed, I’ll have to also have each one of them put into a series folder within my root folder (i.e. ‘Downloads/TV Show Name/TV Show S01E01’ rather than ‘Downloads/TV Show S01E01’).
Is there a way to A) turn off this series folder option, and B) have Sonarr move (or copy) all of those ‘loose’ files into their given subfolders on my external hard drive after a certain length of time (or even manually by clicking a ‘sort into folders’ button or something within Sonarr)?
No to both questions. Sonarr is designed to sort them for you.
Probably best using a media center application that tracks the watched status for you, Kodi, Plex, Emby, etc.
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But even then, say I think a new episode of my favourite TV show has aired that day, rather than simply loading up Kodi, browsing to my ‘Downloads’ folder which is right on my home page and seeing what new TV there is to watch, I’ll have to think of the show that’s aired, navigate to ‘TV Shows’, find that show, find the latest season, then scroll through the entire list of episodes to find the latest one. If it’s not there, I’ll be left wondering whether it hasn’t aired, or just hasn’t downloaded, or it has downloaded but hasn’t added itself to Kodi for whatever reason…
Far too many unknowns/possibilities for error! 
Isn’t it just possible to add this functionality to allow users to use Sonarr in the way that best serves their needs rather than trying to force users to change their downloading habits?
There are a couple ways to do it:
- Calendar in Sonarr
- Recently added in the aforementioned media players
Additionally this might be of use when its available:
You could have it run after a release is imported and hardlink the file wherever you want, or do whatever else you want to it.
There is a lot more complications than just adding it, which we don’t want to take on to deal with a small percentage of users that want things all in one spot, but custom scripts will let you do it.
Awesome, thanks for the suggestions! I’ll definitely check out all options. Much appreciated.
if I may, I have the same problem than you because that’s how I used to do things (no series folder, manual management fo files). But markus is right since letting Sonarr manage your TV Shows works really well with a media player.
For the download part, I use Sonarr calendar to know what’s going to be downloaded and what actually downloaded. The color coding is perfect for that.
Then I have a Growl notification for both the downloader and Sonarr.
Sonarr sends a script notification to Plex to update the library.
And finally, I know right away on Plex’s front page (Recently Added section) the latest unwatched shows (on my Mac or iPad).
It’s very streamlined and much more handy than manually managing new downloads yourself (means also you have to delete additional files, samples, whatever…). I even have an archive folder where I move old episodes to an external drive and since Plex monitors those folders as well I still have access to them in my library; it’s transparent…
I guess the same can be said with other media managers but so far, on Mac, Plex has been working really well.
Thanks for the comments/suggestion. I think there is a rudimentary ‘Recently Added’ listing in Kodi, but it’s not foolproof… And I think it only shows a set number of entries so I may end up missing some episodes. I think Sonarr might be too clever for my needs. I only want something to grab/rename files for me, not necessarily sort/tidy them all for me too. I appreciate it’s incredibly useful if you use it the way it wants you to, but I’d be much more likely to use it if it would allow me to use it how I wanted to.
You can!
Use Sonarr to grab and rename, monitor the TV Show folders with any software to move the files in the desired location (your Downloads folder folder) that will be monitored by Plex for instance. I know for a fact that the Recently Added is accurate.
As for Sonarr, it will stop monitoring the files that you have moved (markus could comment on if a moved file will not prevent the download of better version if cutoff has not been met after the next TV Show library sync cycle).
Hope that helps!
I had this problem initially too. In Kodi just enable the “Hide Watched” option from the left-hand menu bar. It’ll hide the watched episodes, so only tv shows with new/unwatched shows are listed in the TV Shows list. The episode count shows the number unwatched episodes so you know how far behind you are. I’ve been using Sonarr+Kodi for a few months now and it’s fantastic. Haven’t tried Plex yet.