Radarr and Jellyfin are two of the most capable open-source tools available for self-hosted media management, and when connected properly, they handle the entire lifecycle of a movie – from search and download to library organization and playback – without any manual intervention.
What You Need Before Starting
Before writing a single line of configuration, you need four things running: Radarr, Jellyfin, a download client (qBittorrent and Deluge are the most common choices), and an indexer or indexer manager like Prowlarr. Radarr does not download files directly – it finds releases through indexers and hands them off to a download client, which does the actual work. Jellyfin then reads from the completed download directory and makes those files available for streaming. Understanding this pipeline from the start saves a lot of troubleshooting later.
Installation methods vary depending on your setup. Docker is the cleanest approach for most home server users because it isolates each application and makes updates straightforward. If you’re running Docker Compose, you’ll want Radarr, Jellyfin, and your download client all defined in the same compose file so they share a common network and, critically, share the same volume mounts. Path consistency is not optional here – if Radarr sees a file at /data/movies and Jellyfin expects it at /media/movies, the integration will break at the library scan step.
For bare-metal installations on Linux, both Radarr and Jellyfin publish their own repositories, and the installation process is well-documented on each project’s official site. The important thing in either case is to decide on a folder structure before you install anything. A clean layout looks like this: a single /data directory at the root, with /data/torrents for active downloads and /data/movies as the final destination that both Radarr and Jellyfin can read. Keeping everything under one parent directory eliminates cross-device move errors, which are one of the most common issues new users hit.
If you’re planning to access your Jellyfin library outside your home network, setting up a WireGuard VPN server on a Raspberry Pi is a clean way to do it without exposing Jellyfin directly to the internet. That step is separate from this guide, but worth planning for before your library grows large.
Connecting Radarr to Your Download Client and Indexers
Open Radarr and navigate to Settings > Download Clients. Click the plus button to add a new client. If you’re using qBittorrent, select it from the list and fill in the host (usually localhost or the container name if you’re on Docker), the port (default is 8080), and your credentials. The most important field here is the Category – set it to something like radarr. This tells qBittorrent to place Radarr-managed downloads in a specific subfolder, which keeps things organized and allows Radarr to monitor only its own downloads rather than everything in the client.
With the download client saved, move to Settings > Indexers. If you’re using Prowlarr as your indexer manager – which is the recommended approach – you don’t configure indexers directly in Radarr. Instead, go to Prowlarr, add your indexers there, and then use Prowlarr’s Radarr integration to push them over automatically. In Prowlarr, navigate to Settings > Apps, add Radarr as an application, and enter Radarr’s URL and API key. The API key lives in Radarr under Settings > General. Once connected, Prowlarr will sync all your configured indexers to Radarr without any duplication of effort.
Back in Radarr, check Settings > Profiles to configure your quality profiles. This is where you define what release qualities Radarr will accept – 1080p Blu-ray, 720p WEB, 4K HDR, and so on. The default profiles are usable but generic. A more useful approach is to create a custom profile that matches your storage situation and what Jellyfin can actually handle. If your server doesn’t have hardware transcoding for 4K HEVC, adding 4K releases to your profile just means Jellyfin will software-transcode them, which is CPU-intensive and often results in stuttering playback on lower-end hardware.
Root folders are set under Settings > Media Management > Root Folders. This is the directory Radarr will move completed downloads into and where it will organize movie folders. The path you enter here must match exactly what Jellyfin is pointed at. If you’re on Docker, both containers need to mount the same host directory at the same container path. A mismatch here is silent – Radarr will report success, but Jellyfin simply won’t see the files because it’s looking in a different place.
Under Settings > Media Management, enable Rename Movies and configure the naming format. A clean standard is {Movie Title} ({Release Year}) for the folder and the same pattern for the file itself, appended with the quality tag. Jellyfin’s metadata scanner works better with consistent, predictable naming, and keeping the year in the folder name prevents mismatches when two movies share a title – which happens more often than you’d expect.
Pointing Jellyfin at Your Movie Library
In Jellyfin, go to Dashboard > Libraries and add a new library with the type set to Movies. Point it at the same root folder you configured in Radarr. Jellyfin will scan on first setup and then on a schedule, but you can also trigger a manual scan any time a new movie is added. For the metadata provider settings within the library, The Movie Database (TMDb) is the most reliable source for movie posters, backdrops, and cast information – enable it and set it as the primary provider. IMDb works well as a secondary source for ratings data.
Once the library scan completes, add a movie through Radarr’s search interface – find a title, set the quality profile, and click Add Movie. Radarr will search your indexers, find a matching release, push it to the download client, monitor the download, and then move the completed file into the root folder with the correct naming structure. Jellyfin’s next scheduled scan will pick it up, fetch metadata, and make it available for playback. The first time this chain runs end-to-end without any intervention is when the setup genuinely pays off – adding any movie to your library becomes a matter of searching for it in Radarr and doing nothing else.
