How It Works
Seekarr runs silently in the background and searches your arr apps automatically. This page explains what it does, when it does it, and how to control it.
The Search Cycle
When you enable and save settings for an app, Seekarr starts a dedicated background thread for that app. This thread runs a continuous loop:
- Load the app's current settings
- Call the app's API to find missing items and quality upgrades
- Trigger searches for a configurable number of items
- Sleep for the configured Sleep Duration
- Repeat
Each enabled app runs its own independent loop. Sonarr and Radarr run simultaneously — they don't wait for each other.
Sleep Duration
The Sleep Duration setting (found in each app's settings) controls how long Seekarr waits between cycles. The default is 900 seconds (15 minutes).
| Sleep Duration | Searches per hour | When to use |
|---|---|---|
900 (default) |
4 | Good starting point for most setups |
1800 |
2 | Lighter load; larger libraries |
3600 |
1 | Minimal; very conservative indexer usage |
300 |
12 | Aggressive; only if your indexer allows it |
Start with the default and adjust based on how quickly you want your library completed and the rate limits of your indexers.
Items Per Cycle
Seekarr does not search your entire library at once. The Missing Search and Upgrade Search settings control how many items are processed each cycle. Setting these to 1 means one missing item and one upgrade candidate are searched per cycle — gentle on indexers and easy to monitor.
Increase these values if you want to catch up faster, but be mindful of your indexer's rate limits.
State Tracking
Seekarr remembers which items it has already processed so it doesn't search for the same item every cycle. Processed item IDs are stored under /config/state/{app}/.
State resets automatically after a configurable interval (default 168 hours / 7 days). After a reset, Seekarr starts working through the library again from the beginning. This ensures items that failed to be found previously get another chance.
The Scheduler (Optional)
The Scheduler is a separate, optional layer on top of the background loop. It lets you define cron-style rules to pause searches overnight, force a run at a specific time, or adjust behaviour on a schedule.
If you haven't configured any schedules, the background loop runs continuously on the sleep timer — no scheduler configuration is required.
The scheduler does not replace the background loop. It only adds overrides at specific times.
Monitored Only
When Monitored Only is enabled (recommended), Seekarr only processes items that are marked as monitored in your arr app. This prevents it from chasing items you have intentionally unmonitored.