Deletion Flow¶

Reclaimerr deletes candidates in a fixed order.

Scheduled automatic deletion only applies to candidates from rules that explicitly enable automatic deletion. It then applies the candidate's review period. The default movie and TV delays can be overridden by auto-delete-enabled candidate rules, and the longest delay from all matching opted-in rules wins. Candidates remain visible and tagged while waiting. Manual delete and move actions are immediate and do not use this delay.

Seerr requesters can be warned before their titles are deleted automatically. After each cleanup scan, a candidate whose deadline is within Warn requesters before deletion (General Settings, default 7 days, 0 turns it off) sends its requesters one notification of type Your Requests Leaving Soon, linking to the Candidates page so they can request protection. A user with several titles in the window gets them in a single message. Each candidate warns once. If its deadline is postponed afterwards, no second warning is sent; the log notes it.

Warnings only go out while the Delete Cleanup Candidates task is enabled, and only for whole movies, whole series, and seasons. Requesters are matched to Reclaimerr users by exact Plex or Jellyfin/Emby account, or by email. Display names are never used. A requester with no linked Reclaimerr account (or more than one) is skipped, and the scan log counts them.

Cleanup-candidate rules can also enable Move Instead of Delete. When a delete action runs for one of those candidates, Reclaimerr moves the file or folder to the configured destination and removes the source record instead of deleting the file. If multiple matched rules disagree, move wins over delete. Item-scoped movie folders move as a unit, including artwork, trailers, and all sidecars. Shared folders stay conservative: Reclaimerr moves only the selected media plus its matching sidecars (including language-tagged subtitles such as .en.srt) and removes the source folder only when it is empty. Existing destination folders are merged safely. When the same relative file is already present, Reclaimerr verifies matching size and SHA-256 content before discarding the redundant source copy; different files are never overwritten and leave the candidate available for review.

Move operations also honor the rule's Arr action. Delete removes a complete movie or series entry from Radarr/Sonarr without deleting the files that were already moved. Unmonitor keeps the Arr entry and refreshes its file state. Partial season and episode moves never remove the parent series entry. If Radarr or Sonarr is configured to create missing media folders, a retained unmonitored entry may recreate its empty source folder during that or a later scan; Reclaimerr does not repeatedly remove folders managed by another application.

When Leaving Soon collections are enabled, Reclaimerr first removes the affected movie or series from its managed Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby collections. This prevents media-server collections from retaining links to files that are about to disappear. If an affected collection cannot be updated, the delete or move is blocked and retried later. After the operation, Reclaimerr reconciles the collections so failed or partially completed actions remain represented.

Active Playback Protection¶

Settings → General → Protect Active Playback is enabled for new and existing installations. Reclaimerr checks native Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby sessions before deletion or movement, including manual actions, approved deletion requests, duplicate files, and upgrade leftovers. Paused sessions remain protected while the server reports them. Standalone unmonitor and quality-profile changes are allowed.

Defer When Playback Status Is Unavailable appears beneath the active playback toggle and is also enabled by default. With both enabled, affected files are kept when a relevant server cannot report valid live-session status. Turn the second toggle off to allow deletion and movement when live-session status cannot be verified; known playing or paused media remains protected. Missing watch history is separate from live-session availability. Disabling active playback protection bypasses both checks.

Affected candidates display Deferred: currently playing. If unavailable-status protection is enabled and a relevant server cannot report valid playback data, they display Deferred: playback status unavailable. Deferral does not restart the review period, count as a failed deletion, or remove the candidate. Initial deferrals happen before collection pruning or monitoring changes. Unrelated cleanup can continue.

Scheduled candidates retry on the next eligible cleanup run. Manual actions require another explicit attempt. Approved requests keep their approval and expose Retry deletion to request managers. Disabling protection does not automatically execute a deferred request; its last deferral stays visible until retry.

Reclaimerr matches server-qualified media identities and physical paths, including playing episodes beneath a season or series. Configure path mappings when servers expose shared files under different prefixes. Supplemental media associations help identify relevant servers; unavailable servers block associated files when unavailable-status protection is enabled. If a file-only operation has no known server association, an unavailable configured server is treated conservatively as potentially relevant.

Session snapshots are reused for up to 30 seconds within a job and refreshed before later destructive steps. Playback can still start after a check. If a later check defers an operation after earlier steps completed, its deferral details identify the completed steps; those changes are not undone. Protection covers playback reported by configured media servers, without requiring Tautulli or Tracearr.

Deletion Modes¶

A candidate whose rule asks for Change Quality Profile never enters the deletion routing below. It is handled first, resolved once the profile is applied, and recorded in reclaim history as profile_changed. See Rules.

Routing Order¶

1. Use Radarr for movie candidates when the candidate is linked to Radarr and the action can be handled there.
2. Use Sonarr for series, season, and episode candidates when the candidate is linked to Sonarr and the action can be handled there.
3. Fall back to the main media server when the ARR service cannot handle the deletion or no ARR route exists.
4. Use local deletion only when that fallback is enabled and the candidate can be removed locally.

Movies With More Than One Version¶

A movie can hold several files under one Radarr entry, and a rule may match only some of them. Deleting the Radarr movie would take the rest with it, so Reclaimerr picks the narrower route instead:

• when the candidate covers every file in the Radarr entry, the movie is deleted through Radarr as before, which also removes the entry and can add an import list exclusion;
• when it covers some of them, Radarr is asked to delete just those files. The Radarr entry stays, no import exclusion is added, and the versions you kept are untouched.

Per-file deletion happens automatically and needs no setting. It also means a partial version delete no longer depends on Allow Media Server Fallback Deletion.

Reclaimerr only deletes a file it can identify with certainty. If a selected version cannot be matched to exactly one file in Radarr, nothing is deleted for that movie and the candidate records why.

The Same File In Two Libraries¶

If one file is indexed by two libraries, your media server reports it twice, with different internal IDs and the same path. Reclaimerr keeps a record per library, so library-scoped rules keep working, but treats them as the single file they are: deleting it removes every record naming it, counts its size once, and protecting either record protects the file. A candidate whose file is protected through another library's copy is held back rather than deleted.

What The Fallback Covers¶

• movie candidates that Radarr cannot remove directly
• series candidates that Sonarr cannot remove directly
• scoped deletions that need the media server to remove files or folders

Keeping The Media Server In Step¶

Removing a file does not tell your media server anything. Whenever Radarr, Sonarr, or Reclaimerr itself removes media, Reclaimerr therefore reconciles the main media server afterwards:

• with Allow Media Server Fallback Deletion on, it removes the item from the media server, exactly as before;
• with it off, it asks the media server to re-scan the affected path instead. That is a read-only request - it never deletes anything - so the setting still means what it says.

This matters more than it sounds. Skipping the reconciliation leaves the media server serving an entry whose files are already gone. The next Sync Media run re-imports that entry, the next Scan Cleanup Candidates run flags it again as a new candidate, and because the review period is measured from when a candidate was created, the countdown restarts from zero. The item then never reaches automatic deletion, however long you wait.

One Plex caveat: a path scan only drops missing items when Plex's Empty trash automatically after every scan library setting is enabled, which is Plex's default. With it turned off, Plex keeps the entry until you empty the trash yourself.

Series Held In Two Copies¶

A series you keep twice - an HD copy and a UHD copy, each with its own Sonarr - is stored as one set of season records, because seasons are identified by series and season number with nothing to tell the copies apart. Those season fields (size, path, resolution) describe whichever copy your main media server reported, so they cannot be used to aim a rule at one copy.

To act on a specific copy, set the rule's Sonarr instance. That is the only reliable way to say which one you mean.

Without it, Reclaimerr works out which Sonarr owns the files by matching paths. If the series exists in more than one Sonarr and no path matches, it refuses rather than guess, and the candidate says so - add a path mapping or set the rule's Sonarr instance. Deleting one copy also leaves the season record in place while the other copy still has files, and skips the media-server delete in favour of a path re-scan, since the stored media-server item may belong to the copy you are keeping.

Important Settings¶

• Default ARR Delete Behavior
• Allow Media Server Fallback Deletion
• Add Arr Import List Exclusions on Delete
• Move Destination Folders

Related Pages¶

• How It Works
• Tasks
• Production