Media Watchdog

Let your Emby users manage their own media — without giving them the keys to the kingdom.

The problem it solves

Running an Emby server for family and friends with Seerr auto-approval works well — until people start requesting entire seasons of shows, watching two episodes, and moving on. Reality TV is another common one: downloaded, barely touched, sitting there forever.

Giving users delete access is too much. Manually monitoring every request is too time consuming. Media Watchdog fills that gap — it gives users a simple interface to review what they've requested and flag anything they no longer want. Admins get a dashboard showing everything across all users, with the ability to action those flags and delete directly from Radarr and Sonarr, or override a flag if something is worth keeping.

What it does

• Watch history at a glance — cross-references Seerr requests with Emby watch history so you can see what's actually being watched, when it was last played, and how far through a series someone got
• User flagging — users log in with their Emby credentials and can flag their own requests for deletion, putting them in a queue for admin review
• Admin controls — admins see all requests across all users and can delete directly from Radarr and Sonarr, removing the file, the Seerr request, and the Arr entry in one action
• Per-season management — flag individual seasons of a show rather than the entire series, useful when someone is still watching later seasons
• Protect from deletion — admins can mark items as protected to prevent them being deleted even if a user flags them, handy when multiple people are watching the same content
• Requester reassignment — if media was downloaded for someone else under a different account, it can be reassigned so the correct user can manage it themselves (local to Media Watchdog only, does not affect Seerr)
• TMDB scores — displayed on every item so you can make informed decisions about what's worth keeping
• Organised by Arr instance — tabs reflect your actual Radarr and Sonarr instances with custom names you define
• Scheduled cache refresh — stays in sync with Seerr and Emby automatically

Requirements

• Emby Server with API access enabled
• Seerr (Overseerr or Jellyseerr) with API access enabled
• Radarr and/or Sonarr (optional — required for deletion features, must have file deletion rights enabled)

First time setup

On first launch, Media Watchdog will walk you through a three-step setup wizard:

1. Emby — enter your internal Emby URL and API key
2. Seerr — enter your internal Seerr URL and API key, and optionally your public Seerr URL for clickable links
3. Admin account — log in with your Emby admin account to complete setup

Once the wizard is complete, the app will run its first cache build automatically. After that:

• Go to Settings → Sync from Seerr — this imports all your Radarr and Sonarr instances directly from Seerr, including their URLs
• Add API keys for each Arr instance in Settings — this enables one-click deletion from the interface
• Radarr and Sonarr must have file deletion enabled in their settings for deletions to work end-to-end
• Deletion is restricted to Emby admins only

Note on requester reassignment: If media was downloaded for another person and sits under the wrong account, it can be reassigned in Media Watchdog. This is a local override only — it does not modify anything in Seerr. Once reassigned, the correct user can flag it for deletion themselves.

Docker

docker run -d \
  --name media-watchdog \
  -p 5000:5000 \
  -v /path/to/appdata/media-watchdog/data:/data \
  -v /path/to/appdata/EmbyServer:/emby-appdata:ro \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  overboardkiller/media-watchdog:latest

Docker Compose

services:
  media-watchdog:
    image: overboardkiller/media-watchdog:latest
    container_name: media-watchdog
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    volumes:
      - /path/to/appdata/media-watchdog/data:/data
      - /path/to/appdata/EmbyServer:/emby-appdata:ro

Volumes

Unraid

Available in Community Applications — search Media Watchdog.

Or add the template repository manually under Apps → Settings → Template Repositories:

https://github.com/overboardkiller/unraid-templates