unmanic

Unmanic

Unmanic is an automated media library optimiser. It scans a directory for media files, runs them through a plugin pipeline (remux, re-encode, subtitle extraction, etc.), and replaces the originals in-place. The key idea is a rule-based worker queue: you define what "good" looks like (codec, container, audio tracks, resolution) and Unmanic continuously finds files that don't match and fixes them.

Why run it: Unlike Tdarr — which uses a node-based distributed transcoding model — Unmanic is a simpler single-node tool with a plugin-first architecture. It's well suited for set-and-forget library clean-up tasks like converting everything to H.265/HEVC or stripping unwanted audio tracks.

When it makes sense:

• You want to optimise an existing library without manually managing a transcoding queue
• You need fine-grained plugin control over per-file decisions (e.g. skip files already in HEVC, only process files over 10 GB)
• You prefer a lighter-weight alternative to Tdarr for a single-host setup

Architecture

Browser → Traefik (TLS) → Unmanic :8888
                                  ├── /config  → /mnt/SSD/Containers/unmanic/config
                                  ├── /library → /mnt/Data/Media   (scanned + processed in-place)
                                  └── /tmp/unmanic → /mnt/SSD/Containers/unmanic/cache

Unmanic runs a single worker process (configurable) that picks tasks off the queue, processes them through the plugin pipeline into the cache directory, then atomically replaces the source file on success.

Prerequisites

Create the host directories before starting:

mkdir -p /mnt/SSD/Containers/unmanic/config
mkdir -p /mnt/SSD/Containers/unmanic/cache

/mnt/Data/Media must already exist — it is the shared media volume used by the arr stack.

Optional: Intel Arc A310 hardware acceleration (VAAPI)

Unmanic supports VAAPI for hardware-accelerated encoding. To enable it, uncomment the devices block in compose.yaml:

devices:
  - /dev/dri:/dev/dri

Then install the VAAPI plugin in the Unmanic UI and set the encoder to hevc_vaapi (or h264_vaapi). Verify the device node is available on the host with ls /dev/dri.

Quick Start

1. cp example.env .env and set UNMANIC_DOMAIN
2. Create host directories (see Prerequisites)
3. docker compose up -d
4. Open https://<UNMANIC_DOMAIN> — complete the setup wizard
5. Add a library pointing to /library and enable your chosen plugins

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
TZ	America/New_York	Timezone
PUID	3001	User ID for file ownership
PGID	3001	Group ID for file ownership
UNMANIC_DOMAIN	—	Traefik hostname (required)
UNMANIC_PORT	8888	Host port (optional override)