Frequently Asked Questions

WatchNexus is a unified, self-hosted media management pipeline. It consolidates what typically requires 5-6 separate applications (Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, qBittorrent, Bazarr, Jellyfin) into a single application with 35 integrated modules. Built on C#/.NET 10 with a React frontend.

WatchNexus is currently in active development. Pricing and licensing details will be announced closer to the public release. The software is designed to be self-hosted on your own hardware.

WatchNexus can replace your entire media stack: Sonarr (TV automation), Radarr (movie automation), Prowlarr (indexer management), qBittorrent (downloads), Bazarr (subtitles), and Jellyfin (library/playback). Instead of managing 6+ apps with separate databases and configs, you manage one application with a shared database.

WatchNexus runs entirely on your local network. An internet connection is only needed for features that inherently require it: fetching metadata from TMDB, searching indexers, and downloading content. Library browsing and local playback work offline.

Minimum: 4 GB RAM, 2 GB disk space (plus your media storage), any 64-bit Linux or Windows 10+.

Recommended: 8 GB RAM, SSD for the application and database, Ubuntu 22.04+ or Debian 12+.

The release build is a self-contained binary (58 MB for Linux, 72 MB for Windows) that includes the .NET 10 runtime. No additional software installation is required.

Official Docker images are coming soon with multi-architecture support (amd64, arm64, arm/v7). Currently, WatchNexus is available as bare-metal release builds with a systemd install script for Linux and a batch script for Windows.

ARM64 support is planned. The current release builds target x86_64 (amd64). Once Docker images are available, Raspberry Pi 4/5 (with 4+ GB RAM) will be officially supported via the arm64 image.

WatchNexus uses SQLite via Entity Framework Core 10. This means zero database setup -- the database file is created automatically on first run. All 35 modules share a single database, which is one of the key advantages over running separate applications.

Hardware transcoding (Intel QSV, NVIDIA NVENC, AMD VA-API) is on the roadmap but not yet implemented. Direct play works for all supported formats. If you need transcoding today, you can run WatchNexus alongside Jellyfin -- they complement each other well.

WatchNexus uses JWT (JSON Web Tokens) for session management, with optional TOTP two-factor authentication. The 2FA implementation follows RFC 6238, is compatible with any standard authenticator app (Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, Bitwarden), and provides 8 backup codes during setup.

WatchNexus includes multiple security layers: TOTP 2FA, IP filtering, rate limiting on authentication endpoints, audit logging, and session management. The Tunnel module also provides built-in WireGuard VPN management, so you can access your server securely without port forwarding. That said, we always recommend placing any self-hosted application behind a reverse proxy (Nginx, Caddy, Traefik) with HTTPS.

Fortress is WatchNexus's runtime integrity verification system. At startup, it computes SHA-256 hashes of all application assemblies (DLLs). A background service periodically re-verifies these hashes. If any file has been modified (potential tampering), the API automatically locks and logs the security event. It's a detection layer that catches corruption and unauthorized modifications.

WatchNexus supports multiple indexer types:

Built-in: Nyaa.si (anime/Asian media), YTS (movies), EZTV (TV shows)
Standard: Any Torznab or Newznab compatible indexer (works with Jackett)
Generic: Any RSS feed can be used as a search source

Search results include quality detection (4K/1080p/720p/480p), codec parsing (HEVC/x264/AV1/VP9), file size normalization, and seeder/leecher counts.

For many use cases, no. WatchNexus has built-in support for several popular indexers and the Torznab/Newznab standard. However, if you use indexers that require Jackett's specific scraping capabilities, you can still connect Jackett to WatchNexus via the Torznab protocol.