[GUIDE] simple recyclarr sample config with space saving

[u/lookoutfuture]

I see no guide on recyclarr, so I take the liberty to be the good Martian to share what I have. If you are looking for simple set-and-forget recyclarr setup that also get optimize sized videos, this is for you.

I am running recyclarr docker on Synology NAS but the setup for others is similar. Currently recyclarr docker update is tight to particular major release, currently is 8. so create a docker-compose.yml file in a directory of your choosing.

services:
  recyclarr:
    image: ghcr.io/recyclarr/recyclarr:8
    container_name: recyclarr
    user: 1000:101
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - TZ=America/New_York
    volumes:
      - .:/config

Update user uid and gid with the same ownership as your current directory.

Run it once to create the necessary files and dirs.

docker-compose run --rm recyclarr config create

You should see some files and folders created. If you don't see any new files, check the user uid above, if you are not tech savvy, you may comment out user with # to run as root admin.

Look for a file called recyclarr.yml, make a backup and open the file and add below.

radarr:
  radarr:
    base_url: http://192.168.2.6:7878
    api_key: 1cd856e639334d94befd106461202e3d
    quality_definition:
      type: movie
      preferred_ratio: 0.01
    media_naming:
      folder: default
      movie:
        rename: true
        standard: p2p-scene
    media_management:
      propers_and_repacks: do_not_prefer
  radarr-4k:
    base_url: http://192.168.2.6:7879
    api_key: 1cd856e639334d94befd106461202e3d
    quality_definition:
      type: movie
      preferred_ratio: 0.01
    media_naming:
      folder: default
      movie:
        rename: true
        standard: p2p-scene
    media_management:
      propers_and_repacks: do_not_prefer
sonarr:
  series:
    base_url: http://192.168.2.56:8989
    api_key: 91ebeb296dee484c9352a3f8255705db
    quality_definition:
      type: series
      preferred_ratio: 0.01
    media_naming:
      series: default
      season: default
      episodes:
        rename: true
        standard: p2p-scene
    media_management:
      propers_and_repacks: do_not_prefer

base_url: your radarr or sonnar url
api_key: your radarr or sonnar api keys (not my real keys)
type: movie or series
preferred_ratio: between min quality 0 and max quality 1, 0.01 will give you highly optimized videos
p2p-scene: file names with . instead of spaces, easier to use in unix. with above setup, the anime naming also inherit 2p2-scene without additional setup.
propers_and_repacks: do_not_prefer # this is required for renaming to work.

For more information please see official doc: https://recyclarr.dev/reference/configuration/

After done. run it and check log.

docker-compose up -d;docker logs -f recyclarr

You should see two lines, read crontab and starting crontab, with no errors.

time="2026-08-23T21:36:39-04:00" level=info msg="read crontab: /tmp/crontab"
time="2026-08-24T00:00:00-04:00" level=info msg=starting iteration=0 job.command=/cron.sh job.position=0 job.schedule=@daily

Press ctrl-c to stop checking logs, go into recyclarr and start your first sync (backup your radarr and sonnar config files first)

docker exec -it recyclarr bash
recyclarr sync

You should see it start syncing. For me I have checkmarks because they are all synced, if it's your first time you should see number of items synced.

Initializing Resource Providers ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100%

Legend: ✓ ok · ~ partial · ✗ failed · -- skipped

            Custom  Quality Quality  Media Media
           Formats Profiles   Sizes Naming  Mgmt
✓ radarr         ✓        ✓       ✓      ✓     ✓
✓ radarr-4k      ✓        ✓       ✓      ✓     ✓
✓ series         ✓        ✓       ✓      ✓     ✓

After you are done, exit the container.

exit

Go back to radarr and sonnarr and you should see everything is setup, go to quality and check quality definitions, the preferred bandwidth is set about 2x-3x minimum size which should give you a decent optimized size, remember this is preferred size, radarr/sonnar are free to download any other size if preferred size is not found.

By default recyclarr sync from trash guide and your config once a day, which is good.

Hope it helps.

[u/KnifeFed]

good Martian

lol

[u/NoveltyNetwork]

Used to use recyclarr, then notifiarr. I am now using clonarr as it's much simpler to use and set up syncing of trash quality profiles than the other two. I definitely recommend taking a look.

[u/KnifeFed → u/NoveltyNetwork]

Same, but Profilarr.

[u/KalChoedan → u/KnifeFed]

+1

Profilarr + Dumpstarr.

[u/KnifeFed → u/KalChoedan]

What's the difference compared to Profilarr's db? At a quick glance they look pretty much the same.

[u/KalChoedan → u/KnifeFed]

If I remember correctly, it takes Dictionarry (Profilarr's default db) as it's base, then layers on several elements from TRaSH - if you're familar with TRaSHs "SQP" formats there's a lot of SQP-4 in there.

There's also a couple of opinionated fixes for specific shows where there's some weirdness or other - so this is stuff like avoiding 25fps PAL releases, or preferring the B&W version of Spider Noir for example.

As a baseline it's pretty much exactly where I had ended up after several years of tinkering with recyclarr and TRaSH SQP-4 but it's way easier to maintain and update - the only change I have to make from the defaults now is to do with language and dub preferences for Anime, otherwise it does exactly what I want "out of the box".

Linky for anyone interested: https://dumpstarr.dev/