Managing Sonarr on your phone with Submarine , an Android and iOS client

Miguel Castiblanco
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Recently I released the first version of Submarine, the first Open Source Sonarr client for Android, iOS, and Andromeda.

Download on the Play Store.
Code in Gitlab.

Details screen

Why Submarine was created

As an user of Sonarr, I often find myself trying to use it from the phone. Accessing through the browser works, but the experience itself is not as pleasant as it is when the software that you use was made with phones in mind.

So then I tried some Apps that are available in the Play Store, and for all of them I had a similar feeling: The app was not created taking into account how people use Sonarr and how to improve the experience of the user according to that and given that they are using a phone. Some of them have so little focus that they integrate a ton of different services in the same App, something that I compare to browsing all you websites in just one tab of your browser: it can work, but if you want to go back and forward you will easily lose track of what you were doing.

On top of that, I ran them through a proxy only to find that the most popular ones are tracking how you are using them. And some of them didn’t even have an option to turn the tracking off.

And that’s a big issue for me. Not the fact that they are tracking, but the fact that I didn’t see that being explicitly indicated nor a way to disable it.


Why you should use Submarine

I will bring it down to three main reasons:

  • Open Source: All the code of Submarine can be found in the Repo. That way anyone can audit the code and sent Merge Requests for fixes or improvements overall. You are also welcomed to create issues or feature requests.
  • Great UX: Submarine’s UI has been well designed. Tons of time has been put on deciding how to do things to offer the best experience for all of our users. The App allows you to seamlessly navigate, and it feels like home since the very first time you open it.
  • One Job done well: If you have multiple tabs open in your browser, you will appreciate having the ability to have multiple apps on your phone. Submarine may not allow you to connect to anything but Sonarr, but in return it gives you a great set of functionalities, tailored according to the stuff that Sonarr allows you to do.

What can I do in Submarine?

  • Add/Edit/Delete series
  • Search manually
  • Trigger automatic search
  • Monitor seasons/episodes
  • See the upcoming episodes
  • Check the queue of the server
  • See the history of grabs, imports, deletions, etc
  • Delete downloaded files
  • See the wanted/missing episodes and trigger search or manual download easily
  • Use SSL even with self-signed certificates
  • Others

What about the download link for iOS?

Sadly, due to the App Store policies (and Sonarr’s nature) it’s not possible to publish Submarine in there. But if you have a provisioning profile you can just build it and install it into your device.

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