Narratarr brings the Sonarr formula to audiobooks with its own built-in player
On October 29, 2026, noted.lol covered Narratarr, a self-hosted audiobook manager that pairs discovery, downloading, and playback in a single Docker container. For the self-hoster who listens to books, it is one more piece of the *arr stack — worth running on a trusted network, alongside Audiobookshelf rather than as a replacement for it.
October 29, 2026. noted.lol covers Narratarr, a new self-hosted audiobook manager shipped as a Docker image. Sonarr and Radarr have organized series and films for years; Narratarr ports the same mechanics to audiobooks. 8484 — the default port for its web interface. The point that matters: discovery, download, and playback of an audiobook now live in a single container, with no chain of services to assemble.
Discovery before download
The first thing Narratarr changes is how you enter your library. Where the classic *arr tools assume you already know what you want, Narratarr offers a genuine discovery interface. You can browse by genre or search for a specific title, with cover art and a description on hand to help you decide — an experience built for someone who browses a collection without a fixed idea in mind.
The main source is free. Narratarr connects to the LibriVox and Old-Time Radio collections on the Internet Archive, thousands of public-domain recordings. The inclusion of Old-Time Radio, those vintage radio dramas, gives the catalog a charm that commercial release lists lack. An optional feature corrects typos in search — it leans on Apple’s public API, so it is not fully local, but the application works without enabling it.
The part any *arr user recognizes
Anyone who has run Sonarr or Radarr will recognize the logic: find a title, add it to the queue, let the application sort out the files. Downloads from LibriVox and Old-Time Radio go out directly over HTTPS, with no paid subscription. Narratarr can also talk to Prowlarr to query configured indexers, and hand Usenet downloads to SABnzbd. On the torrent side, the only current path runs through Real-Debrid, a paid service — there is no direct qBittorrent or Transmission integration yet.
The filing is clean: finished books are organized into author then title folders, with cover art and metadata saved alongside the audio files. It automates the tedious manual cleanup nobody enjoys. None of this is required to use the free collections; it is convenience, not a prerequisite.
A built-in player, no extra app
The break from other *arr tools is here: Narratarr ships its own browser-based player. It handles chapter navigation, adjustable playback speed, and resume from where you stopped — essential when a book runs dozens of hours. A sleep timer can even stop at the end of a chapter, a thoughtful touch for anyone who listens before bed without wanting to wake three hours deeper into the story.
The player treats books split across multiple MP3 files the same as M4B audiobooks, stitching them into one continuous listen. It is reachable from a phone through the browser, with no dedicated mobile app. And if you already run Audiobookshelf, there is no need to abandon it: Narratarr can drop books into a library Audiobookshelf recognizes and trigger a scan after each download.
A very young project, keep it at home
On the deployment side, the developer ships a Docker Compose configuration with AMD64 and ARM64 images. Everything runs in a single container, with two separate mounts — one for configuration, one for the library. The web interface listens on port 8484 by default. Password protection is optional, but the documentation recommends keeping Narratarr on a trusted home network rather than exposing it directly to the internet.
This is a very new project: the GitHub repository is still small, and there is little long-term feedback from real deployments. Rough edges are to be expected as development continues. The risk is not technical — it is the risk of any young software, namely a lack of track record on stability and image security before a community has stress-tested it.
# Minimal startup: clone the repository, then launch the container
git clone https://github.com/narratarr/narratarr.git
cd narratarr
docker compose up -d
# The web interface then listens on http://localhost:8484Verdict
*If you listen to audiobooks and already run an arr stack, install Narratarr as a complement: discovery across the LibriVox and Old-Time Radio collections, paired with the built-in player, beats stitching together a pile of separate services — as long as you keep it on your local network and point it at Audiobookshelf if you already have one. If your library lives entirely in Audiobookshelf, migrate nothing: Narratarr is too young to replace a proven tool, but it can feed it. And if you have neither a trusted network nor the habit of patching your containers, stay with a cloud option — a self-hosted player is only as good as the discipline of whoever maintains it. Narratarr’s real promise is not to replace anything: it is to finally make self-hosted audiobooks as smooth as a series in Sonarr.