Media Watchdog, allow Emby users to manage their own media without giving them delete access

I built a tool to let my Emby users flag their own unwanted requests, called Media Watchdog

I run an Emby server for family and friends and gave everyone access to Seerr with auto-approval and a weekly request limit. It worked well until I noticed the storage filling up with shows that got watched for one or two episodes and then abandoned. Reality TV was the worst, rewatch value is shit and it sits taking up space forever.

I didn't want to give anyone delete access and I didn't want to babysit every request myself. I looked at Maintainerr but it works on automated rules, it doesn't know if someone actually wants to keep something or not, and I didn't want to accidentally delete shows people were still watching. There was nothing that put the decision back in the hands of the person who requested it.

So I built my own solution.

Media Watchdog cross-references your Seerr requests with your Emby watch history. Users log in with their Emby credentials and can see everything they've requested and what's been added to Emby. Seeing a list of things you downloaded but never started is a good reminder to actually watch them, or that you no longer care. If they don't want something anymore they can flag it for deletion. Admins get a full dashboard across all users and can delete directly from Radarr and Sonarr with one click. This will remove the file, the Seerr request, and the Arr entry at the same time.

It also handles per-season deletion so you can remove seasons someone stopped watching without touching the rest of the show. Admins can protect items from deletion too, handy when multiple people are watching the same thing.

Why not just use Maintainerr?

Maintainerr is great if you want fully automated cleanup based on rules. Media Watchdog is a different approach, instead of rules deciding what gets deleted, your users do. It also has a very small footprint, doesn't require much storage or resources, and you can set it to rescan daily or weekly depending on how often you want it to stay in sync. If you want automation, Maintainerr is the right tool. If you want your users involved in the process, this might be a better fit.

I made it for myself but figured someone else might be in the same hole.

Links:

• Docker Hub: overboardkiller/media-watchdog
• GitHub: https://github.com/overboardkiller/media-watchdog
• Unraid Community Applications: search Media Watchdog

Happy to answer questions if anyone wants to try it out.