Plex watchlist downloading even when available on server (not radarr/sonarr)

[jolly haven]

I have my own DVD / Blu-Rays backed up on my my plex server and sometimes these are on my watchlist to remind me to watch them. However, Overseerr immediately requested all of them despite acknowledging that they were available from my library.

I see the "Hide Available" option, but I am fairly certain this is not what I want, especially as this is an experimental feature. Is there a way to filter these requests out or do I need to simply turn off auto-sync for watchlists altogether because of this setup? (If there isn't a feature like this I'd love one like that, because the auto-sync is awesome!)

Just some fun tidbits: I am using the linuxserver.io image in docker compose and all the shows and movies on my watchlist gotpassed through as requests automagically. (because that's what my settings say to do)

[chrome mirage]

Are your DVD / Blu-Ray backups correctly matched in Plex?

I believe that Overseerr requests everything on a watchlist, regardless of whether or not you have it downloaded already.

If you 'approve' these requests, I would imagine that Sonarr/Radarr then do not download them, as long as the file names state that they meet quality criteria in your profiles?

You could also just decline these requests, and they'd never reappear (unless you delete the requests!)

[jolly haven]

They are correctly matched in Plex; They are not in Sonarr / Radarr because I keep a few different libraries.

Requests were set to auto-approve as I am the overseerr admin and as far as I can tell there is no way to disable this.

I had to just... turn off auto-request from my plex watchlist to avoid the problem

[chrome mirage]

I had this same issue and I was able to get around it by manually editing the database values for my overseerr owner account. It now got requests but not auto approves!

@ me if I haven’t got back to you by end of tomorrow but I’ll write up steps of how I bodged this together

I wanted to achieve the same as I do actually pay for Netflix but want to have a single watchlist on Plex, that covers stuff on there as well

I now have to approve or decline my own requests but it’s the lesser evil

[jolly haven]

I don't mind that to be honest!

[chrome mirage]

Sweet.

So, to achieve this you need to create a separate overseerr account, and make it an admin, and it sits alongside your ‘owner’ account from your Plex account. This new admin account will then be what you use you approve/reject all requests.

You’ll then need to manually edit the SQLite database to edit the permissions of your ‘owner’ account. I forget what the specific value is, so I’ll come back with screenshots.

To be able to edit this database file, I downloaded it to my computer via an SSH session on filezilla, and the opened it up in this free browser SQLite app https://sqlitebrowser.org/

I then edited the value in the table that dictates the ‘owner’ permissions, and resaved. (Again I’ll let you know exactly what I edited it to).

I then had to insert this new database back in to my overseerr config folder, which for me involved removing the old DB files via root first, and then moving in this new one, before restarting the docker container.

I’ve only had this going for a month, so I don’t know how an update to overseerr or a redeployment of the container would affect the database, so best to keep a backup somewhere.

It took a lot of trial and error to get to it, as the value that dictates permissions is a single number that is a sum of various numbers that are tied to each permission… but after I found the part of the source code on GitHub I was able to reverse engineer it!

I’ll tidy this up with some screenshots hopefully today but at very least tomorrow for you

[jolly haven]

[chrome mirage]

Individual permission values are:

NONE = 0,
ADMIN = 2,
MANAGE_USERS = 8,
MANAGE_REQUESTS = 16,
REQUEST = 32,
VOTE = 64,
AUTO_APPROVE = 128,
AUTO_APPROVE_MOVIE = 256,
AUTO_APPROVE_TV = 512,
REQUEST_4K = 1024,
REQUEST_4K_MOVIE = 2048,
REQUEST_4K_TV = 4096,
REQUEST_ADVANCED = 8192,
REQUEST_VIEW = 16384,
AUTO_APPROVE_4K = 32768,
AUTO_APPROVE_4K_MOVIE = 65536,
AUTO_APPROVE_4K_TV = 131072,
REQUEST_MOVIE = 262144,
REQUEST_TV = 524288,
MANAGE_ISSUES = 1048576,
VIEW_ISSUES = 2097152,
CREATE_ISSUES = 4194304,
AUTO_REQUEST = 8388608,
AUTO_REQUEST_MOVIE = 16777216,
AUTO_REQUEST_TV = 33554432,
RECENT_VIEW = 67108864,
WATCHLIST_VIEW = 134217728,

I ended up specifying the owner user to have 50331688

Which is:
MANAGE_USERS
REQUEST
AUTO_REQUEST_MOVIE
AUTO_REQUEST_TV

if youd need 4k requests, I’m unsure if you’d need to add that separate permission and therefore increase the database value accordingly

Per above, I edited the database in DB Browser for SQLite.

Specifically I edited the 'User' table and the value in the 'permissions' column when using the 'Browse Data' tab. I then hit 'write changes' and re-uploaded the database file. (see screenshot - have blanked out my emails and plex tokens)

This has resulted in my Owner's permissions looking like the second screenshot... which seems to do the job!