You've got Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr humming away on your home server. Perfect. But when you're out and realize that show you want isn't downloading? Time to dig out a laptop or suffer through mobile web interfaces designed in 2015.
ArrMatey is a native mobile client for your *arr stack that actually feels like it belongs on your phone. Built with Kotlin Multiplatform, it delivers proper native UI on both Android (Jetpack Compose with Material 3) and iOS (SwiftUI with Liquid Glass). Not a web wrapper. Not a port. Native.
Why This Matters
Most mobile clients for self-hosted apps feel like afterthoughts — web interfaces crammed into app containers, or basic CRUD operations with zero polish. ArrMatey's developer actually thought about mobile-first design. Multi-instance support (because you probably run more than one Sonarr instance), proper calendar views, interactive search with quality filters, and real-time activity monitoring.
The "Slow Instance" mode is clever. Set custom timeouts for remote instances over VPN or high-latency connections. Custom HTTP headers for reverse proxy setups. Little details that show someone who actually uses these tools daily.
Hands On
Getting started takes about two minutes. Add your instances (Sonarr at http://your-server:8989, grab the API key from Settings → General → Security), test the connection, done.
The library view is clean — switch between list and grid, filter by monitored status, search across everything. Tap a show and you get episode lists, season management, file info. The interactive search is where it shines: manual search for releases, filter by quality/language/indexer, see seeders and custom format scores, download with one tap.
Calendar view shows upcoming episodes in both list and month formats. The activity queue gives you real-time progress, ETAs, and you can cancel downloads with blocklist options right from your phone.
The UI feels fast. No sluggish web views or janky animations. Pull-to-refresh works everywhere. It's what you'd expect from a $5 app store purchase, except it's open source.
What's Missing
This is alpha software. No tablet support yet. No widgets. No push notifications. The developer plans Bazarr, Prowlarr, and Readarr support, but it's just the core trio for now.
Some power users might miss bulk actions — you can't mass-edit quality profiles or do batch operations from the app. But honestly, for 90% of mobile use cases (checking downloads, searching for missing episodes, monitoring progress), it covers what you actually need.
The Verdict
I've tried mobile apps for self-hosted tools that felt like afterthoughts. ArrMatey doesn't. The developer clearly runs their own *arr setup and built this for daily use. The attention to mobile UX details shows.
It's MIT licensed, actively developed, and solves a real problem. If you manage your media library from your phone more than occasionally, this saves you from mobile web interface hell.
Try It
Clone from GitHub and build from source (Android Studio for both platforms, or Xcode for iOS). Check the Releases page for pre-built APKs.
Your first test: add one instance, browse your library, trigger a search. If it feels better than your current mobile workflow, you'll keep it.
Compiled by AI. Proofread by caffeine. ☕