Watchlist Exclusions

Prevent specific watchlist items from being routed to Sonarr and Radarr, allowing you to control which content gets added to your library.

Quick Setup

1. Navigate to Utilities → Watchlist Exclusions
2. Find the item you want to exclude using search or filters
3. Click Exclude on the item to block it from being added to Sonarr/Radarr
4. Click Unexclude to unblock it

How It Works

When a user adds something to their Plex watchlist, the sync engine normally routes it to Sonarr or Radarr. An exclusion is a per-user veto on that routing for a specific item — the sync engine sees the item, checks for an exclusion, and skips it if one exists.

Common reasons to use this:

• You don't want a title auto-requested even though a user has it watchlisted (e.g. content you've chosen not to host)
• Prevent re-request loops after Delete Sync — when content is removed but stays on a user's watchlist, an exclusion stops the next sync from re-requesting it

Exclusions clear automatically when the user removes the item from their Plex watchlist, so re-adding it later works normally.

Interaction with Delete Sync

Excluded items are treated as unwatchlisted by Delete Sync. If you exclude something that's already in Sonarr/Radarr, the next Delete Sync run will remove it from your library. Exclusion-driven deletion only triggers once every watchlister of an item is excluded - which is exactly the state the Maintainerr integration creates when it excludes current watchlisters.

Maintainerr Integration

Automatically create exclusions when Maintainerr deletes media, so stale watchlist entries don't re-request content Maintainerr just removed.

Quick Setup

1. Navigate to Utilities → Watchlist Exclusions
2. Enter your Maintainerr URL in the Maintainerr Integration section and click Save Changes
3. Click Enable

Requires Maintainerr 3.23.0 or later, and Pulsarr must be reachable from Maintainerr.

How It Works

Without this integration, media Maintainerr deletes can stay on users' Plex watchlists, get re-requested by the next sync, and be deleted again by Maintainerr - a churn loop. With it enabled, Maintainerr notifies Pulsarr whenever it handles media, and Pulsarr writes exclusions so the sync never re-requests it.

Pulsarr configures Maintainerr itself: it creates a webhook notification agent named "Pulsarr" in your Maintainerr instance and connects it to your rule groups. Only rule groups whose collections delete media are connected - Maintainerr's webhook doesn't say which action ran, so unmonitor-only groups are left unconnected to avoid excluding media that still exists.

Use Maintainerr as your removal engine

When using this integration, we recommend disabling Delete Sync and configuring your removal policies in Maintainerr instead. This feature ensures items Maintainerr deems fit for removal stay removed - they won't be re-added by stale watchlists - so running both removal systems is redundant and makes it harder to reason about why content disappeared.

Configuration

Setting	Description
Maintainerr URL	Base URL of your Maintainerr instance (e.g. http://localhost:6246)
Exclusion Mode	Current watchlisters: exclude only users who have the item watchlisted now - anyone adding it later requests it fresh. Global: block the item for everyone until the exclusion is removed

Sync Behavior

Action	Description
On save/enable	Reconciles the Maintainerr configuration immediately
Scheduled	The maintainerr-sync job re-checks hourly, connecting any new rule groups
Sync Now	Manual immediate reconcile

Each sync verifies the Maintainerr version, provisions the webhook config, updates rule group connections, and fires a test notification to confirm the round trip. The section's status indicator reflects the last result.

Manual Setup

If you'd rather not give Pulsarr your Maintainerr URL, configure the webhook in Maintainerr yourself:

1. Set the maintainerrWebhookSecret environment variable in Pulsarr (the auto-generated secret has no UI surface, so you need to set one you know)
2. In Maintainerr, create a Webhook notification agent with URL http://your-pulsarr:3003/v1/notifications/webhook/maintainerr and the secret as the auth header
3. Set the JSON payload to include "notification_type": "{{notification_type}}"
4. Enable only the Media Handled notification type
5. Connect the agent to each rule group whose collection deletes media, and repeat for rule groups you add later

Page Features

The Watchlist Exclusions page shows all users' watchlist items in a sortable, filterable table:

Feature	Description
Search	Filter items by title
User Filter	Show items for specific users
Type Filter	Filter by Movie or Show
Status Filter	Filter by watchlist status (Pending, Requested, Grabbed, Notified)
Excluded Filter	Show only excluded or only non-excluded items
Sorting	Sort by title, status, or date added (default: newest first)

Filters and sorting persist across visits.

Best Practices

• Prefer excluding over asking users to remove items from their watchlists — the exclusion approach lets the item stay watchlisted (so they can still see it in Plex) without triggering a request
• Manual exclusions are per-user. If you want to block something across everyone, you'll need to exclude it for each user (the Maintainerr integration's Global mode does this automatically for handled media)

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
Item still being requested	Verify the exclusion exists for the correct user; check sync engine logs
Exclusion disappeared	User likely removed the item from their Plex watchlist, which clears exclusions automatically
Item not showing in table	Item may not be on any user's watchlist; check Plex watchlist status
Maintainerr status shows failed	Verify the URL is reachable from Pulsarr and Maintainerr is 3.23.0+; check the error in the status section
No exclusions after Maintainerr deletes	Confirm the integration is enabled and the rule group's collection uses a delete action - unmonitor-only groups are deliberately not connected

API Reference

See the Watchlist Exclusions API documentation for detailed endpoint information.