SABnzbd In Turbo Mode: Tweaks, Add-Ons, And Mobile Apps

So now you've got SABnzbd, and have it configured properly to get the files you need without much hassle. But, there are so many ways to customize it...and apps that do the things you want to do automatically...it's time to make your installation of SABnzbd your personal install.

A large majority of the apps and add-ons that SABnzbd uses will require that you have outside access and remote control in place. So the first thing is to create an API key. Go to Config, select General, now find the SABnzbd Web Server menu, and at the bottom is the key generation interface. Here click on the Generate New Key on the API and NZB. Either write these numbers down or copy/paste them into a text document. The text file is best, to keep you from having to refer back to your writing and typing the numbers in, just copy/paste them from now on.

Now find the Web server authentication, and create a password/log in. this will be used when you access the system from outside of your personal network. If you want to use SSL for this access the certificate can be created here. Now that you have handled the security measures on to other things.

Some ISP's will throttle you down during peak hours, and then there are the times when you aren't the only one on your home network. During these times it's only proper and polite to set limits on your download speeds, or you can even schedule your downloads to happen when these things won't be an issue. SABnzbd has several ways to control these things, but the easiest way is to go to Config, General, then find the Tuning menu. Here you will be able to limit download speeds for all hours. Now for scheduling.

Go to the Config menu, then Schedulling. The hour and frequency are self explanatory, but the Action menu has quite a few options to pick from. Pause, resume, speed limit, enable and disable specific servers, or even shut the client down.

Unless you want to be sifting through a jungle of trash and old downloads, then you will need to enable the categories for your download and watched folders. You do this by going to Config, then Categories. Here you can add anything you wish as a category, tv, software, music, etc.

Another way of doing this is through the watch folder. You will create a folder inside of the watch folder named the same as your category, tv for example, and when you save a file in there it will automatically be categorized as tv...or whatever you named the category.

The last way to categorize is to put your category in double brackets like this:{{tv}}whatever.nzb, and SABnzbd will automatically add the download to your selected category and strip the category name from it. All this is great, but there are better ways of doing this, like using Sick Beard, but I'll tell you about that in another hub.

SABnzbd comes wit a quite serviceable set of tools and console, but the web console leaves much to be desired for an experience that will really wow you. There are browser add-ons for the most popular browsers that can achieve that effect.

Google Chrome: SABconnect++ gives you the functionality from the browser that you need the most. You will have instant access to your queue, speed limiter, and notifications. There are also shortcuts to at least a dozen nzb search indexes, and if the index you want isn't included in that dozen, then simply right click and select send to SABnzbd.

Firefox: nzbdStatus isn't as rich as SABconnect, but is still an excellent add-on. You can send the downloads to SABnzbd, and you will have the pause/resume function. Hovering over the widget will give you the current status of your downloads, too.

If you can't stand life without it, and have SABnzbd on your iPhone or other mobile device, then there are special apps just for you, too. Android users have plenty to choose from, though I find the most popular and useful of these to be SABMobile and SABcontrol. SabMobile will allow you to add files remotely, and monitor to your queue, pause and resume downloads, has SSL for security, an RSS reader, and a lot more. SABcontrol has control functions mainly.

iOS users can expect to find a few apps that will make their day brighter, too. SABMobile is available for them as well, with the same features as the Android users enjoy. MyNZB will allow the users to change categories and priorities, adjust speed, pause and resume all of the queue or individual downloads, and has access to a lot of search indexes. SABcommand is one developed for the iPad user. It's a little weak in the features area, but it takes complete advantage of the large screen that the iPads have.

All of the above mentioned applications and tweaks are fairly straight forward and easy to use for even the newest of the newbies to the Usenet experience. The hardest part of all this is to remember that the apps mentioned here require remote access abilities, so don't skip, or forget this part of the tweaking process.