arr/blocklists

Curated blacklist and whitelist for the ARR media stack. The blacklist is synced automatically from upstream Cleanuparr and stripped of anything listed in the locally-maintained whitelist. Both files are consumed by Cleanuparr -- qBittorrent does not read either URL directly; Cleanuparr's Blocklist Sync feature pushes patterns to qBittorrent on its behalf.

See the wiki for full technical reference:

• Sync -- three-way merge, whitelist exclusion, .prev snapshot, edge cases
• Lists -- the two-file model, pattern semantics, maintaining the whitelist
• Consumers -- Cleanuparr Blocklist Sync and Malware Blocker, raw URLs, recommended modes
• CI and Workflow -- scheduled Gitea Actions job, manual dispatch, commit behaviour

How it works

The repository contains two data files:

File	Role	Source
blacklist	Extensions blocked by downloaders and file cleaners	Synced from upstream, with the whitelist subtracted
whitelist	Extensions that must never be blocked or deleted	Locally maintained

On every scheduled run the sync script:

1. Fetches the current upstream blacklist from Cleanuparr.
2. Detects any manual additions made directly to blacklist (three-way merge against blacklist.prev).
3. Subtracts every entry listed in whitelist.
4. Writes the result back to blacklist and updates blacklist.prev.

The whitelist is the single source of truth for "what I want kept." Adding an extension to whitelist removes it from blacklist on the next sync and prevents consumers from blocking or deleting it. See Sync for the full algorithm.

Prerequisites

• A running Cleanuparr instance with Blocklist Sync and/or Malware Blocker configured
• Network access from Cleanuparr to git.hisp.no
• For Blocklist Sync: a qBittorrent instance reachable from Cleanuparr's qBittorrent connection settings

File structure

Path	Purpose
blacklist	Merged output: upstream blacklist minus the whitelist. Consumer-facing
blacklist.prev	Snapshot of the last upstream fetch. Baseline for the three-way merge. Do not edit
whitelist	Locally-maintained allow list. Edit directly to add or remove entries
scripts/merge_blocklists.py	Sync script executed by the scheduled workflow
.gitea/workflows/sync.yml	Scheduled Gitea Actions workflow

Usage

Both files are consumed by Cleanuparr through two independent features. qBittorrent itself does not read any URL from this repository.

Blocklist Sync (push to qBittorrent)

Cleanuparr's Blocklist Sync fetches a blocklist URL on its configured schedule and pushes the full pattern set into qBittorrent's excluded file names via the qBittorrent Web API. Only blocklists are supported -- there is no whitelist mode for this feature. Point Blocklist Sync at:

https://git.hisp.no/arr/blocklists/raw/branch/main/blacklist

Because the locally-maintained whitelist is already subtracted from this file, any extension you add to whitelist stops being pushed to qBittorrent on the next sync.

Malware Blocker (Sonarr/Radarr queue)

Cleanuparr's Malware Blocker inspects torrents in the Sonarr and Radarr queues and removes ones that violate its rules. It supports both blacklist and whitelist modes. This repository is configured for whitelist mode:

https://git.hisp.no/arr/blocklists/raw/branch/main/whitelist

In whitelist mode, only torrents whose contained files all have whitelisted extensions are kept. Everything else is removed from the queue.

See Consumers for the full configuration details and troubleshooting.

Maintaining the whitelist

Edit whitelist directly in Gitea or via a local clone. One glob pattern per line, sorted, no blank lines. Patterns are matched against the blacklist with exact-string set subtraction:

• *.srt in whitelist removes *.srt from blacklist.
• *sample.srt in blacklist is not affected by *.srt in whitelist. Sample-file patterns are preserved because exact-string subtraction only removes identical entries.

See Lists for the full pattern rules and examples.

Maintaining the blacklist

Most blacklist maintenance happens through the whitelist (above). To add an entry that upstream Cleanuparr does not block -- a tracker-specific junk file, a new malware extension, anything else upstream missed -- edit blacklist directly in Gitea, add the line, commit. The next sync run detects the new line as a manual local addition and preserves it across every subsequent sync.

To remove an entry, use whitelist instead. Deleting a line from blacklist does not work as a removal mechanism: the next sync re-adds it from upstream. Removals must go through the whitelist.

See Lists for the full rules and worked examples.

Pattern syntax

The patterns in blacklist and whitelist are consumed by two different tools with different capabilities. Use only the common subset (wildcards) to ensure patterns work everywhere.

qBittorrent (via Blocklist Sync)

qBittorrent's excluded file names field uses Qt glob wildcards:

Pattern	Example	Matches
*	*.srt	Zero or more characters
?	*.r??	Exactly one character
[abc]	*.[rs]00	One character from the set
[a-z]	*.[r-z]??	One character in the range
[!abc]	*.[!m]??	One character NOT in the set
Literal	VOSTFR	Exact match

Regex, backslashes, and anchors (^, $, \d, (?i)) are not supported by qBittorrent and will be silently ignored.

Cleanuparr Malware Blocker (Sonarr/Radarr queue)

Cleanuparr's Malware Blocker supports all the wildcard forms above plus regex with the regex: prefix:

regex:.*\.srt$

Regex patterns only work in Cleanuparr's Malware Blocker. They do not work when pushed to qBittorrent via Blocklist Sync.

Merge script

The merge script subtracts the whitelist from the blacklist as exact strings, not by pattern semantics. To remove a pattern from the blacklist, the whitelist line must be byte-for-byte identical to the blacklist line. See Lists for the full rules.

Sync schedule

The Gitea Actions workflow runs every 7 days at 04:00 UTC and on manual dispatch. Each run:

1. Executes scripts/merge_blocklists.py.
2. Commits blacklist and blacklist.prev if either changed.
3. Pushes the commit to main.

See CI and Workflow for workflow details and manual dispatch instructions.

Upstream source

The blacklist is sourced from:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Cleanuparr/Cleanuparr/main/blacklist