Use cases
Written for the situation you are actually in
Documentation organised by feature is organised by what the software does. This is organised by what you are trying to fix, which is a different list and usually a shorter one.
Setting up
The problems people hit in the first hour, and the ones that keep a broken install broken.
How do I get from nothing to a working discovery server?
The whole path in order: container, media path, first scan, first flow, first playlist out to Navidrome.
Why does Aurral not see the music Lidarr sees?
Container paths have to match on both sides. This is the single most common broken setup.
How much disk do I need before turning on FLAC?
Work out what a quality profile actually costs you per year before the first download starts.
Why are downloads unreadable after the container writes them?
PUID and PGID exist so the files on disk belong to the user you already are on the host.
How do I serve Aurral over HTTPS with SSO?
Header forwarding, trusted proxy behaviour and why the browser needs to reach the right address.
How do I connect a phone app to my own server?
App passwords, the connect QR code, and which Subsonic clients work out of the box.
Getting more out of it
For a library that has grown but stopped surprising you. Tuning the mix rather than adding features.
I have 40,000 tracks and I only play the same forty.
The core problem Aurral exists for, and the three settings that fix it fastest.
How do I get past the obvious recommendations?
Deep Dive, Focus sources and discovery modes, used together, with numbers that work.
Can I build a flow that only plays 1980s music?
Year ranges apply to the Focus source only. Here is how to make that limit do what you expect.
How do I make this feel like Discover Weekly?
Pick the schedule, the size and the mix once. Then never open the app again for a month.
How do I stop losing track of new releases?
Monitoring levels, the Inbox, and release feeds that arrive without you searching.
Moving and sharing
Bringing playlists across, moving to new hardware, and sharing one server with more than one person.
What actually breaks when I cancel Spotify?
Playlist imports, history, and the two things Spotify does that self-hosted genuinely cannot.
How do I bring an existing playlist across?
Spotify, YouTube Music, Last.fm and plain JSON files, with the sync behaviour of each.
How do I migrate the whole setup without losing anything?
Config, database, media path remapping and the order that avoids a re-download.
Can my family get their own recommendations from one library?
Per-user history, feedback and Inbox, plus the permissions that keep non-admins harmless.
Something not covered here?
The feature documentation covers what each setting does. These pages cover what to do about it when the answer is not obvious.