Manual Import
Manual import lets you bring existing audiobooks into Narratorr’s library from a directory on disk — useful for migrating an existing collection or importing files you’ve obtained outside of Narratorr.
Access it from the Library Actions menu on the Library page and choose Import Files, or go directly to /import.
Workflow
Section titled “Workflow”Step 1: Select a Directory
Section titled “Step 1: Select a Directory”Enter or browse to a directory containing audiobook folders. The directory should have subfolders for each book (e.g., organized as Author/Title or similar).
Click the Browse button to open the directory browser, which lets you navigate the filesystem visually. Below the path input, the page also offers Favorite Folders and Recent Folders lists so you can quickly return to directories you use often.
Manual Import is for folders outside your library path. If you point it at a folder inside the library path, scanning is blocked and Narratorr links you to the separate Library Import flow, which registers existing books in place.
Step 2: Scan and Review
Section titled “Step 2: Scan and Review”Click Scan to discover audiobooks. Narratorr:
- Scans the directory for subfolders containing audio files
- Attempts to match each folder to a known book using metadata lookup
- Shows a card for each discovered book with match confidence
Each card shows:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Matched | Confident metadata match found — ready to import |
| Review | Partial match — you may want to verify or edit the metadata |
| No Match | No metadata match found — edit to provide correct details |
| Already owned | A matching book already exists in your library — starts unchecked, but can still be force-imported. The summary bar counts these as “already in library” |
With multiple editions, Already owned means the same recording is already owned — a different recording of a book you own (a full-cast vs. an unabridged, say) is labeled New version of an owned title instead and imports into its own edition folder. A book narratorr can’t confidently classify is held for review (see below) rather than imported or skipped.
Folders in the same scan that resolve to the same book are not flagged at scan time — they start selected and are matched normally. Duplicate resolution happens at import time instead: a second copy of the same recording is skipped, and an ambiguous one is held for review.
You can:
- Select/deselect individual books or use “select all”
- Edit any book’s metadata — title, author, narrator, series info
- Choose from alternative matches if the auto-match wasn’t right
While matching runs
Section titled “While matching runs”Matching happens in the background after the scan — each card shows a spinning Matching badge until its result arrives, and you can review and edit already-matched books while the rest resolve.
If the match phase hits a problem it can’t recover from, matching pauses rather than failing silently: a Matching paused banner reports how many books are still without a result, with two actions. Resume remaining re-matches only the books that never got a result (finished matches are kept), and Restart all starts matching over from scratch.
While paused, the Import button stays disabled on Manual Import until matching resumes or completes. The Library Import flow is more permissive: pending rows read Paused (the summary bar counts them the same way), and deselecting them lets you import the already-matched subset right away — the page stays put afterwards so you can still resume the remainder.
When an import finishes, the outcome is reported truthfully — books that couldn’t be imported are never rolled into a green success message. Skips are called out with their reason (“already in your library”, “already being imported”), failures surface as errors, and a partial import stays on the page with the imported books deselected, so what’s left is what still needs attention.
Step 3: Import
Section titled “Step 3: Import”Choose an import mode:
| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Copy | Copies files into the library folder, leaving originals in place (default) |
| Move | Moves files to the library folder |
Click Import to process all selected books. Narratorr moves/copies each book’s files into the library using your configured folder format, creates database records, and enriches each book’s metadata. Only audio files are imported — non-audio companions in the folder (ebooks, .nfo, .cue, images) are not copied into the library, and on Move they are preserved at the source rather than deleted. Tagging and post-processing scripts apply to downloads, not manual imports — manual import does not embed audio tags or run the post-processing script. (It does write an OPF metadata sidecar when that setting is enabled — the OPF sidecar is independent of tag embedding.)
Editions and held-for-review. A different recording of a book you already own is imported alongside it in a separate edition folder — the existing recording is never overwritten. If narratorr can’t confidently classify a book (same recording, or different?), it’s held for review: after the import runs, held books appear in a review panel where you can re-confirm them or force the import. Forcing bypasses the duplicate check but never overwrites files on disk.
After the run. Every import run leaves a durable report: the import page shows a last-import panel summarizing the run, and the full record lives under Activity > History > Import History, with per-run counts for imported, held, skipped, and failed books. Runs that need attention (held or failed books) also surface a banner on the Library page that deep-links back to the report.
- Point to a parent folder containing multiple book subfolders — Narratorr discovers each one
- Books that already exist in your library are flagged and start unchecked, but you can still select them to force-import. Folders that appear more than once in the same scan are matched normally and de-duplicated at import time
- Unmatched books can still be imported after manually entering the metadata
- Use the Favorite Folders and Recent Folders lists below the path input to jump back to directories you scan often