Sonarr Prefer X265

To help fine-tune this setup for your server, could you let me know you are running (v3 or v4) and whether your streaming clients require heavy transcoding ?

Ensure your is set to at least 100 . Step 3: Handling Potential Pitfalls

Go to and select your active profile (e.g., "HD-1080p"). Find the Custom Formats section at the bottom. Give your "x265/HEVC" format a positive score (e.g., +100 ).

Creating custom formats only defines what Sonarr should look for; you must assign numerical weights to these formats within your to change Sonarr's downloading behavior. Navigate to Settings > Profiles . sonarr prefer x265

Create blocks for unwanted releases:

A 1GB x264 episode often shrinks to ~500MB in x265 without visible quality loss.

Go to and select your active profile (e.g., "1080p"). To help fine-tune this setup for your server,

A Custom Format is a rule set that looks for specific strings in a release name (e.g., x265 , HEVC , 10bit , HDR ). You assign a to these rules. Sonarr then calculates the total score of every potential download and picks the highest-scoring release.

A common issue encountered when prioritizing x265 is the structural quality hierarchy within Sonarr. By default, Sonarr values source quality tags (like Bluray-1080p , WEBDL-1080p , and WebRip-1080p ) over codec choices.

Locate the field. Leave this blank (filling this forces Sonarr to only download x265, ignoring all other files). Find the Custom Formats section at the bottom

Ultimate Guide to Setting Up Sonarr to Prefer x265 (HEVC) Media

If you remote stream and your client doesn’t support x265, your Plex server will transcode → high CPU usage.

Configuring Sonarr to prefer x265 involves a few straightforward steps. Keep in mind that the exact steps might vary slightly depending on the version of Sonarr you're using and the client (like Radarr, Lidarr, or the standalone Sonarr) you're integrating with.