AnimeWatcher

AnimeWatcher is a self-hosted anime tracker. It monitors your favorite anime via the AniList API and sends you push notifications through Pushover when new episodes air, a new season starts, a sequel is announced, or a season finishes.

Features

• 🔍 Search AniList — find any anime and add it to your watchlist with one click
• 👁️ Background monitoring — polls AniList on a configurable interval (rate-limit aware)
• 🔔 Pushover notifications — new episode, season started, new season announced, season finished
• ⚙️ Global + per-anime preferences — override notification types for individual anime
• 📖 Change history — see every episode and season change the monitor detected
• 🌐 Synopsis translation — translate synopses in place (RTL languages supported)
• 💾 Automatic backups — scheduled ZIP backups of the databases with retention pruning, plus export/import of your watchlist as JSON
• 🔐 Flexible authentication — require login always, bypass it for your local network, or disable it entirely
• 🚀 Fast UI — Blazor Interactive Auto (server-rendered first paint, WebAssembly after), response compression, and layered caching

Screenshots

Search	Anime details

Home	Settings

Quick Start with Docker

The image is published on Docker Hub: albahadly/animewatcher.

docker run -d \
  --name animewatcher \
  -p 8111:8111 \
  -v animewatcher-data:/app/data \
  -v animewatcher-animedb:/app/animedb \
  -v animewatcher-keys:/home/appuser/.aspnet/DataProtection-Keys \
  -v animewatcher-logs:/app/logs \
  albahadly/animewatcher:latest

Then open http://localhost:8111.

Or with Docker Compose:

services:
  animewatcher:
    image: albahadly/animewatcher:latest
    container_name: animewatcher
    ports:
      - "8111:8111"
    volumes:
      - animewatcher-data:/app/data
      - animewatcher-animedb:/app/animedb
      - animewatcher-keys:/home/appuser/.aspnet/DataProtection-Keys
      - animewatcher-logs:/app/logs
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  animewatcher-data:
  animewatcher-animedb:
  animewatcher-keys:
  animewatcher-logs:

See DOCKER.md for the full deployment guide: building the image yourself, SQL Server instead of SQLite, reverse proxy / HTTPS setup, backups, and troubleshooting.

First-run setup

1. Open the app and register an account (authentication is required by default; you can relax this later under Settings → Security).
2. Go to Settings and enter your Pushover User Key and App Token (create an application at pushover.net to get a token), then send a test notification.
3. Use Search Anime to find shows and click Monitor This Anime.
4. Done — the background service checks AniList on your configured interval and notifies you of changes.

Run from Source

Requires the .NET 10 SDK.

git clone https://github.com/albahadly/AnimeWatcher.git
cd AnimeWatcher
dotnet run --project AnimeWatcher/AnimeWatcher.csproj

The server hosts both the API and the client UI (default: http://localhost:5272).

Run the tests with:

dotnet test

Configuration

Setting	Where	Notes
Check interval, Pushover keys, notification types	Settings page (stored in DB)	Not environment variables — configured in the UI
Authentication mode	Settings → Security	Always required (default), local-network bypass, or disabled
Backups	Settings → Database	Interval, retention, manual backup/restore
ConnectionStrings__DefaultConnection	Environment variable	Identity (login) database. Defaults to SQLite; a Server=... connection string switches to SQL Server
ASPNETCORE_URLS	Environment variable	Listening URL, http://+:8111 in the Docker image

Data locations (Docker): anime data in /app/animedb/anime.db, identity in /app/data/identity.db, logs in /app/logs, backups alongside the anime DB. In development everything lives in the project folder.

Tech Stack

• .NET 10 / C# 14 — ASP.NET Core Minimal APIs
• Blazor Web App (Interactive Auto) — server-side rendering + WebAssembly client
• EF Core 10 — SQLite (anime data); SQLite or SQL Server (identity)
• Serilog — console + rolling file logs
• Bootstrap 5 — UI
• AniList GraphQL API — anime metadata; Pushover — notifications; MyMemory — translation

Solution Layout

AnimeWatcher/                # Server host: API endpoints, background services, server components
  Endpoints/                 # Minimal API endpoints (anime, settings, backup, translate, version)
  Services/                  # AniList client, cache, monitoring loop, Pushover, backups
  Data/                      # DbContexts + EF Core entities
  Components/                # Server-side Razor components (layout, Identity pages)
  Shared/                    # DTOs shared by the server

AnimeWatcher.Client/         # Blazor WebAssembly client
  Pages/                     # Interactive pages (Search, Monitored, AnimeDetails, Settings)
  Models/                    # Client-side mirror of the shared DTOs

AnimeWatcher.Tests/          # xUnit tests (monitoring service behavior)

API Overview

The server exposes a REST API under /api (used by the Blazor client):

• GET /api/anime/search?query=... — search AniList
• GET /api/anime/details/{aniListId} / seasons/{aniListId} / recommendations/{aniListId}
• GET /api/anime/monitored / unmonitored — your watchlist
• POST /api/anime/monitor / DELETE /api/anime/monitor/{aniListId} — add/remove
• PUT /api/anime/preferences/{aniListId} — per-anime notification preferences
• GET /api/anime/changes / season-changes — change history
• GET /api/anime/export / POST /api/anime/import — watchlist JSON export/import
• GET|PUT /api/settings/monitoring — global settings; POST /api/settings/test-notification
• /api/settings/db/* — backup create/list/download/restore
• POST /api/translate — synopsis translation proxy
• GET /health — health check; GET /api/version — app version

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Before submitting changes, see .github/copilot-instructions.md for the project's architecture rules and conventions (DTO synchronization, caching invalidation, logging, etc.), and run dotnet test.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.