Frequently Asked Questions

How Can I Recommend a Feature?

Join the CLU Discord Server and let me know what you would like to see added. Post all feature requests in the #feature-requests channel.

How Can I Report a Bug?

The best way is to submit an Issue via github and label it as an enhancement or bug when submitted.

You can also join the CLU Discord Server and post it in the #bug-reports channel.

How Can I Say Thank You?

If you enjoyed this, want to say thanks or want to encourage updates and enhancements, feel free to

Can CLU notify me when a download finishes?

Yes, as of v6.4. Settings → Notifications takes one or more Apprise URLs — discord://, tgram://, ntfy://, mailto:// and 100+ others — and pushes when a download completes, a download fails, or wanted issues land in your library.

Nothing is sent until you add a URL and tick at least one event. See Notifications.

My comics were tagged from Metron with no creator credits

This was a real bug, fixed in v6.4 — and there's an automatic repair.

The Metron client library's response cache had no working TTL, so on a long-lived container CLU could tag a file from a body cached days earlier. Metron also finishes issue records after a comic ships, so a release-morning fetch legitimately has no credits yet. Either way the file was stuck: once ComicInfo.xml has a Notes field, every automatic tagging path skips it forever.

Turn on Credit Backfill (or click Backfill Credits Now) on the Schedules page. It asks Metron which issues have changed, repairs the affected files, and only rewrites a file when Metron actually has credits now.

CLU got my IP banned from Metron

Fixed in v6.4. CLU couldn't tell a 401 from a normal miss, so mistyped credentials meant it kept sending requests — through the nightly series sync, the Weekly Releases publisher warm, automap and auto-tagging — until fail2ban blocked the IP.

A 401 or 403 now latches a block on all Metron traffic, persisted across restarts. It doesn't time out: only saving your credentials, a successful Test, or the Re-enable button clears it. See Metron Authentication.

Can I use a Metron API token instead of my username and password?

Yes, as of v6.4. Generate a token on your metron.cloud account page, then pick API Token in the auth method picker on the Metron card in Settings → Metadata Providers.

Username and password still works — the token is an addition, not a replacement. If both are stored, the token wins. See Metron Authentication.

How do I change what folder cover art looks like?

Settings → Personalization → Folder Thumbnail Style, new in v6.4. Four styles: Fanned Stack (the default, unchanged from v6.3), Single Image, Isometric Cascade, and 2x2 Mosaic Grid.

Picking a style only affects art generated from that point on. To restyle art you already have, run Regenerate All Thumbnails — from Personalization for every library, or from a top-level folder's menu for one branch. See Folder Thumbnail Style.

Can I choose which cover a folder uses?

Yes. Open the folder, click the menu on the issue you want, and choose Set as Folder Thumbnail.

The pin is the folder's primary cover in every style — the whole image in Single Image, the front card in Fanned Stack and Cascade, the top-left tile in the Mosaic — so switching styles never loses your choice. See Set as Folder Thumbnail.

I ran Regenerate All Thumbnails on a publisher and its own art didn't change

That's deliberate. A sweep never touches the folder it was invoked on — running it on /data/DC Comics restyles every series inside and leaves that publisher's own folder.png alone, because a hand-picked publisher image isn't what you're replacing when you restyle series art. The all-libraries sweep skips the library roots the same way.

To change a publisher's own art, upload a new image to that folder.

Where did the Auto-Unpack setting go?

Removed in v6.4. Archives dropped in WATCH are now always unpacked, so there's nothing left to configure and the dead AUTO_UNPACK key is stripped from your config.ini on the next start.

It shipped off, which meant a fresh install silently stranded packs in WATCH. Unpacking is also content-aware now: ready comics get extracted, a .zip that's really a comic is renamed to .cbz rather than exploded into loose pages, and a loose .rar — previously ignored outright — is handled too. See How archives in WATCH are handled.

My download failed but CLU didn't notify me for twenty minutes

Working as intended. As of v6.4 a failed download is retried up to 3 times, spaced 1, 5 and 15 minutes apart, and the failure notification is held back until those are spent — so a notification means "genuinely dead" rather than "the first mirror hiccuped".

Downloads blocked by Cloudflare are the exception: they skip the retries and report immediately, because no automated client can pass a managed challenge.

I get \"Illegal seek\" or CBZ write errors on a mergerfs / FUSE mount

This is fixed as of v6.0. If your library or /data lives on a mergerfs, network, or other FUSE mount, older builds could fail zip writes with OSError: [Errno 29] Illegal seek. CLU now assembles every zip write on a local seekable volume and moves the finished file into place, so these failures are gone. Those writes also get consistent parent-folder permissions as a bonus. If you're still seeing the error, update to v6.0 or later.

Why is my DC++ search taking 30 seconds?

That's normal. AirDC++ queues searches and paces them per hub to avoid getting you kicked. On a two-hub setup the query may not be dispatched for ~17 seconds, with results settling around ~30 seconds.

CLU waits on the AirDC++ instance's own progress counters rather than a fixed timeout, capped at 45 seconds, and returns as soon as results stop arriving. It isn't stalled. See DC++ Searching & Grabbing.

Can I use DC++ or ApexDC instead of AirDC++?

No. CLU talks to the AirDC++ Web Client through its REST API. DC++ itself, ApexDC, FlylinkDC and the rest have no remote API for CLU to call, so there is nothing to connect to.

You need to install and run AirDC++ Web Client separately — it's the same relationship CLU has with SABnzbd on the Usenet side. See DC++ Downloads.

My DC++ downloads land with mangled names like \"_downloads_temp_Farmhouse 007\"

Your Target Directory isn't a path shape the AirDC++ host understands. On a Windows host, / is a forbidden filename character rather than a separator, so a POSIX path gets folded into the filename and sanitized — and the file lands in AirDC++'s own default download folder.

Set Target Directory to a path as AirDC++ sees it, and Local Target Directory to the same folder as CLU sees it. Then run Test Connection, which validates both. See Adding AirDC++.

Why does the Publisher filter on Weekly Releases only show some publishers?

The cache is still warming. Metron's issue-list endpoint doesn't return a publisher, and resolving one per series would be roughly 150 API calls a week against the rate limit — so CLU fills a self-warming cache in bulk passes instead.

On a cold week the pills populate progressively over the first few visits. Once a week is cached, filtering is instant. See Releases.

I set the theme in Settings but my users still see the old one

As of v6.3 the theme in Settings is the site default, not a global override. Any user who has picked their own theme in My Account has opted out of the default, and changing it won't move them.

Users with no personal theme follow the site default and will see your change. Anyone showing a Custom badge on their Appearance pane needs to hit Reset to go back to following it. See Personalization.

Why doesn't my reading list appear on the dashboard?

You have to bookmark it. The Bookmark action on a reading list card is the single opt-in that puts the list in Want to Read and feeds its next unread issue into On the Stack.

Bookmarks are per user, so in a multi-user install everyone bookmarks their own. Readers can bookmark too. See Reading Lists on the Dashboard.

My On the Stack shows a later issue than I expected

On the Stack takes the first entry in the list's own sort order that is unread and has a matched file. Entries with no matched file are skipped, not counted as unread — so if issues 3 and 4 aren't mapped to local files, it will show issue 5.

Map the missing issues to put them back in the sequence.

My folder art disappeared after a refresh

Fixed in v6.3. Nothing updated the index flag after writing folder art, and the grid reads art off that flag rather than the disk — so generated thumbnails vanished on reload until the next full library scan. The same bug affected the manual Generate Thumbnail button.

Upgrade to v6.3, where folder art also generates itself as you browse.

I added a user and now everyone has to log in — why?

Multi-user mode activates automatically the moment a second account exists. There's no separate switch. With a single account and no CLU_USERNAME/CLU_PASSWORD env gate, CLU runs login-free.

To get back to no-login, delete the extra accounts and remove the env variables. See First Run & Logging In.

My new user can see the library list but no files

A library grant is the outer gate, not access on its own — a granted library with no folders checked shows nothing.

Open the user in Settings → Users and check the folders they should see (or the library root for the whole library). See Library & Folder Access.

I lost my only owner password

The last active Store Owner can't be demoted, deactivated, or deleted, so you can't lock yourself out from inside the app — but there is no in-app password recovery. Setting CLU_USERNAME/CLU_PASSWORD after an owner exists does not reset it; those variables only seed an owner when no account exists at all.

Recovering means resetting the password directly in the CLU database. Ask on Discord before you start.