What is Shoko Server

Shoko makes managing your anime collection effortless. It ensures that your collection is well-organized, accessible, and easy to navigate. Regardless of whether you have a small or large anime collection, Shoko can handle it. Thanks to its scalability, it can grow alongside your collection with ease.

With Shoko, you'll have access to your entire collection both locally and over the internet, with no additional work required outside the initial configuration of Shoko Server and one of the supported media player plugins. Say goodbye to manually inputting information or renaming your files to a specific format just to obtain basic series data - with Shoko, this is a thing of the past.

Shoko takes the hassle out of managing your anime collection. With its user-friendly interface, you can sit back and let it do the work for you. No more manual inputting or renaming - just effortless organization and access to your favorite anime.

Learn More About Shoko User Docs

Supported Media Players

Shoko currently supports the following media players.

• Plex via ShokoMetadata Download | Github Repo
• Jellyfin via Shokofin Download | Github Repo
• Kodi via Nakamori Download | Github Repo

Don't see your media player above? If you're a developer who wants to integrate Shoko with a new media player, join our Discord, and we'll be more than happy to provide guidance and assistance.

At this time, the Shoko team itself has no plans to integrate Shoko with any other media players.

Docker

variable	default	what
SHOKO_HOME	/home/shoko/.shoko/Shoko.CLI	where settings, logs and the database live — the directory to mount a volume at. A custom path must already exist; only the default is created for you, and it is required when running as root (PUID=0)
ENABLE_RESTART	true	allow the web interface to restart the server
ENABLE_SHUTDOWN	false	allow the web interface to shut the server down. Off by default because a stopped container will not restart itself from the web interface that just stopped it
INSTALL_PACKAGES	unset	extra apt packages to install before startup, space or comma separated
EXTRA_GROUPS	unset	supplementary groups for the server's user, by name or numeric ID, space or comma separated

PUID, PGID, UMASK and NO_CHOWN are also honoured, and the effective values are printed in the startup banner.

INSTALL_PACKAGES installs extra apt packages before the server starts. Space or comma separated, unset by default. It exists for userspace the image cannot ship for everyone but that has to be present before startup — GPU drivers for hardware transcoding above all, since plugins probe the hardware while starting and cache what they find.

environment:
  - INSTALL_PACKAGES=libva2 libva-drm2 intel-media-va-driver-non-free ffmpeg

Packages live in the container's writable layer, so they survive a restart but not a recreate, and are reinstalled on the next start when that happens. A package that fails to install is a warning, not a failure to boot.

EXTRA_GROUPS grants the server access to a passed-through device — /dev/dri for GPU transcoding above all, which is owned by the host's render group:

devices:
  - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
environment:
  - EXTRA_GROUPS=993        # stat -c '%g' /dev/dri/renderD128, on the host

Prefer the numeric ID: group names differ between distributions and need not exist in the container at all, while the kernel only compares numbers. An ID with no group behind it gets one created.

Note that Docker's own --group-add cannot do this. It adds groups to the container's root process, and the groups that survive dropping privileges are the ones recorded against the user — which is what EXTRA_GROUPS writes.

Building Shoko

Install the latest .net sdk

Windows:

Build TrayService or CLI from VS Code or command line via:

dotnet build Shoko.TrayService/Shoko.TrayService.csproj

Linux:

Install mediainfo and rhash. For apt, that would be:

sudo apt install mediainfo librhash-dev

Build from CLI:

dotnet build -c=Release -r linux-x64 -f net10.0 Shoko.CLI/Shoko.CLI.csproj

If that doesn't work, this document may be out of date. Check the dockerfile for guaranteedly updated build steps.

Contributing

We are always accepting help, and there are a million little things that always need done. Hop on our discord and talk to us. Communication is important in any team. No offense, but it's difficult to help anyone that shows up out of nowhere, opens 3 issues, then creates a PR without even talking to us. We have a wealth of experience. Let us help you...preferably before the ADHD takes over, you hyperfixate, and you come up with a fantastic solution to problem that isn't at all what you expected. Support is also best found in the discord, in case you read this far.