This week in SparkBox: Sep 22 – Sep 28, 2026

Published Monday, Sep 28, 2026

Every Monday we list what changed on every SparkBox in the last seven days, in plain language, with nothing left out. This week: 42 releases (1.6.768 to 1.6.809), 105 improvements, and 2 incidents we owe you an explanation for. If your box is up to date, you already have all of it; if not, run sudo sparkbox update.

What broke, and what we did about it

Jellyfin sign-in broken after the last update? Update to 1.6.723 affects 1.6.720 to 1.6.722

SparkBox 1.6.720 to 1.6.722 put Jellyfin back on version 10 while many boxes were already on 12, and a Jellyfin library that has been upgraded to 12 cannot be opened by 10 (sign-in fails with a database error). 1.6.723 restores Jellyfin 12.1. Run the update now; your library, users and settings are untouched. Do not delete or reset Jellyfin data.

Privacy update: SparkBox 1.6.790 affects ? to 1.6.789

SparkBox 1.6.790 keeps the names of what you download and watch on your box — Tom AI, support tickets and crash reports get labels instead, even to us. Update now to turn it on.

Incidents get a banner on every affected dashboard the moment we know, and the fix is always an update away. We would rather tell you than have you find out.

What shipped

1.6.809 — The Cloudflare Tunnel starts again on its own after your box restarts

• If your box restarted — after a power cut, a reboot, or a NAS system update — the Cloudflare Tunnel app could stay stopped while every other app came back, so your web addresses stopped working until you pressed Resume on the classic Home page, and the new dashboard did not show that anything was down. The Cloudflare Tunnel now starts again with the rest of your apps after every restart. Update once to get it; your tunnel token and hostname routes are unchanged.

1.6.808 — Immich's database-login repair now fixes a login that has really gone wrong

• If Immich stopped starting because its database was refusing Immich's password, `sudo sparkbox repair-immich-db-auth` could wrongly report "Immich's on-disk password already matches its database" and change nothing, so Immich stayed down and the repair looked used up. The repair's check was being let in without the password being tested at all. It now tests the password the same way Immich does, so on an affected box it takes a safety copy of the database, resets only the database login to the saved password, and restarts Immich. Your photos and the database contents are not replaced.

1.6.807 — A failed SSL certificate for your domain now says why

• When you set up your own domain for an app and the SSL certificate could not be issued, Nginx Proxy Manager only ever said "Internal Error", and the Custom Domains setup told you to check that Nginx Proxy Manager was running — which it was. The real reason from Let's Encrypt was hidden in a log on the box. The Custom Domains setup now reads that log and tells you what actually went wrong: the domain's DNSSEC is broken, it has no A record pointing at your home, your router does not forward port 80 to the box, something else (like a Cloudflare proxy) answers on port 80, or Let's Encrypt has paused requests after too many tries — each with the one thing to fix.

1.6.806 — Tom AI explains the risk when you ask it to format a drive

• When you asked Tom AI how to format a drive, it refused (rightly — formatting erases everything, and one wrong letter wipes a different disk), but then gave you advice about folder permissions on your media library that had nothing to do with the question. It now says plainly what formatting would erase, gives you one safe check (`lsblk -f`, which shows every drive, its filesystem and where it is mounted), and explains how to mount a drive and point SparkBox's media folder at it. It still never hands out a format command.

1.6.805 — The health check spots a Jellyfin GPU setting with no GPU behind it

• If hardware acceleration was switched on in Jellyfin but no graphics chip actually reaches it — always the case on a Windows PC running SparkBox in WSL2, where Jellyfin cannot use the Intel or AMD graphics — every video your TV or phone needs converted fails to play, while others play fine, and the health check said nothing. `sudo sparkbox doctor` now warns when Jellyfin is set to a GPU it doesn't have and tells you to set Hardware acceleration back to None; on Windows it also says that software transcoding is the right setting there.

1.6.804 — Tom AI no longer turns app names into “[movie title]” labels

• SparkBox hides the names of what you download and watch before anything leaves your box. If one line it read happened to call Jellyfin (or another app, or an everyday word) a film title, it then hid that word for the rest of the chat, so a stopped Jellyfin showed up as “[movie title 2]-media” and the logs command Tom AI suggested could not work. App names and everyday words are now hidden only on the line that named them, so container names and commands read correctly again; real film and show names are still hidden everywhere.

1.6.803 — The health check now tells you when your media drive isn't connected

• If your media folder is under /mnt or /media but no drive is actually connected (mounted) there, everything you download quietly lands on the system disk, the new drive never shows up, and the health check (sudo sparkbox doctor) used to show only green ticks. It now says so plainly: that no drive is mounted at your media folder, the one command that shows where each drive is connected, and how to connect the drive and point SparkBox at it. If you keep media on the system disk on purpose, it is a note, not a problem.

1.6.802 — The health check no longer warns about Windows' Public network when yours is Private

• On a Windows PC, the health check (sudo sparkbox doctor) always showed a yellow warning that Windows might have your network on its Public setting, which blocks other devices, without ever checking. People whose network was already set to Private saw it every time, took it for the problem, and restarted everything to clear it. The health check now asks Windows: it warns only when the network your PC uses is really set to Public, says so plainly when it is Private, and when Windows can't be asked it shows a short note with the one command to check it yourself.

1.6.801 — Backups no longer refuse to run because of a media library they leave out

• Backups leave your media library out unless you tick it in, and the archive really did leave it out. But the free-space check that runs first measured the whole data folder with the library still in it, so on a PC or Linux install (where the library sits inside SparkBox's own data folder) a backup of your settings was told it needed about the size of your whole library and refused to start. The check now leaves the library out the same way the backup does, so Back up now runs when the settings fit, and still counts the library if you choose to include it.

1.6.800 — A city typed as a VPN server name no longer takes the downloads down silently

• If a city (for example "los angeles") was typed into the VPN Server Hostnames box, the VPN refused to start at all and every download app waited on it, while the dashboard's VPN alert told you to re-pick your cities and country. That box takes exact server names like us5921.nordvpn.com. Saving now refuses a city there and points you to VPN Server Cities, and the alert now names the hostname box as the one to clear.
• When the VPN refuses one of its own settings it stops right after starting, so the health check (sudo sparkbox doctor) only ever caught it "still starting" and never said why. It now shows the VPN's own reason, cut to one readable line instead of the provider's whole server list, and the one line to clear the setting it names.

1.6.799 — Fewer false alarms on Windows, and a one-line fix for a locked-out WordPress

• On a Windows PC that is very busy (for example right after switching on many apps at once), the health check could not get an answer from Windows in time — and then reported that the start-with-Windows task was missing and that another program had taken the dashboard's address, each with a fix that changes your box. Both were false. The health check now says it could not check those two things from there, the same way it already did for the other Windows checks.
• If WordPress shows an error page because its database no longer accepts the password SparkBox saved for it, the health check now points at a safe one-line repair, sudo sparkbox repair-db-auth wordpress, the same one Nextcloud and BookStack already had. It saves a copy of the database first, changes only the login to match, and restarts WordPress. Your site and its content are not replaced.

1.6.798 — See free space on your media drive

• If your media library lives on a different drive than SparkBox itself, the dashboard now shows how much space is left on it. The "Your storage" card adds a line under the ring (for example "Media drive: 3.1 TB free of 4 TB") and the ring is labelled as the SparkBox drive; the Legend layout's "Storage by drive" shows the media drive as its own donut. Before, the card only measured the drive SparkBox is installed on, so a library on a second drive only showed up once it was 85% full. On a box where the library shares the SparkBox drive nothing changes: the ring already is that drive.

1.6.797 — Clearer Media pipeline warnings, and Restart works on VPN apps again

• If Sonarr or Radarr refused a download because it contained a program file (.exe and the like), the "Into your library" step on the home page could show it as a warning that "often clears on its own". It never clears — the app refuses that copy on purpose. It now shows as a failure straight away, with the Try a different copy button.
• On a box with a long download queue, "Into your library" could say a download had "disappeared before it reached your library" when it was simply further down the queue and still downloading. SparkBox now only says a download disappeared when it has checked the whole queue.
• When the VPN container was replaced (for example after an update or a memory change), apps that run through the VPN — like Byparr or the download apps — could stay stopped, and pressing Restart next to them on the Container health card only said "Failed to restart container". Restart now reconnects that app to the VPN and brings it back, the same way `sudo sparkbox restart media` does, without touching your other apps.

1.6.796 — Cloudflare error 1033 now points you at the right fix

• If you published an app through Cloudflare Tunnel and the address showed Cloudflare error 1033, the hostname check in SparkBox told you the hostname route was missing and to add it again — even when the route was already right. Error 1033 actually means Cloudflare cannot reach a running tunnel connector. The check now says so: look at the Cloudflare Tunnel card in SparkBox first (if it is not healthy, its token is wrong or the connector has stopped), and if the card is healthy, the address belongs to a different tunnel in Cloudflare. Nothing about your tunnel or your apps changes.

1.6.795 — Removed qBittorrent to use Usenet only? It stays removed

• If you deleted qBittorrent from Sonarr or Radarr (or switched it off) because you only use Usenet, SparkBox put it back and switched it on again the next time it re-checked how your media apps are connected — right after you filled in your Usenet details, for example — so downloads kept going to qBittorrent. SparkBox now leaves that choice alone: a qBittorrent you switched off stays off, and one you removed is not added back while another download client such as SABnzbd is on. A new box, or an app whose settings were reset, still gets qBittorrent connected for you. Nothing else about your downloads changes.

1.6.794 — Apps you add yourself now show up in Your box

• Adding your own app in Settings → Your box → Add your own app stopped partway: SparkBox's safety check could not run inside the dashboard, so the app was never finished and, when it did start, the dashboard could not read its settings file — Your box said "None yet" and the Apps page had no card. Adding an app from the dashboard now completes, the app shows up in Your box and on the Apps page, and apps added before this update appear by themselves the next time SparkBox starts. Saving an app override from the dashboard works again for the same reason, and `sparkbox custom list` no longer calls a checked app "unchecked". Your apps and their settings are untouched.

1.6.793 — Cloudflare Tunnel guide: addresses that actually reach your apps

• Cloudflare Tunnel's guide and its app card told you to point a hostname at addresses that don't exist on most boxes, so Cloudflare showed a "Bad gateway" page while your box's own address and port worked. They now name addresses that work: the Media Center's Jellyfin is sb-jellyfin-media:8096, Audiobookshelf is sb-audiobookshelf:80, and apps that run through the VPN are reached through sb-gluetun (SABnzbd: sb-gluetun:8081). They also explain what a Bad gateway page means. Nothing on your box changes.

1.6.792 — A clear answer when Docker can't see SparkBox's files

• If Docker was installed as a Snap package, SparkBox's apps could not start and the message called a settings file broken and suggested an update that could not help. SparkBox now says plainly that this Docker cannot see its files, names the Snap version when that is what is installed, and points to the steps to switch to Docker's standard version. Your settings are untouched.

1.6.791 — Clearer wording on the VPN panels, the Money saved card and Tom AI's search-source help

• The VPN panels now say what the tunnel actually does: your download apps connect only through the encrypted VPN, and the kill switch stops them if it drops. The Money saved card compares your apps with similar cloud services by category instead of naming other companies' prices, and Tom AI's help for a search source that fails its Cloudflare check explains the cause and the fix without pointing at any particular site. What Tom AI can diagnose and fix is unchanged.

1.6.790 — Tom AI only ever sends de-identified text, ARM boxes see which apps can't run, and clearer VPN advice

• Before Tom AI's model sees anything from your box, SparkBox now replaces the names of what you download and watch, your indexers and trackers, your addresses, box name, shared folders and email with plain labels like "TV release 1" or "indexer A". The diagnosis works the same on the labels, and your own screen still shows the real names.
• Your box now also knows the titles in its own library and the names of its Jellyfin and Seerr users, so a title you type as plain words ("why is dune stuck?") is swapped for a label too, except a one-word title that is also an everyday word, like Up or Heat. The problem itself still goes through as you wrote it, including the codec and resolution of a release (2160p, x265, HDR), so answers are as good as before, and when Tom AI acts on a label your box acts on the real item.
• The same labels now cover everything else that leaves your box: the case Tom AI files when it gets stuck, the summary of how its fixes went, "Share to demox" (both Tom's private copy and the public post it opens), the text of support tickets, crash reports, and the weekly note, which now sends counts only and adds the titles on your box. What we still see when you use these features: whether your box is healthy, which apps and errors, counts and timings.
• On the support ticket form, "Include host info" and "Attach a diagnostics bundle" now start unticked. A diagnostics bundle carries logs only from SparkBox's own system apps, a ticket no longer includes your box's name, and error reports leave out download folder names and magnet links.
• On a 64-bit ARM box such as a Raspberry Pi, the installer names the apps that are published for Intel/AMD only, the App Store marks them and won't install them, app bundles skip them, and Tom AI won't suggest them. Hearth Chat now runs on ARM too.
• The check SparkBox runs after an update no longer calls your box "overloaded" when it has plenty of free memory. It names the apps that aren't healthy instead, so the real cause (often the VPN) isn't hidden behind "do not restart apps".
• When sparkbox doctor suggests a smaller WireGuard packet size for a VPN that can't look anything up, it now also prints the restart that puts it to work. Before, the setting was saved but not used until Media Center restarted.

1.6.789 — Updating no longer deletes your WordPress site, Terraria worlds or Stable Diffusion models

• Updating SparkBox deleted some apps' data because they keep it in folders the update did not carry across: the WordPress and Ghost databases (the site came back healthy but on its install wizard, with no error), the Web App's site files, Terraria worlds, and Stable Diffusion's downloaded models, pictures and extensions. From this update on they are kept through every update, rollback and restore.
• If your WordPress or Ghost site came back empty after an earlier update, a full SparkBox backup made before that update includes its database.

1.6.788 — A daily tip from Tom AI, and a nudge to open your apps by name

• Once a day a small card at the top of the Overview suggests one thing that would make your box better, worked out from your box's own state: a VPN that isn't connected, a backup that has never run or keeps failing, an app that keeps restarting, a disk filling up, or a missed setting such as hardware transcoding. Each tip says where to fix it and links a guide. No AI writes the tip and nothing leaves your box to make it.
• Got it hides a tip for 14 days, Remind me tomorrow hides it for today, and Settings → General → Daily tip turns the card off. Free boxes get one tip a day. Legend adds Show me another tip and, for backups, updates and friendly addresses, a Do it for me button that asks you to confirm first.
• After an app opens, a small tip can show the name you could type instead of the IP address, like sonarr.sparkbox.home.arpa, with a link to the guide. It shows at most once a day, never over a warning, and Don't show this again turns it off for good.
• Settings → Addresses now links the new guide, How to open your SparkBox apps by name, at the top and in the phone help, and Tom AI points to it when you ask about app names.
• The custom-apps guide's recipe for putting your own app behind the VPN now lists the ports SparkBox's download apps already use inside the VPN, a one-line check for a port clash, and how to undo the change.

1.6.787 — Open your apps by name instead of by IP and port

• Settings → Addresses gives every app a name you can type on your phone or laptop at home, like jellyfin.sparkbox.home.arpa, and sparkbox.home.arpa for the dashboard. Pick your own name and ending, turn it on, and SparkBox sets up the names through the Nginx Proxy Manager it already runs. The names only answer from your home network and Tailscale; the internet gets refused.
• If you run Pi-hole or AdGuard Home on SparkBox, the names are added to it for you (AdGuard asks for its login once) and kept up to date when you add or remove an app. Without one, the page shows what to change on your router or computer. On a UGREEN NAS the names end in :8080, because UGOS keeps port 80 for itself; the page says so.
• App tiles switch to the name only after your browser has reached it once, so nothing breaks while your phone or router is catching up. Tom AI can check a name you typed and tell you why your phone cannot open it.
• Clicking Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr or another app no longer opens a "can't reach this page" tab when that app isn't running. The dashboard now says why: the VPN hasn't connected yet (with a button to check your VPN key), the app is stopped, or, on Windows, the firewall is blocking that address, with what to do in each case.

1.6.786 — Remove a title everywhere, clean up after deleted requests, see what an update changes, and your own apps stay on after an upgrade

• Updating SparkBox switched off apps you added yourself: an update stops every app and starts the ones on SparkBox's list again, and it took your own apps off that list, so they never came back. Your own apps now stay on the list and start again after every update. If one went missing after an earlier update, run sudo sparkbox custom list, then sudo sparkbox enable <name> and sudo sparkbox up <name>.
• Remove a movie, a show or one season everywhere at once: ask Tom AI ("delete Dune from my library"), press Remove a title on the Media card, or run sudo sparkbox purge "Dune" --year 2021. It only acts on a title named exactly as in your library, shows what will go and asks for your dashboard password. The download is cancelled, the torrent removed, the title taken out of Radarr or Sonarr, and the files moved to SparkBox's trash for 7 days, so Undo puts everything back.
• When someone deletes a request in Seerr, the Media card now says how many deleted requests still have files on disk and how much space they use, with Clean up (to the 7-day trash, Undo possible) and Keep them. To do it automatically, turn on Settings → Media → "Clean up when a request is deleted" (off by default). Seasons someone else still asked for are kept.
• Before you update, Updates → SparkBox Core lists every release between your version and the one your box will get, with its notes, and which of your apps the update gives a new version or restarts. An update that only changes the dashboard says no app is touched. On the host, sudo sparkbox upgrade --check shows the same.

1.6.785 — Tom AI no longer tells you to "try again" when retrying will not help

• When Tom AI could not reach its AI service partway through an answer, it added "Try again in a moment." to the end of every error, even the ones that say waiting or retrying will not fix it and you should start a new chat or contact support. It now keeps the error's own advice and only suggests trying again when the error gives no advice of its own.

1.6.784 — Your own app behind the VPN comes back after VPN changes, and Tom AI stops resetting Portainer's password for the wrong problem

• A custom app you put behind the VPN now comes back on its own when an update or a VPN change replaces the VPN connection, the same way SparkBox's own download apps do. Before, it stayed offline until you restarted it yourself. If it still cannot come back, SparkBox tells you the one command that fixes it. The custom apps guide now shows how to put your own app behind the VPN.
• Asked why Portainer could not reach a Portainer Agent on another computer, Tom AI could run the Portainer sign-in repair, which makes a new admin password and does nothing for that problem. Tom AI now runs that repair only after the box's own check shows Portainer really is refusing its saved password.

1.6.783 — Fresh installs wire the media apps and set up Jellyfin on their own again

• On a brand-new install, turning on the Media Center could leave the apps unwired: Jellyfin stayed on its own setup screen, Seerr was not linked, and Tom AI said it had no Jellyfin key. A log file created during install belonged to the wrong user, so the automatic wiring stopped before it began. SparkBox now fixes that file's owner itself and never lets the log stop the wiring.

1.6.782 — A VPN that hasn't connected shows as one problem, not a list of broken apps

• When the VPN (gluetun) had not connected, the health line on the Version 2 and Version 3 dashboards listed every app that runs through it as its own problem, for example "byparr (stopped), chaptarr (stopped), gluetun (unhealthy) and 6 more", with the real cause third. Those apps are only waiting for the VPN. The line now names the VPN first and counts the apps waiting on it: "gluetun (unhealthy, 8 apps waiting on it)". Anything else that is wrong is still named on its own.

1.6.781 — Tom AI no longer says a restart failed because of a finished setup helper

• When Tom AI restarted an app group, it could report "the verification did not pass" and blame sb-clamav-init, the antivirus module's one-time setup helper, which stops on purpose once its job is done. Tom AI now knows a finished setup helper is not a broken app: it no longer counts it against a restart and no longer offers to fix it. A setup helper that actually failed is still reported.

1.6.780 — New home page cards, Tom AI helps run your box, and search sources behind a Cloudflare check work on their own

• The home page cards on the new dashboard got an overhaul. There is a Weather card (today and the next four days, °C or °F, pick your city; your server fetches it and never locates you by IP). Legend boxes also get Now streaming (who is watching what on Jellyfin), Coming up (this week's episodes and movie releases) and Requests (what your household asked for and what each request is waiting on). Your storage card shows the space apps can really use and roughly when the disk will be full at this rate, and every card has a small Ask button that opens Tom AI already asking about that card.
• Several home page card bugs are fixed: the media pipeline card no longer gets hidden by a layout, Reset layout no longer brings back old cards, Container health no longer says "Loading…" forever on a new box, and free space no longer counts the part of the disk only the system can use. Resource usage and the old VPN tunnel card are replaced by Server pulse and Your connection.
• You can now ask Tom AI about your own SparkBox, not only about problems: what is filling your disk, what was watched this week, whether anything is reachable from the internet, and what changed recently. Ask "what should we watch?" or "something like Severance?" and it suggests only films and shows you already have. After you confirm, it can set up a Jellyfin login for a child that only shows PG titles, switch new downloads between 1080p and 4K, and add an app by what it does ("a music server"). Legend boxes also get a short weekly note on the home page; if you have turned Tom AI off, the note is written on your box and nothing is sent out.
• Some search sources sit behind an "are you human?" check that SparkBox answers for you. It can take a minute, and on some setups SparkBox gave up too early, so Prowlarr's Test button spun and then failed. SparkBox now allows two minutes, puts each search source you add onto the helper by itself within a few minutes (and leaves it alone if you take it off), and `sudo sparkbox doctor` names a site whose checks keep failing.
• After a fresh reinstall, the pop-up with each app's new username and password shows again the first time you open Jellyfin or Seerr. Before, your browser remembered the old install and skipped it, so the new passwords never appeared.
• "Add your own app" can be reached from the Version 2 and 3 dashboards: Settings has an "Open Your box" button that opens that page in Classic just for this, and your dashboard choice stays as you set it.
• On a fresh Usenet setup, Radarr and Sonarr no longer warn that SABnzbd's download folder "does not appear to exist inside the container". SABnzbd only makes its movies and TV folders when the first download finishes, so SparkBox now creates them in advance. A Completed folder you moved outside your media folder is left alone.
• Running the installer on a Mac now stops straight away and says how a Mac can run SparkBox (install Ubuntu on an Intel Mac, or run SparkBox on another box and open the dashboard from the Mac), instead of failing partway through with no reason given.
• On the Classic dashboard, saving an override under Settings → Your box, "Check, add and start", removing your own app, resetting a saved password and approving a Tom AI repair now open the box to confirm your password when SparkBox asks for it. Before, they only said a password was needed and gave you nowhere to type it.
• "Check, add and start" under Settings → Your box now starts your app after adding it. Before, it only added and switched the app on, so it stayed stopped until someone ran `sudo sparkbox up`.
• After an update, SparkBox no longer reports "1 app not healthy: sb-clamav-init" while Doctor says everything passed. That helper does its one setup job and stops on purpose; one that actually fails is still reported.
• The App Store's "Media" preset button, which did not work, is gone. Custom, Privacy and Full stay.

1.6.779 — The new dashboard stays your choice, a cleaner logo, and cut-off restarts clean up after themselves

• If you use the new dashboard, opening My Vault or the "Access from anywhere" guide used to switch your whole dashboard back to Classic and leave it there. It now opens Classic just for that page, with a "Back to your dashboard" button, and your choice stays as you set it.
• Picking a dashboard now sticks in every open tab. Before, a tab still showing the Legend dashboard (Version 2) kept showing it, so when an update finished and that tab refreshed itself you were back on Version 2 even though you had chosen Version 3. Any open tab now switches to the dashboard you picked the next time it loads.
• SparkBox has a fresh logo with a clean transparent background, so it looks right on the sign-in screen, in the sidebar, in your browser tab and on your phone's home screen, in light and dark mode.
• If an update or restart was cut off halfway, Docker could leave a spare copy of an app named with a long code in front, like "697df57ca38a_sb-jellyfin-media". That copy made every later restart of the app fail, or left the app running under the odd name. SparkBox now removes those leftover copies before it starts or restarts your apps. They never ran, so nothing is lost.

1.6.778 — Restarting one app touches only that app, and Tom AI's hands-on mode is on again

• Restarting an app from the dashboard or Tom AI and then from the command line no longer restarts all your media apps or briefly cuts the VPN. SparkBox now uses one version of Docker Compose everywhere on your box, and while a restart you asked for is running, SparkBox's own watchdog waits instead of trying to "fix" the apps that are restarting on purpose.
• Changing one app's memory limit, or asking Tom AI to restart one app, now rebuilds only that app. If the VPN connection has to be rebuilt, your download apps move onto the new one and are checked to be running, instead of being left stopped while SparkBox said they were reconnected.
• Resetting your qBittorrent password no longer leaves Sonarr and Radarr locked out of it for an hour. The reset clears qBittorrent's lock-out and checks that both apps can really sign in — and says so if they can't.
• Tom AI's hands-on mode — the one that can press the dashboard's own buttons for you, install an app, back up, move your VPN or reset a password — was switched off on most boxes by mistake, even though the chat said it was on. It is on again unless you turned it off in Settings.
• When an app is stopped or failing, the Home page now says which one — for example "bazarr (stopped)" — on every dashboard style, not only the classic one.
• Pressing Restart on your media apps now tells you whether the restart actually worked, and shows the reason if it didn't, instead of always saying "Restarting".
• Ask Tom AI about your backups, disk space, VPN location, invites or requests and it now looks at your box and offers the button, instead of telling you to run a command. It no longer answers questions about your own box from a saved forum reply written for someone else on an old version. Asking for a movie with its year ("Night of the Living Dead (1968)") finds it, and Tom AI can clear Jellyfin's old streaming files on a standard install.
• Tom AI only mentions that your box is overloaded while it actually is. When it fixes something it tells you the result instead of "I ran out of steps", "Back up now" is judged by the backup itself so a busy moment no longer reports a good backup as failed, and after a restore the chat tells you how it went once the dashboard is back.
• SparkBox no longer restarts Sonarr, Radarr and Prowlarr every time it checks their connections — it was misreading Prowlarr's hidden API key as a wrong one. A harmless "command not found" line in the Seerr setup log is gone too.
• Restoring a backup no longer leaves a hidden full-size copy of it in your backups folder (old leftovers are cleaned up automatically), and the Backups page's list of what is left out shows your media folder's real path.
• If Seerr asks you for a Jellyfin address and email again, Tom AI now points you straight to the one command that signs it back in.

1.6.777 — Restart buttons work again, the Media card is back, and Tom AI can fix things for you

• Restart buttons and settings that restart an app work again. Since July, pressing Restart on an app, saving a new VPN, changing a setting that rebuilds an app, or resetting an app password in Settings → Passwords often didn't actually happen — a safety check quietly refused it in the background. They now run the same way updates do, and if one fails the dashboard (or Tom AI) tells you instead of acting as if it worked.
• The Media card on your home page works again. The newer Jellyfin that SparkBox installs stopped accepting the way the card sent its access key, so Now Playing, Recently Added, Continue Watching and your library counts were empty on most boxes. They're back.
• The checkup no longer says your Jellyfin password is wrong when it isn't. It was introducing itself to Jellyfin in an old way the Jellyfin version we install turns away before it even looks at the password. A genuinely out-of-date password is still caught. The same fix lets the checkup read Jellyfin's hardware-transcoding setting on boxes with a graphics card.
• When something was wrong, the Home banner said "1 service needs attention" and pointed you at a page of thirty-odd apps to find it yourself. It now names the app — and the Apps page card names it too, instead of saying "1 service unhealthy" over a list where every service still had a green dot. An app that is running but failing its own health check no longer shows green anywhere.
• The Security page tells you in one line whether you need to do anything. Most of the time it says "Nothing you need to do": the known issues it finds are inside each app's own software, their makers fix them, and SparkBox brings those updates to you. You only see a to-do — and a number on the Security tab — when there is something you can actually do, like pressing Update for an app whose new version is ready.
• Tom AI can now do the fix instead of describing it. It can press your dashboard's own fix buttons (like the Media card's "Clean up" for leftover downloads) and offer approved repairs when a check shows a problem — restarting an app that is down, fixing a Portainer or database login, refreshing the VPN server list, or giving an app that keeps running out of memory more room. You approve every one, and Tom AI re-checks your apps before saying anything is fixed.
• Ask Tom AI to: reset an app's password (the new one goes to Settings → Passwords, never into the chat), install an app from the catalog after checking your box has room, add someone to your Jellyfin with a one-time invite or a new login, move your VPN to another country or city, show what is filling your disk and clean up only safe things, back up now or tell you when the last backup ran, restore a backup (it takes a fresh backup first), request a movie or show through your own Seerr, or start an app or SparkBox update. Anything that changes your box asks you first; deleting or restoring also asks for your dashboard password.
• New command sudo sparkbox set-memory <app> <size> gives an app that keeps running out of memory more room and restarts only that app; sudo sparkbox set-memory <app> default puts it back. The checkup now prints the exact line to run for each app it saw run out of memory.
• Tunarr sets itself up: it connects to your Jellyfin (and Plex, if it's signed in), switches on your Movies and TV libraries, and uses your graphics chip for encoding when your box has one SparkBox already uses for Jellyfin. Go straight to Channels and build one.
• More apps connect themselves: SABnzbd is now linked to Lidarr and Chaptarr the way it already was to Sonarr and Radarr, Unpackerr picks up your Sonarr and Radarr keys without you pasting them, and Chaptarr gets its Books and Audiobooks folders again (its last update had quietly stopped that). Connections you set up yourself are left alone.
• When support proposes a database-login repair on your ticket and you approve it, it now actually runs — it used to stop at a question nobody could answer and still report that it had finished.
• Homarr is no longer offered — SparkBox's own dashboard already puts every app on one page. If your box already runs Homarr, nothing changes: it keeps running and updating until you remove it.
• Tom Spark's Fleet is a card you can remove. The banner and nav links from the last release became one compact Home card: link your pilot once with a code from the game and it shows your ship, credits, kills, rescues and where you are parked. Don't play? Click Remove card and it is gone from every dashboard on your box, and you can add it back any time from Customize or Settings.

1.6.776 — You can type the Cloudflare tunnel token into Settings again

• The box asks for your Cloudflare tunnel token only while you are switching the app on. After that, the Cloudflare Tunnel Token field in Settings was greyed out with a “Don’t change” label, so anyone who pasted the wrong token, or skipped it, had no way back to it without a command line. The same lock sat on the other credentials our guides send you to — the Usenet provider password, the VPN password, the Grafana and PhotoPrism admin passwords. Those fields are typable again, they still carry a warning badge, and saving a new tunnel token now restarts the connector for you so the card turns healthy on its own.

1.6.775 — Play Tom Spark’s Fleet from your dashboard

• Every SparkBox now has a Play Fleet link and a home card for Tom Spark’s Fleet, the free online space game. Open it in a new tab to mine, trade, and explore with other pilots. Available on free and supporter boxes in every dashboard version, with no app installation needed.

1.6.774 — The installer tells you when your big drive is about to go unused

• SparkBox keeps everything — media, photos, backups — in one data folder, and it does not pick a drive for you. On anything that is not a NAS appliance that folder defaults to the system disk, and if you had already added a bigger drive for exactly this, nothing said so: the drive sat empty while your library filled the disk the operating system lives on. The installer now looks at what you actually have mounted, and when a larger drive is there it names it, gives its size, and prints the one line to re-run with so your data lands on it. A box with a single drive is left alone, and NAS and network-share advice is unchanged.

1.6.773 — SABnzbd opens through a Cloudflare Tunnel address

• If you publish apps on your own domain with a Cloudflare Tunnel, SABnzbd would answer "Access denied - Hostname verification failed" on that address while the same app opened fine on your home network. SABnzbd only accepts addresses it has been told about, and the list of addresses you publish lives in your Cloudflare account, so your box had no way to learn them. The Cloudflare Tunnel app now has a box where you list the addresses you published, and SparkBox passes them on. Fill it in, run an update, and the tunnel address works.

1.6.772 — The media widget finds Jellyfin again after a reinstall

• Your box's media widget asks Jellyfin what is playing and what was recently added, and it needs Jellyfin's access key to do that. It was looking for that key in a file that SparkBox has never written — the key is actually saved alongside the Jellyfin admin password the box generates for you. On most boxes it got the key a second way, from Seerr, so nothing looked wrong; but on a box where Seerr had no key — a fresh install over media you already had, or a Seerr sign-in that was never finished — the widget had no key at all and simply could not reach Jellyfin. It now reads the key from the file the box really writes, so the widget works on those boxes too. Your Jellyfin password and data are untouched.

1.6.771 — Private apps tell you how to open them instead of handing you an SSH command

• Shelfarr, CoolerControl and Stable Diffusion use private access by default. Their cards told you to reach them through the Access picker, but the picker was never switched on for them, so clicking the tile handed you an SSH tunnel command instead — and on a UGREEN NAS that command cannot work, because UGOS ships SSH with port forwarding turned off. All three now offer the Access picker: click choose access on the card and pick a private Tailscale link or a domain behind the proxy. Shelfarr's guide also advertised your box's IP and port 5056, an address that has never answered since the app was made private; it now describes how the app is actually opened.

1.6.770 — A box that reports an app in trouble gets looked at again

• When your box reported that one of its apps was in a bad state, our own fleet diagnosis quietly skipped the report instead of reading it: it expected the troubled apps as a list of names, while every box sends a count and the app details beside it. So the reports that exist precisely to get a struggling box noticed were the ones being passed over. Those reports are now read and diagnosed, which means a box that keeps having trouble with the same app is spotted and fixed sooner. Nothing your box sends has changed, and nothing new is collected.
• The assistant now explains what changed in three more releases in plain language instead of showing a placeholder.

1.6.769 — Sharing a chat to the forum keeps the part that says what is still broken

• When you shared a Tom AI chat to the forum, the post was built from your question, Tom's answer and a "What I still need help with" section — but the whole thing was then cut to a fixed length from the top. If you had pasted a long terminal output into the chat, that paste used up the entire post and the section where you say what is still wrong was dropped before you ever saw it, so your post arrived asking nothing and nobody could help. The post is now budgeted: the "What I still need help with" section always survives, and your question and Tom's answer are each shortened on their own so both stay readable. The full conversation still goes to Tom privately, as before.
• A shared chat that started with pasted terminal output used to be titled with your command prompt, so nobody browsing the forum could tell what the post was about. The title is now taken from the first line where you are actually describing the problem.
• The assistant now explains what changed in three more releases in plain language instead of showing a placeholder.

1.6.768 — The Jellyfin card on your home page shows your library again

• The Jellyfin tile on the home page showed an error instead of what is playing now and how many films and shows you have. The home page was asking Jellyfin for that information at an address Jellyfin stopped answering on when it moved to version 12, which is the version SparkBox installs, so the answer came back as "not found" on every box. Because a "not found" reply looks a lot like a rejected password, this was easy to mistake for a Jellyfin sign-in problem — it was not, and resetting your Jellyfin admin password would not have helped. The home page now asks at the address Jellyfin actually answers on, and the card fills in again the next time your box regenerates its home page.
• The assistant now explains what changed in three more releases in plain language instead of showing a placeholder.
• Tom AI's retrieval check now measures how well it finds the right article, instead of accidentally measuring the separate grader that scores the answers.

How to get all of this

One command on your box, whenever suits you. Nothing here changes your data or your settings.

sudo sparkbox update

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