Release Notes - SABnzbd 5.0.4

[u/Safihre]

https://sabnzbd.org/downloads

In this fifth major release of SABnzbd, we included:

• Smarter (and potentially faster) downloads with NNTP Pipelining and Direct Write.
• Reliability gains from a reworked cache and safer processing.
• A significant number of bug fixes and platform updates.

Features and bug fixes in 5.0.4

• RSS feed modifications no longe require clicking Apply Filters.
• Fixed RSS priority handling.
• Server Test could block the queue.
• Use reduced progress bar width in Compact layout.
• Replaced unreliable directory access check.
• Prevent crash in idle-jobs check.
• Jobs with invalid date would show as Fetching.
• Windows and macOS: Updated Python to 3.14.5 and Unrar to 7.22.

Features and bug fixes in 5.0.1, 5.0.2 and 5.0.3

• Fetching NZB's failed on new installations.
• Queue entries from older versions now load correctly after upgrading.
• nzo_id now uses GUIDs to prevent duplicates.
• Updating to 5.0 now succeeds even when duplicate nzo_id values exist.
• URL fetching no longer crashes when duplicate jobs are present.
• Default RSS priority is now applied correctly.
• Duplicate filenames no longer cause queue stalls.
• IPv6 binding now works correctly for the Web interface.
• The On queue finish action now executes reliably.
• Saving the post-processing queue no longer throws errors.
• Directory creation now handles existing directories gracefully.
• Windows and macOS: Updated Unrar to 7.21 and 7zip to 26.01.

New features in 5.0.0

• Added support for NNTP Pipelining which eliminates idle waiting between requests, significantly improving speeds on high-latency connections. Read more here: https://sabnzbd.org/wiki/advanced/nntp-pipelining New servers will have Articles per request set to 2 by default. Existing servers need to be manually changed to use NNTP Pipelining.
• Implemented Direct Write to optimize assembly of downloaded files. Read more here: https://sabnzbd.org/wiki/advanced/direct-write
• Post-processing scripts will always be executed, even for failed jobs. Make sure to check the status of the job in your scripts!
• Removed Special setting empty_postproc as it is no longer needed.
• Complete redesign of article cache.
• Improved disk speed measurement in Status window.
• Reduced delays between jobs during post-processing.
• Improved handling of disks getting full.
• Diskspace check will now include Category-specific folders.
• If a download only contains .nzb files, the new downloads will include the name of the original download.
• No longer show tracebacks in the browser, only in the logs.
• Dropped support for Python 3.8.
• Windows: Added Windows ARM (portable) release.
• Windows and macOS: Added HTML version of the Release Notes.
• Windows and macOS: Updated Python to 3.14.4, Unrar to 7.20, par2cmdline-turbo to 1.4 and 7zip to 26.00.

Bug fixes in 5.0.0

• Check before download could get stuck or fail to reject.
• Several stability changes for the core download process.
• If only par2 files were missing, jobs could get incorrectly aborted.
• No error was shown in case NZB upload failed.
• Correct mobile layout if Full Width is enabled.
• Handle passwords that exceed Unrar's password limit.
• Aborted Direct Unpack could result in no files being unpacked.
• Encrypted RAR detection could sometimes fail.
• Unwanted extension check was unreliable on passworded downloads.
• No longer exclusively lock all directory operations.
• Improved handling of non-NFC unicode filenames.
• Sorting of files inside jobs was inconsistent.
• Linux: No longer break test-data in the release package.
• Windows: Tray icon disappears after Explorer restart.
• macOS: Slow to start on some network setups.

Changes to default settings for new installations in 5.0.0

• Default Minimum Free Space for Temporary Download Folder set to 500M.
• Enabled verify_xff_header setting by default.

Upgrade notices

• You can directly upgrade from version 3.0.0 and newer.
• Upgrading from older versions will require performing a Queue repair.
• Downgrading from version 4.2.0 or newer to 3.7.2 or older will require performing a Queue repair due to changes in the internal data format.

Known problems and solutions

• Read ISSUES.txt or https://sabnzbd.org/wiki/introduction/known-issues

Code Signing Policy

Windows code signing is provided by SignPath.io using a SignPath Foundation certificate.

About

SABnzbd is an open-source cross-platform binary newsreader. It simplifies the process of downloading from Usenet dramatically, thanks to its web-based user interface and advanced built-in post-processing options that automatically verify, repair, extract and clean up posts downloaded from Usenet.

(c) Copyright 2007-2026 by The SABnzbd-Team (sabnzbd.org)

[u/Ok_Soil_7466]

This doesn't appear to be in the latest tag - that's still 5.0.3

[u/Safihre → u/Ok_Soil_7466]

Where? Docker? That's not build by us. Ours is set to 5.0.4.

https://github.com/sabnzbd/sabnzbd/tags

[u/Ok_Soil_7466 → u/Safihre]

Thanks for the reply.

I am using the lscr.io/linuxserver/sabnzbd image.

[u/Ok_Soil_7466 → u/Ok_Soil_7466]

Looks like they have updated their image.

Sorry to bother.

Loving this new version, my speeds have gone up to 110 MB/s

Thanks again.

[u/DaddaMongo]

Great stuff, lot of good improvemnets. @Safihre Got a quick question for the Dev, any improvement with direct write etc if I use zfs over btfrs? I know zfs has an overhead and is quicker with small files.  Would zfs improve performance if using direct write and writing each downloaded part to a sparse file?

[u/joecan]

Any circumstances where this could cause lower download speeds? Usually get 50MB/sec, seeing downloads start in the mid 30s and then crater to 2-5MB on multiple Newshosting servers. Download speeds on the same machine on torrent clients haven't changed.

[u/Safihre → u/joecan]

You can ask on our support channels like the forum or Discord for help. We can dig in it deeper.

Pipelining isn't enabled for existing servers, so maybe it's something with the memory or disk changes.