SparkBox patches — Sat Sep 26, 2026
Posted by Chris
SparkBox releases shipped on Sat Sep 26, 2026 (UTC), in order, newest at the bottom. This thread is updated as releases land during the day. Update from the SparkBox dashboard, or run sudo sparkbox upgrade on your SparkBox host. Legend boxes get every release the day it ships; free boxes get it after it has run there for a week. If a problem remains after updating, submit a private support ticket or reply below with the app name, what you expected, and what happened instead. Earlier days: Fri Sep 25, 2026 · Thu Sep 24, 2026 · Wed Sep 23, 2026 · Tue Sep 22, 2026 · Mon Sep 21, 2026 v1.6.787 — 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. v1.6.788 — 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. v1.6.789 — 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. v1.6.790 — 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 fix scorecard, "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. v1.6.791 — 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. v1.6.792 — 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. v1.6.793 — 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.