Time Slots allow you to schedule specific shows to run at specific times each day or week, recreating the feel of traditional broadcast television. Rather than letting programming flow continuously, Time Slots give each show a hard start time — for example, you can pin “Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters” to 10:00 AM and “Batman Beyond” to 10:30 AM so they air at those exact times every day. Flex time handles any gap between when a program ends and when the next slot begins. This is the most familiar scheduling model for anyone who grew up with a TV guide.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/chrisbenincasa/tunarr/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Creating a Time Slot Schedule
To open the Time Slots editor, navigate to your channel, select Tools, then choose Time Slots.Open the Time Slots editor
Go to your channel’s programming page, click Tools in the top toolbar, and select Time Slots. The editor opens showing a timeline of the day with any existing slots listed.
Add your first slot
Click Add Slot to create a new time slot. Set the Start Time to when you want this program to begin airing (e.g.,
10:00 AM). Then select the Show or Movie you want to air in this slot from the content picker.Add additional slots
Repeat the process for each program you want at a specific time. For example, add a second slot at
10:30 AM and assign a different show. Slots are displayed in chronological order.Configure padding
Set the Pad Times option to control how Tunarr fills gaps between programs. With padding enabled, if an episode ends early, Tunarr inserts flex time so the next program begins exactly at its scheduled start time.
Set Max Lateness
Configure the Max Lateness value to define how many minutes a program is allowed to overrun its slot before being cut off. For example, a value of
5 means an episode that runs 4 minutes into the next slot will play to completion; one that runs 6 minutes over will be truncated at the slot boundary.How Time Slots Fill a Day
When you define time slots, Tunarr only explicitly schedules the programs you assign. Understanding what happens between and after your slots is important for getting the channel to behave as expected. Between slots: If show A ends at 10:22 AM and the next slot doesn’t start until 10:30 AM, Tunarr fills the 8-minute gap with flex time (using your filler list content if one is configured). Padding ensures the next program begins exactly at 10:30 AM. After the last slot: If your last scheduled slot of the day is “Batman Beyond” at 10:30 AM and you have no further slots defined, “Batman Beyond” continues playing episodes until the schedule loops back to 10:00 AM the following day. If you want the channel to play flex content overnight instead, add a Flex entry after your last slot.Padding
Padding is the mechanism Tunarr uses to enforce hard start times. When a program finishes before its slot’s scheduled start, the gap is filled with flex content so the next program starts on the dot.Global Pad Time
The Pad Times setting applies a uniform pad duration to every slot in the schedule. This is the primary way to enforce hard start times across the board.Per-Slot Padding
Individual slots can override the global pad time with their own value. This is useful when different parts of your schedule have different tolerance requirements — for example, a morning block that needs tight padding while an evening block can be more relaxed. To set per-slot padding, open the slot’s options in the Time Slot editor. A per-slot override takes precedence over the global Pad Times value for that slot only; slots without an override use the global value.Max Lateness
Max Lateness is the complement to padding. It defines how far a program is allowed to run past the slot’s scheduled start time before the slot is skipped and the next one begins.| Scenario | Result |
|---|---|
| Episode overruns by less than Max Lateness | Episode plays to completion; next slot starts late |
| Episode overruns by more than Max Lateness | Episode is cut at the slot boundary; next slot starts on time |
Max Lateness is measured from the scheduled start time of the next slot, not from the end of the previous program. A Max Lateness of
5 minutes means the overrunning episode can bleed at most 5 minutes into the next slot’s window before it gets cut.Slot Overflow and Edge Cases
Short programs: If a program is significantly shorter than its slot window, the remaining time is filled with flex. For example, a 15-minute episode in a 30-minute slot will be followed by 15 minutes of flex before the next slot begins. Very long programs: If a single episode is longer than the gap between two slots and exceeds the Max Lateness threshold, the episode is truncated at the slot boundary so the next scheduled program can begin on time. Missing content: If a slot’s assigned show runs out of episodes, Tunarr wraps back to the beginning of the episode list for that show.Slot Linking
By default, each time slot maintains its own episode cursor. If the same show appears in multiple time slots — for instance, a morning airing and an evening rerun — each slot independently starts at episode 1 and advances on its own. To make multiple time slots share a single episode iterator, use Slot Linking:- In Continue mode, the slots advance together sequentially — each slot picks up where the last one left off, so every episode airs exactly once across all linked slots before the list wraps.
- In Rerun mode, every linked slot plays the same episode before the group moves on — useful for simulating same-day reruns at different times.
Scheduling Concepts
Review the core vocabulary before diving deeper into scheduling tools.
Slot Editor
Use duration-based slots instead of fixed start times for more flexible scheduling.