IMDb Scout Mod: turning an IMDb page into a search console

One userscript file, many sites behind it

The project is a single JavaScript userscript, with the repository holding the script file, a licence and the overview. What it does is described in one dense sentence in the project overview: it adds auto search for movies and series across torrent, usenet, ddl, subtitles, streaming, predb and other sites, adds links from hundreds of various sites back to the IMDb page, adds movies and series to Radarr and Sonarr, pulls in external ratings from Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd, Douban, Allocine, MyAnimeList and AniList, shows media server indicators for Plex, Jellyfin and Emby, adds or removes entries on Trakt's watchlist, and removes ads. It supports the redesigned Reference pages and does multi auto-search on the List, Watchlist and Advanced Title Search pages, and it auto loads Reference View without a login.

Where the buttons come from, and how a site is declared

Adding a site to the script is a data change rather than a code change, which is the design decision that makes the list maintainable. Inside the script there is a list of dictionaries containing all the sites and the data needed to check IMDb against them, and each site is a dictionary with a defined set of attributes. The name is the site's name and the icon is optional. The searchUrl is the URL to perform a search against, and matchRegex is a string or regex which appears if that search does not return a result, with positiveMatch available to flip the test so it succeeds when the URL does return a matching result. There are more attributes than that, and several of them solve awkward edge cases. The TV flag restricts a site to TV pages when a site is only relevant there, both makes a site appear on movie and TV pages, and spaceEncode changes the character used to encode spaces in titles, which defaults to a plus sign.

The optional attributes that handle the awkward cases

The rest of the dictionary schema is where the real work shows. goToUrl gives a different URL for the link than the one used for searching. loggedOutRegex treats a site as logged out if any text on the page matches, and ignoreEmpty covers the case where an empty response means no results rather than a session that has expired. configName allows the display name to change without breaking existing users. The inSecondSearchBar and inThirdSearchBar options place a site's button in a different search bar on the page, and mPOST switches a site to an HTTP POST request for those that do not support GET. ignore404 makes all four hundred level HTTP errors count as nothing, and rateLimit sets a connection rate limit in milliseconds with a default of 200, where on the Search and List pages a limit of 1000 or less is multiplied by four. The seedingRegex attribute covers sites that mark a result as seedable.

URL parameters, and why the template matters

The search URL is a template with placeholders, and the list of parameters is what lets one template work across sites with different identifier schemes. There is %tt% for the IMDb id with the tt prefix and %nott% for the same id without it, so tt0055630 and 0055630. There are identifiers for other databases: %tvdbid% for TVDb, %tvmazeid% for TVmaze, %tmdbid% for TMDb and %doubanid% for Douban. %tmdb_orig_title% exists to get a native original title rather than the Latinised one IMDb uses, and the search string has two forms, %search_string% for the US title and %search_string_orig% for the original title, which reverts to the plain one if the original is not set. The year is %year%. The streaming APIs use a different set, with %seriesid% for the IMDb id of a series, %seasonid% for the season number and %episodeid% for the episode number, which is how the same script handles a film and a series without a second code path.

Browser and manager support, stated plainly

The notes section is unusually blunt about what does not work. Firefox is the recommended browser, and Chrome or Chromium based browsers are listed as bugged, with the reason given as super slow, attributed to a synchronous requests bug that the project says they do not want to address. Safari is worse, because it does not support sending cookies, so auto-search does not work with sites that require a login. The recommended manager is Tampermonkey, described as currently the only manager that supports all features, and the script also works with Violentmonkey, Greasemonkey, Greasemonkey v3 and Greasemonkey for Pale Moon. The browser list is Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Waterfox, Brave, Pale Moon and Edge, and mobile support covers Firefox Nightly, Firefox for Android and the Orion browser on iOS. Installation is through the Greasy Fork script page rather than a build step, which is the right shape for a userscript.

Reading the results from the colour of the border

The script communicates the outcome of a search through the colour of a border around the icon, and the project ships an image for each state so the mapping is unambiguous. A green style means the search completed and results were found, a different one means the search completed and results were not found, another means there is no access to the search or the search cannot be done, and the last means the search completed and a request was found. That last state is the one specific to this workflow, since a request rather than a finished file is a different kind of answer from a search box. The border approach keeps the feedback on the button itself, which matters when a single title page has a dozen buttons and a multi-search fires them all at once. The script also adds a special button for extracting information to the clipboard in BBCode format, and offers a compact mode and a dark theme for the Reference View.

Versioning that does not follow the usual rules

The project describes its own version scheme as a bastardization of the semver standard, and then spells out what each level means. Patch versions will not change behavior, only the URL or the settings for trackers, which is the practical reality of maintaining links to sites that change their own URLs. Minor versions will definitely change code, although behavior may in fact remain the same. Major versions will definitely change behavior, although it will only be increased at the discretion of the current maintainer. That last clause is the one to note, because it means a major bump is not a promise of a breaking change but a statement that one happened. The project publishes no GitHub releases, so the script version visible in the manager is the version history, and the last push to the repository was on 2026-10-20, with the script hosted on Greasy Fork at the address in the project homepage.

Editorial conclusion

IMDb Scout Mod fits an IMDb user who treats the site as a catalogue and wants to jump from a title page to a search on a dozen other sites without opening tabs, and it fits a user of Radarr, Sonarr, Trakt, Plex or Jellyfin who wants those links in the same place. It does not fit a Chrome or Chromium user who is willing to accept the current behaviour, because the project lists those browsers as bugged and super slow, and it does not fit a Safari user at all, since Safari does not support sending cookies, so auto-search does not work on sites that require a login. Before you install it, read the notes on browser and manager choice, check that the userscript manager you use supports all the features, and expect the site list to need its own maintenance as trackers change.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. Project website
4. Purfview/IMDb-Scout-Mod on GitHub
5. README