Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

MKVToolsNix is how I remove audio tracks I don’t want from MKVs and reset default tracks and subtitles. Super easy to use.

If it's a matroska (mkv) file you can use mktoolnix (use the header editor) to set default tracks.

Don't bother with removing stuff. Just set your default audio and subtitle track in whatever you're using to play or stream the media, and you won't have to worry about selecting the proper one each time.

As for Bazarr, there's several reasons it might not be fetching the right subtitles, so definitely look into fixing that. Often it's a problem with paths being wrong. It might give you a clue by looking at the status page.

And be sure you're setting up all your Servarr apps using the TRaSH guides. It'll take you an hour or so to do, but you only need to do it once, and it'll drastically improve the quality of releases you grab.

I don't get how having additional audio tracks and subtitles in other languages is a problem. Idk what you're using to watch your stuff but, at least in Jellyfin, you can set the default audio and subtitle languages in your profile settings.

If you're using radarr/sonarr, you can...I'd refer to the trash guides, they have instructions for specifying language/subtitle tracks.

Anecdotally, I would strongly advise against limiting your options like that. As long as you have a way to set your streaming preferences and get the audio track you need, you shouldn't even notice the other tracks.

With that said, you can strip the unnecessary tracks out with other software (I think Handbrake can, but I've never done it).

Tdarr can do this via its workflows. IIRC, there's a plugin that will look up the default language and let you configure what to keep. For example, keep native language and your language but discard the others. This works for both audio tracks and subtitles.

Lots of suggestions for MKVToolNix, but I prefer automated solutions:

Tdarr is a highly configurable automated conversion tool. You can use it to just remove extra video audio or subtitle streams, change containers, transcode streams into different codecs, or all of the above.

I've got it set to automatically convert all media that gets added to my libraries into hevc/mkv while stripping out extra audio/subtitle tracks. This leaves me with less clutter and 30-40% smaller file sizes.

Tdarr can do what you want. I have mine setup to drop all non English tracks unless theyre the only one and do the same for subtitles.

You can setup a custom format in the ARRs that specifically looks for English audio and ranks any others or multi-audio as a negative value, that should help you avoid non English releases.

I automated this with FileFlows.

New media automatically has Audio tracks sorted with the best track (English, most channels, highest bitrate) set to index0 and set as default and a basic stereo AAC track added for compatibility if there isn't already one in the file. superfluous tracks are removed. Subtitles are also cleared out if there are extras too.

I also have Fileflows handle a light compression pass on files that are more than 6 months old for archival, in certain video libraries where I don't need perfect copies stored.

Most of the files you get from private and public trackers will be same ones you can get via Usenet so it's pretty much the same everywhere, filtering your *Arrs to prioritise certain release groups helps when you know specific shows or genres are better supplied by a certain group.

MKVToolNix is the right answer, BUT if you plan on sharing your Linux ISOs with the wider community you may not want to edit the original file.

Not sure what you're watching on, but Plex lets you set a preferred audio language per-user, while Jellyfin and Kodi support external audio tracks as long as they are properly identified, so you could extract/find the English track you want and just toss it in the same folder