Transmission is a BitTorrent client which features a variety of user interfaces on top of a

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

back-end. Transmission is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

licensed under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

, with parts under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

Features

Transmission allows users to quickly download files from multiple peers on the Internet and to upload their own files. By adding torrent files via the user interface, users can create a queue of files to be downloaded and uploaded. Within the file selection menus, users can customise their downloads at the level of individual files. Transmission also seeds, that is, it will automatically share downloaded content. Transmission allows the assigning of priorities to torrents and to files within torrents, thus potentially influencing which files download first. It supports the Magnet URI scheme and encrypted connections. It allows torrent-file creation and peer exchange compatible with Vuze and μTorrent. It includes a built-in web server so that users can control Transmission remotely via the web. It also supports automatic port-mapping using UPnP/ NAT-PMP, peer caching, blocklists for bad peers, bandwidth limits dependent on time-of-day, globally or per-torrent, and has partial support for IPv6. It allows the use of multiple trackers simultaneously,

Local Peer Discovery The Local Peer Discovery protocol, specified as BEP-14, is an extension to the BitTorrent (protocol), BitTorrent file-distribution system. It is designed to support the discovery of local BitTorrent (protocol), BitTorrent peers, aiming to minimiz ...

, Micro Transport Protocol (μTP), and UDP tracker. It does not support directly subscribing to RSS feeds containing torrent files for automatic download, but third-party add-ons can supply this functionality. macOS-specific features include Dock and Growl notifications, automatic updates using Sparkle and Universal Binary (up until version 2.22). Transmission 4.0.0, released in February 2023, added support for hybrid torrents so that it can work with v1 and hybrid (v1/v2) torrents.

Development

Transmission 1.60 and later removed support for Mac OS X v10.4. Currently, Transmission 1.54 is the last version that runs on Mac OS X 10.4. Although it is possible to compile later versions from source, either by downloading from the project's website or using a package manager like Fink or MacPorts, it is unsupported and any bugs specific to 10.4 will not be fixed. Starting with Transmission 2.30 an Apple Mac with an

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

CPU is needed;

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

-based systems are no longer supported natively. Since Transmission 4.0, Apple Silicon is supported as well. The Transmission back-end (libTransmission) also serves as the basis of the Transmission daemon. The daemon supports a web front-end called Clutch. Older versions have been ported to form the basis of the update system for the video game '' Metal Gear Online'' on

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

, as well as the backend for ImageShack's BitTorrent service.

Distribution and ports

A portable version is available on PortableApps.com.

Ports

Transmission is a set of lightweight BitTorrent clients (in GUI, CLI and daemon form). All its incarnations feature a very simple, intuitive interface on top on an efficient, cross-platform back-end. There are several transmission clients for different operating systems including

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and BeOS/

ZETA Zeta (, ; uppercase Ζ, lowercase ζ; , , classical or ''zē̂ta''; ''zíta'') is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 7. It was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician letter zay ...

. Each operating system front-end is built using native

widget toolkit A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library (computing), library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of ...

s. For example, transmission-gtk uses the

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both Free software, free and ...

interface, transmission-qt the Qt interface, and transmission-cli a

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

. Transmission-remote-cli is an ncurses interface for the transmission-daemon. Python-transmissionrpc is a Python module implementing the

JSON-RPC JSON-RPC (JavaScript Object Notation-Remote Procedure Call) is a JSON-based wire protocol for remote procedure calls (RPC). It is similar to the XML-RPC protocol, defining only a few data types and commands. JSON-RPC allows for notifications (data ...

protocol for Transmission. An unofficial

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...

of Transmission using a

(CLI) on iOS was accomplished on 3 March 2008. In November 2010, iTransmission, another unofficial port, was released for jailbroken iPhones sporting a GUI that is capable of downloading directly to the device over WiFi or 3G. A Transmission remote was released for Android, with the name of ''Transdroid'' but does not currently support downloading directly to devices. On

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, Transmission-Qt can be built with MinGW, the daemon and console tools can be built with Cygwin, also there are two third-party GUIs: transmission-remote-dotnet and Transmission Remote GUI, as well as unofficial full builds of Transmission's Qt Client. There is also an unofficial full build of Transmission daemon which can be run as a

Windows service In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manag ...

. This same unofficial full build of Transmission daemon running as a

can be used for direct

streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

of the downloading file(s). A port for all platforms enhanced with streaming of the downloading file(s) is located on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

. It is also ported to the Maemo OS of the Nokia N810 internet tablet and N900 smartphone as well as to the MeeGo/

Harmattan The Harmattan is a season in West Africa that occurs between the end of November and the middle of March. It is characterized by the dry and dusty northeasterly trade wind, of the same name, which blows from the Sahara over West Africa into th ...

OS of the

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

N9 and N950 smartphones, on which it does download the torrents to the device.

Website breach

In March 2016, Palo Alto Networks reported that Transmission's official website was compromised and tainted .dmg files were uploaded to the site, using an Apple Developer signature to bypass the OS X gatekeeper feature. The tainted packages installed a

ransomware Ransomware is a type of malware that Encryption, encrypts the victim's personal data until a ransom is paid. Difficult-to-trace Digital currency, digital currencies such as paysafecard or Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, cryptocurrencies are com ...

application (a variant of Linux.Encoder.1, but recompiled for Mac, known as KeRanger) that encrypts the user's files and attempts to force users to pay 1

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

(worth roughly US$404 at the time of the attack) in order to get the decryption pack. The Transmission website advised Mac users to immediately upgrade to a new version that removes the malware-infected file. Apple revoked the developer certificate that was used to sign the tainted package, and added the package's signature to the XProtect anti-malware system.

Reception

Transmission is the default BitTorrent client of many

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

and

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s, including

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

, Mint, Fedora,

Puppy A puppy is a Juvenile (organism), juvenile dog, generally one less than 12-18 months old. Puppies are markedly underdeveloped and dependent on their mothers at birth (displaying ''altriciality''), but healthy puppies grow quickly and begi ...

, Zenwalk, and the GNOME flavor of openSUSE. Fon ships its routers with Transmission pre-installed. '' CNET'' editor Paul Huges praised Transmission for its "simplicity, lightweight, as well as being feature-packed" and as of April 2017 the software ranked third in P2P downloads for Mac on ''CNET''.

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Transmission (Bittorrent Client) 2005 software BeOS software BitTorrent clients for Linux Cross-platform software File sharing software that uses GTK File sharing software that uses Qt Free BitTorrent clients Free software programmed in C MacOS file sharing software Free software that uses ncurses Software using the MIT license Unix Internet software