Transmission is a BitTorrent client which features a variety of user interfaces on top of a cross-platform back-end. Transmission is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, with parts under the MIT License.

Features

Transmission allows users to quickly download files from multiple

peers Peers may refer to: People * Donald Peers * Edgar Allison Peers, English academician * Gavin Peers * John Peers, Australian tennis player * Kerry Peers * Mark Peers * Michael Peers * Steve Peers * Teddy Peers (1886–1935), Welsh international ...

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 A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosperm pl ...

, 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 Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the n ...

/ 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 file-distribution system. It is designed to support the discovery of local BitTorrent peers, aiming to minimize the traffic through the Internet service p ...

Micro Transport Protocol Micro Transport Protocol or μTP (sometimes also uTP) is an open UDP-based variant of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol intended to mitigate poor latency and other congestion control problems found in conventional BitTorrent over ...

(μTP), and

UDP tracker The UDP tracker protocol is a high-performance low-overhead BitTorrent tracker protocol. It uses the stateless User Datagram Protocol (UDP) for data transmission instead of the HTTP protocol (over TCP) regular trackers use. The data is in a custom ...

. It does not support directly subscribing to

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

feeds containing torrent files for automatic download, but third-party add-ons can supply this functionality. macOS-specific features include

Dock A dock (from Dutch language, Dutch ''dok'') is the area of water between or next to one or a group of human-made structures that are involved in the handling of boats or ships (usually on or near a shore) or such structures themselves. The ex ...

and

Growl Growling is a low, guttural vocalization produced by predatory animals; producing ''growls''. Growling or growl may also refer to: Sounds * Death growl, the dominant singing style in death metal music * Stomach growl, or borborygmus, noise prod ...

notifications, automatic updates using Sparkle and Universal Binary (up until version 2.22).

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 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. 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 ''Metal Gear Online'' was a stealth third-person shooter video game for the PlayStation 3. It was an online multiplayer spin-off of the ''Metal Gear'' video game series. The starter pack of ''Online'' was available worldwide bundled with '' Metal ...

'' on PlayStation 3, as well as the backend for

ImageShack ImageShack is a subscription-based image hosting website headquartered at Los Gatos, California. Although ImageShack always had a subscription service, the majority of its revenue was originally produced from advertising related to its free ima ...

'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, macOS and

BeOS BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in 1990. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform that could be used by a substantial population of desktop users a ...

/ ZETA. Each operating system front-end is built using native widget toolkits. For example, transmission-gtk uses the GTK interface, transmission-qt the Qt interface, and transmission-cli a

command-line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

. Transmission-remote-cli is an ncurses interface for the transmission-daemon. Python-transmissionrpc is a Python module implementing the JSON-RPC protocol for Transmission. An unofficial port 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 The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

that is capable of downloading directly to the device over WiFi or 3G. A Transmission remote was released for

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

, with the name of ''Transdroid'' but does not currently support downloading directly to devices. On Windows, Transmission-Qt can be built with MinGW, the daemon and console tools can be built with

Cygwin Cygwin ( ) is a POSIX-compatible programming and runtime environment that runs natively on Microsoft Windows. Under Cygwin, source code designed for Unix-like operating systems may be compiled with minimal modification and executed. The Cygwin in ...

, 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. This same unofficial full build of Transmission daemon running as a Windows service can be used for direct

streaming Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

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

OS of the Nokia 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 DMG may refer to: Organizations Entertainment * Dames Making Games, a Canadian non-profit organization that encourages the participation of women, non-binary, femme and queer people in the creation of video games * Davidson Media Group, an Americ ...

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 from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid off. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, ...

application (a variant of

Linux.Encoder.1 Linux.Encoder (also known as ELF/Filecoder.A and Trojan.Linux.Ransom.A) is considered to be the first ransomware Trojan targeting computers running Linux. There are additional variants of this Trojan that target other Unix and Unix-like systems. Dis ...

, but recompiled for Mac, known as

KeRanger KeRanger (also known as OSX.KeRanger.A) is a ransomware trojan horse targeting computers running macOS. Discovered on March 4, 2016, by Palo Alto Networks, it affected more than 7,000 Mac users. KeRanger is remotely executed on the victim's compute ...

) that encrypts the user's files and attempts to force users to pay 1

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

(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 Gatekeeper is a security feature of the macOS operating system by Apple. It enforces code signing and verifies downloaded applications before allowing them to run, thereby reducing the likelihood of inadvertently executing malware. Gatekeeper b ...

anti-malware system.

Reception

Transmission is the default BitTorrent client of many Unix and

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

s, including Ubuntu, Mint,

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

, Puppy,

Zenwalk Zenwalk GNU/Linux is a desktop-focused Linux distribution founded by Jean-Philippe Guillemin. It is based on Slackware with very few modifications at system level making it 100% compatible with Slackware. Zenwalk aims to be a modern and multi-p ...

, and the

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

flavor of openSUSE. Fon ships its routers with Transmission pre-installed. ''

CNET ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...

'' 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 Software that uses ncurses Software using the MIT license Unix Internet software