10 years old

Who would have ever thought… Transdroid is 10 years old!

On 25 february 2009, the very first apk went public, asking people for feedback. A release in the – then called – Android Market followed soon. It really was just build for myself, but with positive feedback the app and user base started growing…

It all started very humle. Android 1.0 was just launched, and the T-Mobile G1 was the only phone available. Interface design was skeumorphic or non-existing, and 3G only barely rolled out in cities.

Over time, the app did get bigger. Many new torrent clients got supported, multiple configurations, home screen widget, SSL connections, ‘high-res’ icons, RSS feeds, in-app search… When the time for a 1.0 came the app was much used and had over 250.000 downloads. Quite an achievement at that time.

It wasn’t until 2011 that I finally marked a version 1.0, indeed being pretty much feature-complete and stable. And then it got removed from the Play Store… a big blow at first. We didn’t do anything wrong, and certainly other apps were doing the same thing? But alas, the app stayed available and forever since almost all users get the app from my site or F-Droid.

Development never stopped, for sure. Phones without a physical menu button arrived – crazy! – so a fancy action bar came along with some colour. In 2012 the app got a tablet interface – all the hype back then.

It wasn’t until Transdroid 2, with a major UI rewrie, that a Holo theme followed, now coming in white as default, with black being an option. This eventually morphed into the Material theme that Transdroid still uses today.

So what’s in the future? Yes, the project is in maintenance mode. I don’t really have the drive and time right now to do major work, and apart from the random fix for new Android versions or update to the Search library, not much is going on. Perhaps one day I find the enthousiasm to properly rework the app. Perhaps ourside contributors can revive the spirit.

But whatever happens, I don’t see myself dropping the hundreds of thousands users. In fact, the app has more users than ever, I belief, and I care for them as much as 10 years ago. Fixes may be slow, but they will come. Perhaps even a small feature here and there – no promises. Thank you very much, to all of you, who used the app, spread the word, filed feature requests and bugs, even contributed code and translations.

Thank you all!

Eric

Material is here

Transdroid 2.5.1After a long time of some mere bugfixes, following by a long time of slow work on the promised refresh… Transdroid 2.5 is finally here!

The obvious change in the new Material design. Both light and dark themes are now styled in the design language that was introduced in Android Lollipop. While more is to come, the app should feel a little more modern in both graphical appeal and feel. As always, feel free Transdroid on GitHub!

Under the hood I have solved an array of bugs and incompatibilities. User of rTorrent, qBittorrent or Aria2? The new versions should be compatible with the latest and greatest of your favourite torrent client. Translations have been updated too. The Search Module was also improved. Several private and public trackers have been added for your direct search pleasure.

Transdroid 0.13 from 2009Finally, for now, I am updating the website and documentation. Some of it is from 2009 still. And I think you’d agree that SOME things have changed since then…

Hold on while I Materialize a refresh

Just a quick update to let everyone know I am working still on the app. The last time has been busy and most development has been quite behind the scenes, as I am working on a small visual refresh of the app. Well small… it is getting a Material design look to match the Android Lollipop visuals and some parts needed a bit of tweaking to get right with those new and changed idioms.

A beta version should be available fairly soon, within a week or two. After that I will focus more on bugfixes again to update support for some clients (rTorrent, qBittorrent, tTorrent) and long standing annoyances. Hold on just a bit more!

Some private tracker love

I just released Transdroid 2.1.3. It includes bug fixes, such as for the rTorrent file upload restriction, but more importantly it supports the new Torrent Search 2.0. With the 2.0 release of the Search module I introduced support for private sites to function just as the public sites that were already supported nicely, fully integrating in the search feature of Transdroid and other apps.

When you open the new Torrent Search interface you can enable and disable public sites in case you are not interested in their content, and Transdroid will not show them in the search results. More importantly, you can provide the credentials to private trackers that you have an existing account for to get the same smooth search experience in Transdroid for your private sites.

Since every private tracker will have a different code and login method, support for each of them has to be custom build. Currently I only support IPTorrents and Bit-HDTV. If you have a private site that you like support for, you may either implement it yourself of course if you know some Java (you can use the IPTorrents class to start) and send me a pull request on GitHub. It is quite simple really. No coding skills (or lazy)? If you provide me with an account I might add it myself — although my time is very limited so I can give no guarantees.

Big update, lots of fixes

UDATE: Transdroid does not support rTorrent with Digest authentication in this 2.1.0 release. I’ve fixed this for the next release, hopefully out at the end of this week!

Big update today to Transdroid and its little Play Store-cousin Transdrone. Most importantly it fixes MANY annoyances in both the UI and connectivity.

Using uTorrent, rTorrent, Transmission, Deluge, Bitflu, qBittorrent, Torrentflux-b4rt? Quite likely… and the new version should be quite a bit more stable for you. Moreover, Deluge has not support for labels (viewing and setting) and uTorrent and Deluge can force data recheck.

The UI has seen many little fixes like selection improvements, search input box that properly hides and much more. Remember the option to treat non-trasferring torrents as inactive in Transdroid 1? This is back: enable the ‘Treat dormant torrents as inactive’ option in System settings and every torrent that has no data transfer (0KB/s) going on will be listed as inactive. Especially useful if you have many seeding torrents that are not connected to any leecher. Finally, the widget now contains buttons for pausing or resuming all torrents on the server and can optionally show the server status statistics, that is, the number of and speed of your active uploads and download.

Perhaps your favorite feature is not here or you still have a poor connection? Add your issue to the GitHub issue tracker. Thanks!

Trans…what?

Today marks a big day in the history of Transdroid. For the existing users, some of you who use Transdroid many, many years already, will receive an update notification for Transdroid 2, the first non-beta release. The whole UI has received an overhaul in true modern ‘Holo’ style fashion. Not only does this mean a more attractive and hopefully nicer to use app, but it also solved many interface bugs and makes the app ready for the future. This includes a modern widget, multi-select of torrents and files and much more. UPDATE: You can use the settings export and import feature to transfer your server, RSS and search settings.

But before we look into the future, a short trip to the past. Two years ago Transdroid was removed from the Play Store — then still called Android Market — and I am very happy to announce that today you can download Trandroid again directly from the official Android Play Store. Transdroid? Well, not exactly. To prevent potential problems I have decided that the Play Store version will not included torrent search and RSS feeds. To signify this clear difference I’ve given it a new name. Meet Transdroid’s little brother: Transdrone. Existing users who can live without integrated search, but more importantly new users who never heard of Transdroid, can now get a truly capable torrent manager right from the Play Store. And for those who love the search: the full Transdroid will always remain available right here. You’ll get update notifications right from the app.

Get it on Google Play

Where from here? Well, development will not stop, only calm down a little. There are some bits and pieces that Transdroid 1 has and the new version doesn’t — most of them will be added in due course. New stuff will appear too. Got some idea for yourself? Share it on the new issue tracker.

Finally: if you upgrade you might encounter some small issues in certain special cases. Don’t hesitate to contact me via mail or on the forums. Found a real bug/crash? Use the error report feature (now found in the system settings) or leave a log on GitHub.

Transdroid 2 alpha released for the adventurous!

UPDATE: Alpha version 2 3 4 is released; see the highlight below for updates.

Since Transdroid was conceived over 4(!) years ago, Android has changed quite a bit. And so did Transdroid, as it went from a minimal list showing your Transmission torrents to a well known, feature rich and loved project. Even without the Play Store I am blessed with tens of thousands of active, supportive and plainly awesome users.

Transdroid 2 main screen showing the list of torrents

One of the things that didn’t quite stay up to date over time is the UI. Sure, it got updates like an action bar and a basic tablet layout, but it’s not exactly Holo and certainly needs a bit of a refresh. An excellent time to squash some UI-related bugs as well, such as 7″ tablet support, file priority color coding, multi-select in main screen and, much requested, properly handling http links for public and private trackers.

Transdroid 2 (not sure if I keep that name, will see) installed next to your old Transdroid. You can export your settings (just use the default settings.json storage location) in the old Transdroid and import them in Transdroid 2. Ready? Download the .apk directly at http://transdroid.org/beta

What works in this alpha release

  • Fully responsive UI (from small phones to big tablets) with an updated Holo look. Light and dark theme available (check settings).
  • Viewing your server’s torrents, getting details and file lists, starts/stopping/removing/etc. torrents and files. Sorting, filtering and textual search filtering in the main list.
  • Multi-select actions on torrents, files and RSS items. Long-press a list to start a multiple selection.
  • Adding of torrents via http(s), file and magnet links. Yes, both public and private trackers work again with http(s) links. (See below for extra info.)
  • RSS feeds, including magnet links therein. (Cookie support coming soon.)

What does not yet work (but is coming)

  • Search. Obviously a top feature and the next thing I will implement. Added in alpha 3!
  • Setting of labels, updating trackers and setting max. download/upload speeds. All coming very soon. Added in alpha 3!
  • Background service. No notifications yet on new RSS items or finished/new torrents. Coming soon. Added in alpha 3!
  • The activity stack (basically, how the back button works) still needs to be tweaked. Improved in alpha 3; will see if it needs more work.
  • No widgets yet. I will create a scrollable list home screen widget, to replace the aged static ones, in due time.
  • Server settings now have the option to specify a local network, so no 2 separate configurations are needed. While this will solve a LONG standing feature request, it isn’t yet implemented in the alpha. It will in the beta.
  • No new clients are supported. I hope to add Tixati and aria2 support, but it won’t be for a while. Contributions welcome though! Improvements for exisitng supported clients also have to wait a bit.

Transdroid 2 details screen showing torrent status, trackers and file listing

Important changes

  • Transmission’s folder setting now overrides the /transmission part in the default /transmission/rpc folder. If you import your setting from the old Transdroid you might have to fix this accordingly. In other words, leaving the folder blank (using the default) is effectively the same as setting this manually to /transmission.
  • Any http(s) link that ends with .torrent or is of the bittorrent mime type will again be picked up by Transdroid. If your (private) tracker requires a log in, then the links are still send to your server, but this won’t actually work. To circumvent this issue you may specify the cookies to use for the specific site. In that case the http(s) link won’t be send to your server, but is downloaded by Transdroid directly (using the cookies you specified) and then added to the server. To add a site, add a web search site in the settings. The domain of the search URL is used to match http(s) links. Enter cookeis in the key1=value1;key2=value2 format. This is similar to uTorrent’s RSS feed cookies support and you can read here how to get your cookie keys/values.

Reporting bugs and suggestions

  • General discussion, issues, questions and suggestions: let’s keep it in the forum for now. I’ve made a dedicated announcement topic in the public forums.
  • Experience a crash? Go to settings -> System -> Send error log to send me an email with details. Please describe what you were trying to do and what device you are using.
  • The new version also lost some features which I feel were not very focussed and probably not used much. No auto refresh in main screen. No filtering over labels AND torrent status at the same time. Things may change if you are vocal enough, though.
  • Transdroid will move to GitHub when the first non-alpha release is made. The issue tracker there is open yet please use the forum until the beta stage has been reached.

Have fun! Hope you enjoy the changes and it further boosts user adoption and appreciation. Let me know, here, on Twitter, on Google+ or in the support forum.

Transdroid 2 alpha tablet UI

Synology NAS support

One of the longest standing feature requests in the issue tracker was to add support for Synology NAS‘ Download Station. With many thanks to Erwan Loisant I can now finally close this issue, because any Download Station 3.40 or newer can now be accessed by Transdroid. Obviously it doesn’t support the full feature set like rTorrent or Transmission, but the basic stuff works great. Many, many thanks to Erwan for the excellent code!

Quite some users has issues with links to torrents that Transdroid directly tried to add to the server (by sending the URL). This isn’t compatible with sites that use authentication, notably private trackers. I’ve decided to remove handling of http torrent links at the moment. This means an extra click (on the downloaded .torrent file) for users of public sites, but it’s the lesser of the two evils I suppose. By the way, if you get ‘Can’t read .torrent file’ messages, close Transdroid fully (with the back button or slide the running app thumbnail) and try again.

Also I would like to make public that I am working on a new, improved UI for Transdroid. So don’t expect much updates to the current version, instead I’ll let you now when there’s a new alpha release. I’ll post a screen shot soon.

Community contributions

Thanks to some excellent contributions from the community (yay for open source!) a new version is available that brings some much requested additions. For rTorrent users Tom Briden made some additions such as deletion of data on removing a torrent, viewing labels (with ruTorrent’s plugin) and showing the real time a torrent was added. Also by him is a new filter feature for the main torrent lists. Finally, many thanks to all continues efforts form the translators. All languages have been updated.

Keep up the work everyone and the next version will be even better than this 1.1.10 release!