Category: Usage

Everybody that Transdroid uses knows how to start, stop, add and remove torrents. It is of great convenience to manage your torrents while away form home. But Transdroid has some nifty features that you probably didn’t even knew about. Here are some tips on getting even more out of your Transdroid install:

1. Swipe to switch Do you have multiple servers configured in Transdroid? Many people do, like keeping a config for home Wi-Fi connections. You can switch between server configurations via the menu, but it’s easier to swipe. Just make a right-to-left (or left-to-right) motion to switch to the next (or previous) config. Want to switch using the server list? Tap the active server bar at the top of the screen.
2. Restricting transfer rates If your server is overloaded with traffic, you might want to restrict the bandwidth usage on your torrents. The ‘Set transfer rates’ menu option allows you to set both maximum upload and download rates. Want easy access? Tap the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
3. Filter-while-typing A feature that is a bit hidden and probably only for users of Android devices with keyboards: filter-while-typing. In any list in Transdroid (say, the main screen) you can start typing to filter the shown list. Looking to remove one torrent from your huge list? Type the first letters and you’ll find it quickly.
4. Active transfer filtering If you have many torrents running, it sometimes is easier to consider only actively transferring torrents as active instead of those that are not paused. Choosing ‘Filter list -> Only transferring (> 0KB/s)’. Started torrents that have an upload and download rate of 0KB/s will show up in the ‘inactive’ torrent list.
5. Barcode scanner I am still not sure how useful it is, but many users have requested it: a barcode scanner that starts torrent searches. Any barcode is translated to an (EAN or UPC) code that is translated into a search query. I believe it works surprisingly well with some results filtering and string magic. 🙂 Accessable via ‘Add -> Scan barcode’.
6. Auto-refresh If you are connected on local Wi-Fi or have a stable connection, you might want Transdroid to automatically refresh the torrent screen. Choose ‘Settings -> Interface settings ->Refresh interval’ to set how often it auto-refreshes.
7. In-app search switching Did your query not show satisfactory torrent results? You can switch between the in-app search providers easily using the menu. And left-to-right swiping works here as well.
8. File-level priorities To be honest: this feature isn’t even released officially yet, but from the next version onwards you can set priorities on a file level. Open the details screen of an active torrent and view the file listing. Long-pressing allows you to adjust a file’s priority or disable its downloading at all. As with search result, you can use the checkbox to perform actions for many at once.

Any tips you want to share yourself? Feel free to leave your comments here.

Setting up a torrent application to be able to connect to from outside your network can be a bit hard. That’s why often users get stuck at successfully connecting to their servers or home computers using Transdroid. Here is a little step-by-step help for anyone that has troubles:

You need one of the supported torrent application running on your server or home computer, with the web interface enabled. Remember the port number that you fill in here; you use it later to open the port on your router and to fill in in the Transdroid application.

If Transdroid doesn’t work (‘error in parsing of server response’, for example), try these steps:

• Enable the web UI in the preferences window of your torrent application. Make sure you use a username and password, you set a listening port (this number you will need later) and do NOT set IP filtering on. For uTorrent and BitTorrent set the listening port to 8080, for Tranmission leave it at 9091, for Deluge leave it at 8112, rTorrent normally uses port 80.
• Check if the web UI works on your local machine. For uTorrent and BitTorrent use http://localhost:8080/gui, for Transmission use http://localhost:9091/transmission/web/, for Deluge use http://localhost:8112/, for rTorrent use the wTorrent web front-end. If this link does not work, go back and check the settings.
• Get the internal IP of your computer running the torrent application. On Windows, you can find it by looking at the properties of the network connection or by running ipconfig.exe in a command prompt. On Ubuntu, right-click the network manager applet and choose connection details, or by running ifconfig in a terminal windows.
• Open port 8080, 9091, 8112 or 80 (or whatever you’ve set) on your router/ADSL modem. You can use the instruction from the portforward.com website. Of course you map this port to your server, using the IP you just retrieved.
• Now get your external IP address by surfing to whatismyip.com, again from your local machine. Write down this number. It is you public IP address on the web.
• In Transdroid, fill in the external IP address you just looked up, the port number, username and password. Make sure you are NOT connected to the local WiFi network. It should now connect.
• If it does not. Connect your Android device to the local WiFi network and use the internal IP address of the computer running your torrent app instead of the external IP address. If this does work, you haven’t set up the port forwarding correctly.

Good luck.