Transdroid – Page 3 – Manage your torrents from your Android device

8 tips you did not know

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.

Xirvik seedbox partnership

Seedboxes are servers dedicated to one thing only: torrenting. No need to keep your home machine running all the time and amazing transfer speeds. And it isn’t only for die-hard torrent users as well; new users can benefit from the easy setup. No more need to forward ports on your router and other complex installation tasks!

And from the next release on connecting to your seedbox cannot be easier. Transdroid partnered with Xirvik to offer even easier setup. Depending on your Xirvik server plan (starting at $4,95 a week), you can connect to rTorrent, Torrentflux-b4rt or uTorrent with on 4 simple setttings. Moreover, Xirvik will sponsor Transdroid development to build new features and improve existing ones. Are you a Xirvik user? Make sure to pass them your Transdroid feature requests so they get pushed forward in the work queue. 🙂

New licensing

The GNU GPLv3 logo From today, Transdroid will be distributed under a new license: the GNU General Public License. This is important because it have different permissions than the old license that was used. I want to briefly explain this choice.

I am a strong supporter of free and open-source software. Although not always possible, I believe software should be free to use, adapt, redistribute or even sell. However, I also believe that software released under such conditions should always be free. In particular, I believe we should encourage any derivative works to be free and open-source as well. Until now Transdroid was released with an Apache License 2.0, which is pretty much fully permissive. The change to the GPLv3, which is a copyleft license, ensures any work based on Transdroid version released in the future needs to be released under GPLv3 as well.

Any Transdroid version based on source code, documentation, meta files, etc. of revision 138 or earlier (released Transdroid version 0.13.5 and earlier and beta versions 0.14.0 beta 3 and earlier) are still under the Apache License 2.0, while from revision 139 and onwards (including any future Transdroid releases) will be licensed with GNU General Public License version 3. Transdroid reuses some code released by their own licenses (Apache and LGPL), which will be left in tact.

Hopefully this explains why all future works of (or based on) Transdroid will be open-source forever.

Feature extravaganza

Ho ho ho, take a look at all the shiny new features that are present in the just-released Transdroid 0.13.0! Just in for your holiday shopping…

RSS feed support

Often websites expose an RSS feed for visitors to get news delivered right to them. Recently special torrent vieqs are becoming popular as well and luckily most of them actually are standardized. For example Final Gear, all about the Top Gear and Fifth Gear car shows, offer a feed for when new shows are available online.

Transdroid now supports such feeds! In your settings, add them using the URL and some personal name tag. Using the RSS menu option in the main screen a list of all your feeds will be shown. In the background it will check the number of unread items. Any new torrents available? Click the feed to get the full listing, after which adding them to your server is as easy as clicking the item you like! Every time you get into the listing the last item is remembered, so next time it can see again if any new torrents are available.

SSL support

As requested already a while back, Transdroid now finally supports SSL connections with your torrent client. All kudos go to q3aimi, who provided a full working code patch. See, the power of open-source software. It should work with self-signed certificates.

Filter 0KB/s transfers

Some people, especially those with many running torrents, like the list to be organized a little differently. One new way to filter the downloading and uploading lists is to enable the ‘Transfers >0KB/s only’ option from the ‘Filter list’ menu. All torrents that aren’t stopped or paused, but aren’t actively transferring data as well, will now show up in the inactive torrents list instead.

Overall server statistics

At the bottom of the screen Transdroid will now always show you the number of active downloads and uploads, as well as the total transfer speeds they consume. Going too fast…?

Transfer rate adjustment

Another feature requested by users helps you limit the total torrent transfer speeds. By selecting ‘Set transfer rates’ from the menu or touching the total statistics bar in the main screen, you can set the maximum upload and download torrent rates. Both values are in KB/s and you may use the reset button to cancel you fixed limits again. Works on all but Vuze for the moment (Vuze support will follow soon).

High-res icon

Finally, for all you lucky high-res (or rather, hdpi) device owners such as the Motorola Droid, the new version includes a nicer, more detailed icon. 🙂 (The other artwork will get high-res version later as well.)

New look and icon

When I started development on Transdroid back in May 2009, I stole Transmission‘s icon to feature my application. IT was an innocent choice since Transdroid would support nothing but that torrent client. Skip ahead 7 months and so much has changed since. Many new torrent clients and many new features were added. So for the app to get its own icon is really overdue already.

Glad to present you Transdroid’s new logo! It is right here next to you. The idea came from the gears in a transmission together with the obvious download arrow. So the logo, as well as the name, still hint at its Transmission-tight past. On the other hand, I think its a fresh start as well.

Although some comments in the Market already explained they miss the old icon, others seem to approve of it. I hope most of you will enjoy it. Leave comments here or twit me at Twitter.

Finally, if someone ever wants to download the new logo, here it is:
PNG logo — PNG icon — PNG tiny icon — PNG promo — PSD logo — PSD icon — PSD promo

Website problems

I am trying to get the site back online as soon as possible. Sorry for all the inconvenience the website downtime causes.

UPDATE: Most of the stuff is back online, like posts and pages. The install guides are still missing the images – this will be fixed soon as well. The translation tool should be working again. Missing something? Mail me about it!

New site, new release

Welcome to Transdroid’s new website: www.transdroid.org Glad you have found your way. The application is getting better and better and is also attracting more and more users. To fit this growing interest and more mature image, the logical next step was for the application to get its own domain name. Thanks so much to Travis, who provided the domain registration and hosting. The old blog will be there for a little longer, but only on this site you’ll find the latest updates and user support. All old posts and comments are moved here too.

More interesting for you as a users is that a new Transdroid version was just released! Version 0.12.1 had some nice updates, most of which were requested by users themselves. So what’s new?

Vuze (previously called Azureus) support. The most-used torrent client that wasn’t yet supported. You will need the XML over HTTP plug-in enabled in Vuze.
Swipe to switch. Switching between your server configurations now is even easier. Just swipe – or fling – your finger from left to right or right to left to switch to the next or previous configuration. No need to open up the menu.
Support for local .torrent file uploads. You will need a compatible file manager, such as OI File Manager. Hit the ‘add local .torrent file’ button in the torrent add screen to install. Other file managers may work, such as aFile when using the Send to… command.
Deluge support updated. Transdroid’s Deluge support is based on the not yet released 1.2 version. In practice this means that you will always need the latest SVN version. Transdroid is updated to reflect the recent (security) updates and should work again.
Updated translations, now including Romanian.

Get the new version from the market or download directly. More coming up!

Support Transdroid development

Even though I try to update and improve Transdroid often, there is always more to add and make it even better. Of course I will keep doing this, but you can help as well. What can you do?

Donate

Transdroid is free and open-source. Anyone can download it form the Android market or even directly from the web. If you are a Twitter follower you can get beta version too. But if you feel it saves you time (and hence money), maybe you would like to donate some to support future Transdroid development? You are free to pay whatever you like. I do have to pay 30 cents transaction costs though, so please make the amount higher than that. 😉 Hit the large Donate button at the right.

Provide webspace

Maybe you can’t miss any money, but have some connections with web hosts? Transdroid still needs it own domain name (I believe www.transdroid.org is still free) and some web space with a small amount of bandwidth. PHP and MySQL supported will be needed, but that’s about it.

UPDATE: This is taken care of. Thanks!

Become a developer

Transdroid is open-source which means everyone is free to get the Android source code and start coding new features. I tried to build everything using clear and open coding standards and extensively commented. You don’t have to be an experienced Android developer, as it really is pretty much standard Java. So if you want to build some new torrent client support like Torrentflux, Vuze or whatever is to your liking; checkout the SVN and get coding.

Translate

I am a native Dutch speaker and quite apt in English as well, but that’s about it. Currently Transdroid is already offered in German, French, Spanish and Italian. You can help as well! Do you speak another language fluently or want to update one of the languages already supported (especially Italian is old)? It’s as simple as getting the strings.xml file from the source code site. Use the English original in the ‘values‘ directory if your language wasn’t supported yet. Just send the translation to me via e-mail or use the issue tracker.

UPDATE: I have just finished a tool to translate Transdroid right form your web browser, which can be found right here.

Icon and artwork

At the beginng of Transdroid’s development, only Transmisison was supported as a torrent client. Since then, support was extended to 5 6 different apps already. The icon never changed though: it is still the Transmission icon I snitched used back then. So if you are a good designer, why not draw some nice icon and maybe some artwork as well? I don’t have any concrete specs but I guess it should do something with Android’s droid, torrents and maybe ‘remote’.

UPDATE: Please post any artwork and icon you have here on the issue tracker. Transdroid already has a new icon! Without the droid…

Spread the word

If none of the above apply, you can always spread the word to your friends, collegues and all other Android users. Maybe post some praise on Twitter or your blog?

Thanks for any help. I will try to reward all effort with an even more complete, useful, stable and attractive torrent remote app.

Better views at your torrents

The latest and greatest Transdroid has just been released to the market, which mostnotably comes with an options to filter your torrents per status. Four views are available with a simple button press, which will filter the torrent list for a better overview of what is going on. There is still a main view showing all your torrents, but you can also choose to only display downloading, seeding or inactive torrents.

Hope you like this new feature. If you have other ideas on how to Transdroid, feel free to leave a comment, or even open an issue for it.

Multi-server support

Not only was support for multiple servers a personal nice-to-have, but it was also requested by some of the Transdroid users. So I finally had the time to build this very nice feature, which is in the newly released 0.10.1. It is now very easy to switch between set-ups. One of the main benefits: when you come how and connect to your local WiFi, a simple tap on your LAN server configuration is enough to connect to your torrent app again. Here are some screenshots of the new functionality:

The new preferences screen shows all server configurations

Switching between server configurations is easy

And have you noticed that you can now not only search isoHunt, but BTJunkie and Mininova as well? I will build a web search feature in the near future.

New sites available, all with search results right inside Transdroid

Oh, and the nasty widget bug is also solved in this release. Sorry for any inconvience this may have caused. Hope the new features make up for it. 🙂

Want to follow Transdroid development and receive early updates? Join Transdroid on Twitter!