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:

  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.

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 logoFrom 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