Transmission: New Version Offers Remote Control Torrent Tools
A new version of Transmission, the popular Mac/Linux BitTorrent client, has been released. This is a significant update that adds a new browser-based interface for managing your torrents remotely. The remote features come from Clutch, which has been included with the latest version of Transmission.
The new remote management feature is listed as experimental, but I didn’t have any trouble setting it up and was able to browse and control torrents from other machines on my home network. Firefox 3 didn’t load the stylesheet quite right on my Mac, but the Windows version had no trouble.
The Transmission web interface uses a CSS skin that makes it look indistinguishable from the actual app, so there’s no hunting for menu items in unfamiliar places. All permissions and IP whitelists are handled through the client, but otherwise the web interface has the same basic feature set.
Also new in this version of Transmission is support for Leopard’s Quick Look feature — just select a torrent and hit the spacebar. Of course if most of your torrent downloads are folders or disk images there isn’t much to see in Quick Look, but it’s there if you want it.
As commenters on Lifehacker have pointed out, the ability to serve Clutch out over SSL has been removed. But, as also discussed in the comments, you could set up SSL encryption if you have access to an Apache server you can use as a proxy.
Transmission is free and you can grab the latest Mac and Linux versions from the download page.
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