Magnet links are also supported and can be added in exactly the same way. The file location can either be a local path to a downloaded torrent file or a direct URL to the online location. To add a torrent you will use transmission-remote and pass the torrent file location as a parameter with the -a option. The first thing you will want to do is start the Transmission session, you can do this by simply running the daemon: To confirm the directory location you can run this command which will print out the current settings:įor a full list of available configuration options, check out the manual page. Transmission-daemon -download-dir 'your-download-directory-path' This can be set with the following command: Although one thing you may want to update is the download directory for completed torrents. Out of the box, the default settings should be fine for simple use. This is the control utility used for adding and removing torrents. This is the Transmission client itself, when a Transmission session is started it will run quietly as a background process and can be controlled with the remote utility. The installation will include a set of command line utilities but for the scope of this tutorial we will cover just two of these: transmission-daemon and transmission-remote. Transmission is the default BitTorrent client in many Linux distributions and transmission-cli can be found in most official repositories.įor OSX, Transmission CLI can be installed with the excellent package manager Homebrew: This guide will run you through the basic usage of the terminal client. There is also a command line interface for Transmission which turned out to be perfect for my occasional BitTorrent requirements. Transmission is a popular cross-platform BitTorrent client that comes in a variety of flavours, including native Mac and GTK+ versions with a desktop GUI familiar to anyone who has used uTorrent. In some cases, you will find that a heavy desktop app can be replaced by a simple command line alternative and Transmission CLI offers just that. After using uTorrent for a while I found myself looking for a lightweight (and ad-free) alternative. When it comes to BitTorrent clients, there are a lot to choose from.

Remote control torrent