Transmission
The Mac-native torrent client that gets out of the way.
What it does
Transmission is a small, native Cocoa app over a C core. It downloads torrents, and the window shows the queue and little else. Encryption, peer exchange, DHT, local peer discovery and a scheduler are there; the endless preference tabs are not.
The same core also ships as transmission-daemon with a web interface and an RPC API, which is what runs on a NAS or a headless box — and what every mobile remote and *arr stack speaks to.
Notes
brew install transmission-cligivestransmission-remoteandtransmission-createwithout the app.- Bind the daemon to a VPN interface, or run it in a container whose only route is the tunnel. A dropped VPN otherwise falls back to the normal uplink silently.
- In 2016 the official macOS download was served with malware twice after the project’s site was compromised. Verify the checksum, or install through Homebrew.
- BitTorrent is a distribution protocol, not a licence. Use it for Linux images, Creative Commons material and other content you have the right to share.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| qBittorrent | Open source | Far more settings, a search tab, and RSS rules |
| Deluge | Open source | Plugin-driven, and built around a daemon from the start |
| WebTorrent Desktop | Open source | For streaming a torrent rather than keeping it |
| µTorrent or BitTorrent Classic | Free | The clients this category left behind — ad-supported, and unmaintained on macOS |
Install
brew install --cask transmission
brew install transmission-cli # remote control and torrent creation