If you’re on a mac, and you use bittorrent a lot, chances are you’re familiar with Transmission, a lovely little bittorrent client. But did you also know you can control Transmission remotely from another computer? (And it doesn’t even have to be a mac!)
# Setting up the server
Transmission has made this startling simple. Just go into Preferences, and select Remote. Check “Enable remote access”. You should set up a username and login below if you have others on your local network you don’t want accessing your Transmission, or if you plan to access Transmission away from home (see below). If the computer you’ll be accessing it from is a mac, you can turn on Bonjour for easy access.
# Accessing Transmission from another computer
Now on to the second computer, where you’ll be accessing Transmission from. If it’s a mac and you have Bonjour bookmarks enabled in Safari, you should see a link for your Transmission remote.
If you’re second computer isn’t a mac, you’ll need to know the “.local” name for you remote machine — you can set this in System Preferences -> Sharing -> Computer Name -> Edit. Now simply type that address into your favorite web browser appending the proper port number from above:
Log in with the username and password you set up (if you set one up) and you should an interface very similar to the Transmission app!
From here, you can add torrents via URL or a torrent file you’ve already downloaded. You can pause and resume torrents, control speed throttling and even see info on selected torrents.
# Setting up an app using Fluid or Prism
Want your Transmission remote to feel even more like an application? You can use something called a Site Specific Browser (SSB) to create your own little app for that.
On OS X, I use Fluid, which uses the Webkit (Safari) rendering engine.
Download and install Fluid. When you start fluid you’ll be prompted to create a site specific browser. Copy and paste the URL from your browser (including the “/transmission/web/” into the URL. Name it what you like and choose an Icon if you want (I just used the Transmission app’s icon, which happened to be installed on this computer as well).
Click create, launch now, and there you go. You now have a Transmission Remote App.
If you’re using Windows or Linux, you can use the Prism app (which I mentioned in my post about accessing 1Password remotely) to set up a similar SSB.
# Access Transmission from your iPhone (or other mobile browser)
Transmission even has a nifty web interface just for the iPhone! Simply navigate to the URL for the Transmission web interface from Safari and log in.
You can even create a psuedo iPhone app by adding a shortcut to the homescreen.
Now, I’m guessing the mobile interface would work on other mobile phones, but since I don’t have one, I can’t verify.
# Control Transmission away from home (Advanced)
This step is for optionally controlling Transmission while you’re away from home. I actually find this to be particularly handy, if I’ve come across something I’d like to download while at work or away, but don’t want to run bittorrent on whatever network I’m currently on, and want the file to end up on the remote machine anyway. This bit is a little more complicated, in order to proceed you’ll need:
- (Unless you have a static IP) A dyndns account and dyndns updater installed on the remote machine.
- Access to your firewall and router, and a knowledge of how to forward ports, and assign static IP’s within your NAT (assuming your device isn’t connected directly to the internet).
Setting up dyndns and port forwarding is a bit beyond the scope of this tip, so if you’re not familiar with how to do this, a little googling should point you in the right direction.
On your router, you’ll need to forward the Transmission web server port. You can make the public port anything you like, but the internal port must match the number set in the Transmission Remote settings (the default is 9091).
While you’re away from home, you can use the dynamic host name you set up with dyndns to access your computer. To try it out, type the address in the address bar as you did above, but replace the “.local” name with your dyndns host name. If you made your public port something other than 9091, you’ll need to append that instead.
You can edit any bookmarks you made to the Transmission Web interface to use this new URL as well, but you’ll need to re-create your SSB’s and iPhone shortcut from scratch.
Now you can control your home Transmission from anywhere!
# Make sure it’s always running
One last note, the transmission app needs to be running for the web server to work, so if you just want to have it always running, right-click on the dock icon and select “Open at Login”.
