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It is not always possible to set all configurations from the GUI, especially for the daemon or the web interface. This guide will try to give an overview of how and what you can change. For the location of these files, look at the Configuration Files page.

Note: The client should be closed before making changes, otherwise settings will be reverted to their previous state.

Some of Transmission's behavior can also be customized via environment variables.

GTK / Daemon / CLI

Overview

GTK, CLI and daemon (both on a Mac and Linux) use a JSON formatted file, mainly because of its human readability. (Consult the JSON website for detailed information)

Reload Settings

You can make the daemon reload the settings file by sending it the SIGHUP signal. Or simply run either of the following commands:

$ killall -HUP transmission-daemon

Or:

$ pkill -HUP transmission-daemon

Formatting

Here is a sample of the three basic types: respectively Boolean, Number and String:

{
    "rpc-enabled": true,
    "peer-port": 51413,
    "rpc-whitelist": "127.0.0.1,192.168.*.*"
}

Options

IP Announce

announce-ip: String (default = "") Alternative IP address to announce to tracker.
announce-ip-enabled: Boolean (default = false) When enabled announce-ip value is used instead of client's address visible to tracker for announcement requests.

Bandwidth

alt-speed-enabled: Boolean (default = false, aka 'Turtle Mode') Note: Clicking the "Turtle" in the GUI when the scheduler is enabled, will only temporarily remove the scheduled limit until the next cycle.
alt-speed-up: Number (KB/s, default = 50)
alt-speed-down: Number (KB/s, default = 50)
speed-limit-down: Number (KB/s, default = 100)
speed-limit-down-enabled: Boolean (default = false)
speed-limit-up: Number (KB/s, default = 100)
speed-limit-up-enabled: Boolean (default = false)
upload-slots-per-torrent: Number (default = 14)

Blocklists

blocklist-url: String (default = https://www.example.com/blocklist)
blocklist-enabled: Boolean (default = false)

Files and Locations

download-dir: String (default = default locations)
incomplete-dir: String (default = default locations) Directory to keep files in until torrent is complete.
incomplete-dir-enabled: Boolean (default = false) When enabled, new torrents will download the files to incomplete-dir. When complete, the files will be moved to download-dir.
preallocation: Number (0 = Off, 1 = Fast, 2 = Full (slower but reduces disk fragmentation), default = 1)
rename-partial-files: Boolean (default = true) Postfix partially downloaded files with ".part".
start-added-torrents: Boolean (default = true) Start torrents as soon as they are added.
trash-original-torrent-files: Boolean (default = false) Delete torrents added from the watch directory.
umask: String (default = "022") Sets Transmission's file mode creation mask. See the umask(2) manpage for more information. Users who want their saved torrents to be world-writable may want to set this value to "0".
watch-dir: String
watch-dir-enabled: Boolean (default = false) Watch a directory for torrent files and add them to transmission. Note: When watch-dir-enabled is true, only the transmission-daemon, transmission-gtk, and transmission-qt applications will monitor watch-dir for new .torrent files and automatically load them.

Misc

cache-size-mb: Size (default = 4), in megabytes, to allocate for Transmission's memory cache. The cache is used to help batch disk IO together, so increasing the cache size can be used to reduce the number of disk reads and writes.
dht-enabled: Boolean (default = true) Enable Distributed Hash Table (DHT).
encryption: Number (0 = Prefer unencrypted connections, 1 = Prefer encrypted connections, 2 = Require encrypted connections; default = 1) Encryption preference. Encryption may help get around some ISP filtering, but at the cost of slightly higher CPU use.
lazy-bitfield-enabled: Boolean (default = true) May help get around some ISP filtering. Vuze specification.
lpd-enabled: Boolean (default = false) Enable Local Peer Discovery (LPD).
message-level: Number (0 = None, 1 = Error, 2 = Info, 3 = Debug, default = 2) Set verbosity of transmission messages.
pex-enabled: Boolean (default = true) Enable [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_exchange Peer Exchange (PEX)].
prefetch-enabled: Boolean (default = true). When enabled, Transmission will hint to the OS which piece data it's about to read from disk in order to satisfy requests from peers. On Linux, this is done by passing POSIX_FADV_WILLNEED to posix_fadvise(). On macOS, this is done by passing F_RDADVISE to fcntl().
scrape-paused-torrents-enabled: Boolean (default = true)
script-torrent-added-enabled: Boolean (default = false) Run a script when a torrent is added to Transmission. Environmental variables are passed in as detailed on the Scripts page
script-torrent-added-filename: String (default = "") Path to script.
script-torrent-done-enabled: Boolean (default = false) Run a script when a torrent is done downloading. Environmental variables are passed in as detailed on the Scripts page
script-torrent-done-filename: String (default = "") Path to script.
script-torrent-done-seeding-enabled: Boolean (default = false) Run a script when a torrent is done seeding. Environmental variables are passed in as detailed on the Scripts page
script-torrent-done-seeding-filename: String (default = "") Path to script.
torrent-added-verify-mode: String ("fast", "full", default: "fast") Whether newly-added torrents' local data should be fully verified when added, or wait and verify them on-demand later. See #2626 for more discussion.
utp-enabled: Boolean (default = true) Enable Micro Transport Protocol (µTP)

Peers

bind-address-ipv4: String (default = "0.0.0.0") Where to listen for peer connections.
bind-address-ipv6: String (default = "::") Where to listen for peer connections.
peer-congestion-algorithm: String. This is documented on https://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/bittorrent/tcp-congestion-control.html.
peer-id-ttl-hours: Number (default = 6) Recycle the peer id used for public torrents after N hours of use.
peer-limit-global: Number (default = 240)
peer-limit-per-torrent: Number (default = 60)
peer-socket-tos: String (default = "default") Set the Type-Of-Service (TOS) parameter for outgoing TCP packets. Possible values are "default", "lowcost", "throughput", "lowdelay" and "reliability". The value "lowcost" is recommended if you're using a smart router, and shouldn't harm in any case.

Peer Port

peer-port: Number (default = 51413)
peer-port-random-high: Number (default = 65535)
peer-port-random-low: Number (default = 1024)
peer-port-random-on-start: Boolean (default = false)
port-forwarding-enabled: Boolean (default = true) Enable UPnP or NAT-PMP.

Queuing

download-queue-enabled: Boolean (default = true) When true, Transmission will only download download-queue-size non-stalled torrents at once.
download-queue-size: Number (default = 5) See download-queue-enabled.
queue-stalled-enabled: Boolean (default = true) When true, torrents that have not shared data for queue-stalled-minutes are treated as 'stalled' and are not counted against the download-queue-size and seed-queue-size limits.
queue-stalled-minutes: Number (default = 30) See queue-stalled-enabled.
seed-queue-enabled: Boolean (default = false) When true. Transmission will only seed seed-queue-size non-stalled torrents at once.
seed-queue-size: Number (default = 10) See seed-queue-enabled.

RPC

rpc-authentication-required: Boolean (default = false)
rpc-bind-address: String (default = "0.0.0.0") Where to listen for RPC connections
rpc-enabled: Boolean (default = true)
rpc-host-whitelist: String (Comma-delimited list of domain names. Wildcards allowed using '*'. Example: "*.foo.org,example.com", Default: "", Always allowed: "localhost", "localhost.", all the IP addresses. Added in v2.93)
rpc-host-whitelist-enabled: Boolean (default = true. Added in v2.93)
rpc-password: String. You can enter this in as plaintext when Transmission is not running, and then Transmission will salt the value on startup and re-save the salted version as a security measure. Note: Transmission treats passwords starting with the character { as salted, so when you first create your password, the plaintext password you enter must not begin with {.
rpc-port: Number (default = 9091)
rpc-url: String (default = /transmission/. Added in v2.2)
rpc-username: String
rpc-whitelist: String (Comma-delimited list of IP addresses. Wildcards allowed using '*'. Example: "127.0.0.*,192.168.*.*", Default: "127.0.0.1")
rpc-whitelist-enabled: Boolean (default = true)

Scheduling

alt-speed-time-enabled: Boolean (default = false) Note: When enabled, this will toggle the alt-speed-enabled setting.
alt-speed-time-begin: Number (default = 540, in minutes from midnight, 9am)
alt-speed-time-end: Number (default = 1020, in minutes from midnight, 5pm)
alt-speed-time-day: Number/bitfield (default = 127, all days)
- Start with 0, then for each day you want the scheduler enabled, add:
  - Sunday: 1 (binary: 0000001)
  - Monday: 2 (binary: 0000010)
  - Tuesday: 4 (binary: 0000100)
  - Wednesday: 8 (binary: 0001000)
  - Thursday: 16 (binary: 0010000)
  - Friday: 32 (binary: 0100000)
  - Saturday: 64 (binary: 1000000)
- Examples:
  - Weekdays: 62 (binary: 0111110)
  - Weekends: 65 (binary: 1000001)
  - All Days: 127 (binary: 1111111)
idle-seeding-limit: Number (default = 30) Stop seeding after being idle for N minutes.
idle-seeding-limit-enabled: Boolean (default = false)
ratio-limit: Number (default = 2.0)
ratio-limit-enabled: Boolean (default = false)

Legacy Options

Only keys that differ from above are listed here. These options have been replaced in newer versions of Transmission.

2.31 (and older)

open-file-limit: Number (default = 32)

1.5x (and older)

Bandwidth

download-limit: Number (KB/s, default = 100)
download-limit-enabled: Boolean (default = false)
upload-limit: Number (KB/s, default = 100)
upload-limit-enabled: Boolean (default = false)

Peer Port

peer-port-random-enabled: Boolean (default = false)

1.4x (and older)

Proxy

proxy-authentication String
proxy-authentication-required: Boolean (default = 0)
proxy-port: Number (default = 80)
proxy-server: String
proxy-server-enabled: Boolean (default = 0)
proxy-type: Number (0 = HTTP, 1 = SOCKS4, 2 = SOCKS5, default = 0)
proxy-username: String

Peers

max-peers-global: Number (default = 240)
max-peers-per-torrent: Number (default = 60)

1.3x (and older)

RPC

rpc-access-control-list: String (Comma-delimited list of IP addresses prefixed with "+" or "-". Wildcards allowed using '*'. Example: "+127.0.0.*,-192.168.*.*", Default: "+127.0.0.1")

macOS

Overview

macOS has a standardized way of saving user preferences files using XML format. These files are called plist (short for property list) files. Usually there is no need to modify these files directly, since Apple provided a command-line tool to reliably change settings. You do need to restart Transmission before these have effect.

In short:

To set a key: defaults write org.m0k.transmission <key> <value>
To reset a key: defaults delete org.m0k.transmission <key>

Options

PeerSocketTOS: Number (Default = 0)
RPCHostWhitelist: String, see "rpc-host-whitelist" above.
RPCUseHostWhitelist: Boolean, see "rpc-host-whitelist-enabled" above.

13 KiB Raw Blame History

GTK / Daemon / CLI

Overview

Reload Settings

Formatting

Options

IP Announce

Bandwidth

Blocklists

Files and Locations

Misc

Peers

Peer Port

Queuing

RPC

Scheduling

Legacy Options

2.31 (and older)

1.5x (and older)

Bandwidth

Peer Port

1.4x (and older)

Proxy

Peers

1.3x (and older)

RPC

macOS

Overview

Options

13 KiB

Raw Blame History