Drag-and-Drop Torrent Creation on the Mac
Written by Smaran on February 08, 2007A new Dashboard widget for the Mac has simplified the process of creating a torrent to grabbing a file or folder and dragging it onto the Mac OS X Dashboard.
Until now, there have only been two three ways of creating a torrent on the Mac. The first was to use the mainline BitTorrent client, the second option was Azureus, the Java-based BitTorrent client, and the third was Tomato Torrent.
The problem with the mainline client is that it’s not a Universal application, so running it on an Intel Mac is like watching cheese ferment. There is a Universal beta, but is still very buggy and refuses to close, you have to force quit it. 
And Azureus is a memory hog, partly because it’s written in Java and partly because it’s such a feature-full application.
So, there is a need for a lighter alternative. Well, we’ve found an alternative, and it’s as light as it gets. 
A developer by the name of Wojtek has released a widget that makes creating torrents as easy as dragging and dropping a file or folder onto your Dashboard. It’s called CreateTorrent and is really simple to use.
The only thing you need to do once you’ve downloaded and installed it on your Dashboard is add an announce (tracker) URL. Just flip it around and you’ll see three input boxes: Announce URL, Port and Output Filename. The only one you need to change is the Announce URL, ie. a tracker address. Mininova compiles a list of “frequently used” public and private trackers that you can use. Most people just use The Pirate Bay’s tracker:
http://tpb.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce
Initially, the widget just refused to work. But then, I wanted to find out what exactly was wrong and opened it with Azureus instead of Transmission, the client I normally use. Turns out, it was an issue with libtransmission, the core library of the two BitTorrent clients I tried to seed the torrent with, Transmission and Acquisition. When I opened the torrent with Azureus, it just worked.
Download the torrent I made with CreateTorrent: Noite de Carnaval by Code (.torrent).
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28 Responses
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Yeah, didn’t have a MAC to try it out on, looks pretty darn handy though….
much easier than the regular method thats for sure…
Lets go windows…!
yah maybe we can pray for a nice Google Desktop widget.. :-)
I pray the make this for windows
>_>
“Until now, there have only been two ways of creating a torrent on the Mac.”
Nope, Tomato torrent can generate torrents also.
@ Feyth: Oh, of course. How could I forget?! I even reviewed Tomato Torrent a while back.
Updating the post now.
But if you have to open it in Azureus to make it work, why not just make it with Azureus? I’m not seeing how this helps.
It actually works with other torrent clients also, not only Azureus. Besides, as the author pointed, it’s caused by a bug in the libtransmission library, which probably will be fixed in future.
worked in Transmission SVN for me. I don’t know what you did wrong.
Um, how do I drag and drop a folder over a widget?
Ya, can’t get this thing to work at all.
> Um, how do I drag and drop a folder over a widget?
you grab a folder/file, hit F12 (by default) and then drop - tricky huh?
installed widget OK; pick up file, hit F12, drag file to the widget, and nothing happens…..
Can’t get it to work either. Installed just fine, and I was able to drag a folder to it…no luck generating anything (even an error) though.
= (
doesn’t work for me either……….waste of time. Tried every way I could think of. Ignore this app.
you need to add a .tor after the name you choose for your torrent in order for the widget to work
nirvana - nevermind would be
nirvana - nevermind.tor
wOrd
How am I supposed to seed my torrent? Does it do it automatically? Do I have to upload my torrent anywhere? I am doing exactly what you said. But my friend says there are 0 out of 0 peers. No seeders. Am I missing a big part of this?
I drag file to the widget byt nothing happens :(
errata corrige: widget works properly with files but not with directories!!
too bad it doesn’t work
hey sorry im new to this whole thing and i have tomato torrent and everytime i go to any of the websites to try and download it i get the file but its not compatible w/ tomato torrent (it doesnt have the tomato on the little paper when i download it). i have a mac by the way….if anyone can pllzzz help me id really appreciate it…
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