WebTorrent Desktop 0.23 | Hacker News Reader

WebTorrent Desktop 0.23

github.com

120 pointsfeross36 comments

I love WebTorrent and have been using the desktop app as well as using Instant.io to transfer files.

I don't get why the desktop app still doesn't allow you to select specific files. Am I the only one who wants to do that? It's a pretty standard feature in every other torrent client. Now that libtorrent supports WebTorrent protocol, I don't know what the value proposition of the WebTorrent desktop app will be.

Contribute it

If I spent the time to fix all the open software that I use, I'd be homeless.

If you are not a part of a team building something you have little or no say in the outcome.

Put some gloves on and help out. Maybe you could get your features on the roadmap.

A lot of people in your situation hire a developer to add custom features. If your skill level isn't as high as the work required it could take forever (making you homeless). In your case (low skill/custom requirements) it is best to invest with a professional developer who can make your dreams a reality.

You can do that. Start the torrent, click to expand, unselect the files you are not interested in.

How does instant.io work? I just "download" from magnet, and the app hangs in there for ages[0].

[0]: https://i.imgur.com/8hdoVEX.png

Is the magnet link one you created with Instant.io/WebTorrent, or is it off a torrent site? I'm wondering because of those tracker URLs I can see in the magnet URI.

If it's the latter, it's not going to work because the torrent needs to be seeded via WebTorrent(i.e. WebRTC). The desktop version of WebTorrent can download both regular torrents and web torrents because it's not limited to WebRTC for peer connections(whereas a browser is).

OOOH! That makes sense. Yes, it was off of a public tracker. So, this is a P2P file sharing website, then?

Yep, exactly.

I've been using Webtorrent Desktop for quite a while now, and really enjoy using it generally, but there are some glaring issues around random freezes on fast connections, plenty of open issues on it with other users reporting the same experience: https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent-desktop/issues?q=is...

I've personally been working around this using a custom fork that messes around with the simultaneous connections settings of the webtorrent library, and it seems to help a bit, but I still get freezing from time to time when I download a large number of torrents simultaneously.

I wonder if an alternative Webtorrent implementation (not Webtorrent Desktop) in Rust on top of WASM might make those kinds of issues easier to avoid with its safeguards around concurrency and just generally making more efficient use of resources.

(Slightly edited repost from an earlier thread about Webtorrent, feels a lot more relevant on this one)

There are two other WebTorrent implementations (possibly more that I don't know about!)

* https://github.com/anacrolix/torrent (Golang)

* https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent (C++)

An implementation in Rust would be amazing, but there is a quite a bit of work to make that happen in pure Rust though! If you want to use FFI/unsafe code it is totally do-able :)

I don’t think the first one (anacrolix/torrent) supports WebTorrent, where did you read it?

There is a 'webrtc.go' file in that repo, so I guess it does.

Support was added a few months ago with some generous donations.

Webtorrent is very nice in web browser. But,i am not convinced why should i use webtorrent outside browser where i can use transmission/aria2/libtorrent based torrent clients.

Ease of use perhaps? WebTorrent is the application i recommend to anyone not-tech-savvy who wants to download and watch their favourite movies. Having a distinct play button for them to press and being able to watch immediately is a huge feature for them.

Yes,maybe. But,transmission BT client is also very easy.

The support for WebTorrent protocol (alongside BitTorrent) is also huge as this allows people to seed torrents that can be fetched by browsers.

Though your point is partially valid now that libtorrent has recently added support for WebTorrent protocol.

> allows people to seed torrents that can be fetched by browsers.

The ephemeral nature of tabs discourages reciprocity, so I don't think supporting browser use is good for preserving content availability.

Watch/listen while downloading

Transmission, aria2 , libtorrent based clients too support it. Actually, if you simultaneously (continuous) download, you can watch/listen while downloading.

I have seen some places where torrents are blocked (and WebTorrent still works!).

WebRTC uses DTLS, and ISPs blocking it is a pretty high blast radius. Also with conferencing being so important makes it much easier to hide. Tor's Snowflake did some good writeups on this also.

WebTorrent doesn't require a browser to use either anymore, so you could see lot more peers if you use both!

You can download from webtorrent nodes as well as bittorent, you can use it without forwarding any ports, and you can start watching a video as soon as you start downloading it instead of waiting until it’s done.

This broke VLC launching for me, though i think the regression is actually from the previous release:

https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent-desktop/issues/1807

In-case anyone has the same issue... downgrading alone is not sufficient to fix, as the issue seems to be with the configuration stored in .config/WebTorrent Once you remove this and install 0.21 or less VLC will launch again.

Another way to sandbox it if I don't trust the chrome-sandbox to set it setuid as root?

firejail?

I'm using WebTorrent Desktop to seed PeerTube videos. I'm really glad I can do this to help support my favorite content creators.

Is there a particular peertube platform thats currently popular?

And doesn't have suspicious advertising.

videos.lukesmith.xyz

That's exactly who I'm seeding.

done the amazing dude that add by `mistakes` adds in his standarjs library(that is just an amazing config file) to make some money, got with pants off and tell us it was just a test...

https://github.com/standard/standard/issues/1381

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20786981

i love javascript.

Did I miss something..?

enjoy: https://github.com/standard/standard/issues/1381

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20786981

I dont get it

The premise is stupid and incorrect.

Seems like you're exaggerating and overly bitter, for some reason.

I'll just move on, this is nothing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com