I preferred to bundle libtransmission to offer a plug'n play experience across all platforms.
Regarding all the criticism here, I believe PikaTorrent should primarily focus on new or average torrent users. Advanced users might either modify the settings file manually for now (though guessing the path is not ideal), or perhaps PikaTorrent should expose a textarea to edit transmission settings (though this approach might be risky for average users).
In the meantime, I plan to expose a lot more Transmission settings in the UI. Even for me, PikaTorrent is not mature enough to fulfill all my needs. However, with more features to come and potential feature requests from users on GitHub, it might become a suitable BitTorrent client for advanced users and server usages.
I just released a new version. I mainly reworked design for the torrent cards, utilizing a lot less vertical space.
Thank you for the few valuable feedback. I will continue to iterate and improve pikatorrent. Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts and feature requests on GitHub/Discord.
I strive to maintain parity between the mobile and desktop UIs, and I understand that some tweaks are needed to reduce the used space.
The file counter is a button that displays the downloaded files. In the near future, users will be able to directly open files from this view. For example, this will enable playing media files directly from PikaTorrent.
The displayed information and ordering can be customized from the settings. If you prefer not to see ETA or other information. The default settings might changed based on feedback received, such as yours.
There's nothing wrong with using Transmission. I find the new web UI rather nice, but IMHO, still not be ideal for newcomers. With PikaTorrent, my goal is to provide a simple, cross-platform client that can be controlled remotely without requiring any technical knowledge.
Well, I believe that setting up a web server should not be a requirement for remote software control. In the case of torrents, it would be great to have the ability to manage downloads on a desktop from a mobile device, no matter where we are.
I understand that Hacker News users are generally power users. If qbittorrent fulfills your needs and you have the skills to setup and secure a webserver, there is no need to switch to another client. Additionally, it's worth noting that PikaTorrent may not implement all the features of qbittorrent anyway.
I think so, too. It seems people here would prefer a table view.
However, I'm uncertain about the value added by including all this information in a table. Personally, I find myself ignoring them 99% of the time.
When dealing with hundreds of torrents, I believe filtering options and a simple text filter would be more useful in quickly finding specific torrents. What are your thoughts on this?
That being said, based on the feedback, it seems necessary to reduce some vertical space in these cards.
I chose web technologies for PikaTorrent because I wanted the ability to remotely control my instances on the web, which you can access at https://app.pikatorrent.com. Additionally, Expo allows me to target both web and native mobile platforms using React Native. It's a significant time-saver to maintain a single codebase that can target the web, desktop (via Electron), and native mobile platforms.
However, in the context of a terminal like Tabby or Hyper, it may make less sense to choose web technologies over cross-platform native libraries. I suppose the goal here was to create an easily "hackable" terminal experience.
Thank you for your comment, it seems that many users here would prefer a table view. It's true that when the cards are collapsed, some (configurable and orderable) information gets hidden, which is not ideal. However, in the meantime, I'm trying to maintain parity between the mobile and desktop versions.
When I mentioned the "old" interface, what I meant was that it may not be as attractive to newcomers. I understand that a UI can be old but perfectly functional.
As an advanced user myself, remote control is important to me, but I also want to introduce more people to BitTorrent through a simple UI. Based on the comments, it seems I have missed the target for advanced users with these large cards, this is something I would like to improve.
What would you suggest? Should I offer two view modes, one with cards and one with a list? I could find a way to reduce the vertical height of the cards anyway.
In the near future, I plan to utilize the horizontal space to add filter and label management options, allowing users to quickly find specific torrents. I think displaying hundreds of torrents simultaneously isn't practical as I can't process them all. Instead, I believe a search bar and filters would greatly enhance the user experience. It seems people here would prefer a table view instead, like qbittorrent, what are your thoughts on this?
The search bar allows you to quickly search using the selected search engine. Google is just an example preconfigured in the settings, but you can configure any search engine of your choice. For example, you can add archive.org with the URL "https://archive.org/search?query=".
While I may consider integrating a search feature with plugins in the future, I currently find the existing search bar to be a simple & time-saving shortcut for finding torrents online.
Regarding the package-lock.json, I understand your point. However, please keep in mind that PikaTorrent is a monorepo. It includes the website, app (web & mobile), desktop (electron), and CLI. There are numerous development dependencies that are not bundled into the final app.
In theory, PikaTorrent could handle as many torrents as Transmission since it uses the same library. However, we need to conduct further testing on PikaTorrent UI with a larger number of torrents in order to observe the performance of its virtualized list.
I preferred to bundle libtransmission to offer a plug'n play experience across all platforms.
Regarding all the criticism here, I believe PikaTorrent should primarily focus on new or average torrent users. Advanced users might either modify the settings file manually for now (though guessing the path is not ideal), or perhaps PikaTorrent should expose a textarea to edit transmission settings (though this approach might be risky for average users).
In the meantime, I plan to expose a lot more Transmission settings in the UI. Even for me, PikaTorrent is not mature enough to fulfill all my needs. However, with more features to come and potential feature requests from users on GitHub, it might become a suitable BitTorrent client for advanced users and server usages.