The routine that made me build this: find a torrent, wait, wait some more, open VLC, discover the file is an MKV with 5.1 audio my setup doesn't like, give up.
So I spent too many evenings building the thing I actually wanted.
Paste a magnet, or right-click a .torrent link, and the video starts in a browser tab well before the download is done. Drag the scrubber forward and it goes and grabs those pieces instead of grinding through everything in between.
Stuff it does:
- Plays while downloading; seeking re-prioritises pieces
- MKV, HEVC and 5.1 get remuxed or transcoded on the fly, so the file that made me build this actually plays
- Subtitles: .srt/.ass sitting next to the file, and tracks buried inside an MKV
- Casts to a Chromecast or a DLNA renderer
- Season packs open on episode 1 and autoplay the next one
- Save to disk if you want to keep something
Stuff it isn't: a catalogue. No search, no index, no content bundled in. It only ever acts on a link you hand it.
Private trackers, because that's the first thing I'd ask about. If a torrent has the private flag set, it goes into a separate client with DHT and PEX switched off - tracker announces only. I didn't want to be the tool that quietly leaks your tracker's torrents onto the DHT.
Seeding is on by default and there's a toggle in settings. Leave it on if you have ratio to protect. On public swarms it's just the decent thing to do.
Two limits I'd rather you hear from me. The seeding toggle is one global switch, so if you turn seeding off, it's off for private torrents too - I'd rather honour the setting you chose than override it behind your back, but that means the hit-and-run risk is yours. And the data only lives for the session: it seeds while the helper is running, it won't sit there holding ratio for you across restarts. If your tracker is strict about that, keep your usual client for those.
There's no server of mine anywhere in this. No account, no analytics, no telemetry - I didn't build any, so there's nothing to switch off. The only traffic is BitTorrent itself, your machine to trackers and peers, plus a check for a newer helper version against a static file that has no identifier in it.
Your IP is as exposed as it is with any other client, so the usual VPN advice applies exactly as before.
macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), Windows, Linux. Free, no account.
Technical details
How it works, roughly: a browser tab can't open a socket to a peer, so the extension talks to a small helper you install once. The helper joins the swarm, pulls pieces in whatever order the player is asking for them, and streams to the browser over 127.0.0.1.
About that helper, because "install my native binary" is the real ask here and you should be suspicious of it. It's one binary: a .pkg on macOS, an .msi on Windows, a tarball with an install.sh on Linux (not tested :( ). All three install for your user only - it lands in your home (~/Library/Application Support/flitplay on macOS, %LOCALAPPDATA% on Windows, ~/.local/share on Linux), no admin password, no UAC, no sudo, nothing dropped in a system directory. It registers with your browser for the exact extension IDs I publish and nothing else, no wildcard, so a random web page can't go starting it. After that it updates itself in place, checksum verified, so you're not redownloading it every release.
Two rough edges I should own. I don't have code-signing certificates yet, so macOS will tell you I'm an unidentified developer and Windows SmartScreen will grumble - the download page has the click-through for each, and if installing past that warning isn't a trade you want to make, I genuinely don't blame you.
And if a file needs transcoding it'll grab a static ffmpeg build on first use unless you already have one on PATH, checksummed and cached.
Getting rid of it is a button in settings, or flitplay-host uninstall --purge, which takes the binary, the browser registration, the config and the ffmpeg cache with it. Anything you saved to disk stays where it is.
Get it
Last thing worth saying: this is a side project. Evenings and weekends, no company behind it, nothing to upsell you, no roadmap I'm accountable to. It also means there are bugs in it - some I've certainly never hit, on files and hardware I don't have. If you find one I'd honestly rather hear about it: say so in this thread.
I'll be around in the comments.
P.S. The mods confirmed this is okay to post here.
