The open-source BitTorrent client Transmission has released version 4.1.4, a maintenance update addressing a security vulnerability in the macOS client, download reliability problems, and several bugs affecting its GTK, Qt, and Web interfaces.
One important fix addresses a regression introduced in Transmission 4.1.0 that could cause torrents with zero-byte files to be handled incorrectly, sometimes losing download progress. Another correction resolves a rare problem preventing webseed downloads from completing.
The release also improves how Transmission’s GTK and Qt clients interact. Previously, launching one client while the other was running could cause problems when adding torrents through a browser or file association. Now, new torrent requests are automatically handed over to the existing session.
Speed-limit handling has been corrected. Per-torrent overrides of session speed limits now work properly for uploads and downloads. Additionally, the torrent-add RPC method has been hardened against malformed requests.
Other improvements address a rare shutdown issue that could leave Transmission running but unresponsive, an SSL verification problem involving the TR_CURL_PROXY_SSL_NO_VERIFY setting, and a compilation failure with specific GCC warning flags.
On the security side, Transmission 4.1.4 fixes a potential remote code execution vulnerability in its macOS client. Exploitation requires local write access to the user’s preferences, so the issue cannot be exploited remotely. The release also raises the minimum supported macOS version to macOS 12 and fixes an issue preventing certain magnet links from being added correctly.
For Linux desktop users, the GTK client receives several usability fixes. Torrent lists now automatically update sorting and filtering when a torrent’s top-level folder is renamed or when metadata arrives through a magnet link.
Additionally, opening a torrent’s folder also works correctly for single-file torrents stored within directory structures, and an issue preventing the application icon from appearing on some desktops has been resolved.
The Qt client also gets internal optimizations to reduce interface CPU usage, and Windows builds benefit from updated Qt and zlib dependencies.
Finally, the web interface fixes a display issue that occasionally showed torrent names as “Unknown.” Command-line users also get a correction for transmission-remote --list-groups, which had been broken since Transmission 4.0.
For more information, see the changelog.
