Streaming preview

Press v on a file in the detail pane's Files tab and it opens in your player immediately -- no need to wait for the torrent to finish. Seeking works too: jump to any point and the pieces you land on are fetched first.

torrnado preview <torrent-id> <file-index>          # print the stream URL
torrnado preview <torrent-id> <file-index> --play   # open it in the player

The daemon serves the file over a loopback HTTP URL backed by a torrent.Reader, whose reads block until the data arrives and whose position is what drives which pieces the client asks for. Requesting a preview resumes the torrent and raises the file's priority, because a paused or unwanted file cannot stream at all.

Handing the on-disk path to a player would not work, which is why this exists: until every piece of a file is present it lives at <name>.part, sparse and filled out of order, so a reader of it sees zeros wherever pieces haven't landed yet.

The URL binds 127.0.0.1 and carries a token that lasts only as long as the daemon that issued it. player in config.toml chooses the command (default mpv); it may carry flags (player = "mpv --no-terminal") and is split on spaces rather than run through a shell, so the URL is never a shell-injection surface. The player is detached, so it keeps playing after you quit the TUI.

On macOS, a player installed as an .app may be blocked by Gatekeeper the first time torrnado launches it ("Apple could not verify..."). That's the OS, not torrnado: approve it once in System Settings → Privacy & Security, or xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/<player>.app.

Switching themes

:theme opens a floating picker over the panes. Moving through it applies each theme as you go -- the list, sidebar and detail pane underneath recolor live, so you judge a theme on your own torrents rather than on a swatch. enter keeps it, esc puts back the one you started with. Your own themes from the themes directory are listed alongside the built-ins and marked (user); one that fails to parse is reported and stepped over rather than applied.

:theme nord switches straight to a named theme without opening the picker.

The choice lasts for the session. torrnado will not rewrite your config.toml -- doing so would re-encode the file and lose its comments and ordering -- so to keep a theme, put theme = "nord" in it yourself.