User Guide

User Guide

Most of what this page will describe arrives in Phase 1. Today Flume shows live engine status and does not yet manage torrents. This page is the intended shape, and is updated as features land.

Adding torrents (Phase 1)

Magnet links. Paste into the add box. Flume detects a magnet link on the clipboard when the window regains focus and offers to add it.

Magnet links resolve their metadata over the DHT, so the status indicator must read Ready first. A magnet added while Connecting will sit waiting.

.torrent files. Use the file picker, or drag the file anywhere onto the window — Flume highlights the drop target and opens the add dialog with it. Non-torrent files are ignored rather than reported as an error.

Clipboard. If you have a magnet link on your clipboard when you open the add dialog, Flume prefills it. The clipboard is read only at that moment, when you have deliberately opened the dialog — never in the background.

Selecting files (Phase 1)

Each torrent has a file tree with checkboxes. Deselected files are not downloaded.

This matters for distro torrents, which often bundle several ISO variants plus checksum files when you want one image.

Controlling torrents (Phase 1)

Action	Effect
Pause	Stops transfer, keeps the torrent
Resume	Restarts transfer from existing progress
Remove	Removes from the list, asks whether to delete files
Open folder	Reveals the download in your file manager

Removal always asks before deleting data. Deleting a partially downloaded ISO by accident is a bad afternoon.

Settings (Phase 1)

Setting	Notes
Download folder	Where completed and in-progress files go
Rate limits	Global, plus per-torrent overrides
Max active torrents	Limits concurrent transfers
Listen port	Default 42221
UPnP	Automatic router port forwarding
DHT	Required for magnet links
Theme	Light, dark, or follow system

Seeding

Flume seeds completed torrents while running. Seeding requires an open listening port — see the firewall notes in Getting-Started.

Seeding Linux ISOs back is genuinely useful; distro mirrors carry real bandwidth costs.

Troubleshooting

Slow or no download. Check the status indicator reads Ready. Check peer count — zero peers on a well-seeded torrent usually means a blocked port.

Torrent stuck at 99%. Usually a single rare piece. librqbit will keep trying; leave it running.

Downloads restart after a crash. Fast-resume state flushes on clean shutdown. If the app is killed hard, some re-hashing on next launch is expected — it verifies rather than re-downloads.