A native macOS remote for Transmission.

⬇ Download Swarm 1.0 — universal, macOS 14+

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Swarm is a small, fast, entirely native app for controlling a Transmission daemon from your Mac — on your home server, a NAS, a seedbox, wherever it's running. SwiftUI throughout, Liquid Glass on macOS 26+, a real toolbar, keyboard shortcuts. It opens instantly, uses almost no memory, and looks like it belongs on your Mac — because it's built for nothing else.

Downloading a prebuilt copy? Swarm isn't notarized yet, so macOS will flag it as unverified on first launch. This is expected — see Installing a downloaded build below for the one-time fix.

Features

Torrent management

• Real-time updates, multi-select with shift/cmd-click, drag-and-drop .torrent files straight onto the window
• Add via magnet link, .torrent file, or URL — make Swarm the default handler for both
• A tabbed inspector per torrent: Activity, Trackers, Peers, Files (with per-file priority and inclusion toggles), General
• Right-click a torrent to ask its tracker for more peers, verify its data on disk, reorder it in the download queue, rename it, move its data to a new location, or copy its magnet link

Speed control

• Global upload/download limits
• One-click Slow Mode with its own alternate limits, configurable from a popover

Built for the Mac

• Native SwiftUI window with an .inspector() side panel, full menu bar commands, and a Dock badge showing active downloads
• Launch at login, keep running quietly in the background after you close the window
• A notification when a download finishes
• English and Russian, following your system language or switchable in-app from Preferences → General

At a glance

• A live sparkline of upload/download throughput in the sidebar
• Torrent counts per filter (All, Downloading, Seeding, Paused)
• Free disk space on the download server

Requirements

• macOS 14 or later
• A Transmission daemon with remote access (RPC) enabled somewhere on your network

Building

No Xcode project — Swarm is a plain Swift package, built and packaged into a .app by one script:

./script/build_and_run.sh run

To produce a distributable, universal (Apple Silicon + Intel) DMG instead:

./script/build_and_run.sh dmg

Installing a downloaded build

Swarm isn't notarized yet — that needs a paid Apple Developer account — so on first launch Gatekeeper will say it "cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" or "is damaged and can't be opened." It isn't damaged; macOS just hasn't seen this signature before. Either:

• Right-click (or Control-click) the app → Open → Open, once — macOS remembers your choice after that, or
• Run xattr -cr /Applications/Swarm.app in Terminal to clear the quarantine flag.

Signing with a Developer ID (optional)

With a paid Apple Developer account, dmg/release builds can be signed with a real certificate instead of ad-hoc — a prerequisite for notarization:

DEVELOPER_ID_IDENTITY="Developer ID Application: Your Name (TEAMID)" ./script/build_and_run.sh dmg
xcrun notarytool submit dist/Swarm-1.0.dmg --keychain-profile "AC_PASSWORD" --wait
xcrun stapler staple dist/Swarm-1.0.dmg

(--keychain-profile assumes credentials already stored once via xcrun notarytool store-credentials.)

Security & privacy

• Server passwords live in the Keychain — never in plaintext preferences.
• The app is sandboxed with Hardened Runtime, and asks for nothing beyond network access and files you explicitly choose.
• Swarm talks to Transmission's RPC API over plain HTTP by default, matching Transmission's own defaults, and that traffic never leaves your local network — NSAllowsLocalNetworking is the only App Transport Security exception it declares. If your daemon is reachable from outside your LAN, put it behind HTTPS or a VPN; Swarm doesn't encrypt RPC traffic itself.
• Nothing is collected, tracked, or sent anywhere except the Transmission server you configure.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.