Keep Transmission hidden when opening torrents automatically

[Gary King]

I've got some apps that will download .torrent files into my ~/Downloads folder, which Transmission watches. When Transmission adds a new torrent, how do I keep it in the background rather than having it take focus away from whatever I am doing?

[Gary King]

Anyone?

[RobotPi]

This has started happening to me recently, perhaps in the last release or the one before.

I'm running Transmission 2.71 (13538) on a MacMini (2Ghz Core2Duo, 1Gb RAM, Snow Leopard fully updated) hooked to a TV, but otherwise headless (no monitor, mouse, keyboard). The Mac also runs XBMC (11.0 Eden) and TVShows 2.0 which is hows TV shows are grabbed.

In the last few weeks, perhaps a month or so, whenever a new torrent is added to Transmission, it pops the window showing the list of active transfers, OSX Menu Bar and the Dock (but not the open Finder windows) over XBMC, which runs full screen. I've disabled all the options for Transmission to pop-up windows or user prompts.

Does anybody know if this is a known issue and if there's a fix?

Cheers, RobotPi

[RobotPi]

Thanks for the response. No I'm using the regular build (with GUI), which I would prefer to stick with because I'm guessing it's easier to tweak the settings from a GUI, but Ill look into the daemon build as a short term measure and hope Transmission starts behaving like it did for years in a future release.

[chrisgibson]

I have this exact same problem! It seems churlish to even raise it, as Transmission works so well, and this is really just a minor irritation, but my set up is almost identical to the one above; a Snow Leopard machine with the latest Transmission (GUI) and permanently running Plex full-screen. When TV Shows (or Automatic) downloads a torrent file, and Transmission picks it up (or possibly when it completes?), the Transmission window gains focus and appears over the top of Plex, which is a nuisance for the wife as she can't then operate Plex with the Apple Remote.

This didn't used to happen, but I don't know if it's a bug, or a new feature...? I'm hoping it'll be reverted in a future build, but if anyone has any workarounds in the meantime, I'd love to hear them.

[RobotPi]

Many thanks for coming back, X190!

I'm afraid because I travel a lot (and therefore away a fair bit) I don't know which specific build resulted in this change of behaviour. But I'd estimate this started happening 7-9 weeks ago. I do recall noticing it straight after being prompted for an update and just assumed it was a minor bug which would be fixed in the next release but saw a couple more releases come and go without a fix which prompted my first post.

As for what trigger this, I have observed Transmission's UI popping over XBMC in fullscreen when TV Shows 2.0 adds a torrent via magnet link but I don't know if that is the only circumstance when this happens. Here are my config windows.

RobotPi

[RobotPi]

Thanks for your response but I don't believe this to be the case. My understanding of the working of magnet links is that each client, Transmission in this case, will setup a magnet link handler in the OS. This lets the TCP/IP stack to direct certain types of network containers (the magnet link) to the client.

There is nothing in TV Shows 2.0 that suggests it needs (or does) know about Transmission and there are no settings which obviously cause it start/open Transmission, but I can establish this with some further testing by changing Transmission for another P2P client and changing TV Shows 2.0 to something else. I believe what's happening is that Tranmission is doing something with UI code causing it to appear over full screen apps, even though the settings have user prompts disable - and which never actually appear.

[RobotPi]

Thanks for coming back. It looks like this is outside the scope of Transmission to control then. The daemon it is

[chrisgibson]

This makes perfect sense in my case; I've only recently started using TV Shows, and I think it's ony downloading magnet files at the moment. That must be giving focus to Transmission. I'll raise it with TV Shows. Thanks for the prompt response!

[chrisgibson]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but the way I got around this in the end was to write a small AppleScript that gives Plex focus. I trigger this script automatically every 15 minutes, so if Transmission has gained focus, Plex will be given it back. This works well for me, as the sole purpose of the Mac Mini is to run Plex, but I know it may not suit everyone. If anyone wants details of the script, though, just post something here or message me and I can add a copy of the script itself.