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Guide
The Complete Guide for using Powder Web.
When you run Powder Web you actually run a web server locally that allows the management and streaming of torrents from any browser, on any device. When Powder Web is running you can visit http://localhost:3000/ (unless it was changed in the settings) in your browser to access the Powder Web.
Typically, when accessing Powder Web from the browser for the first time, you will see a login prompt. Learn how to create a user.
The Settings Panel is mentioned a lot throughout this guide. In order to reach the Settings Panel, you must click the Gear Icon in the top right corner of the application window (or browser window in case it was loaded in a browser). It is important to click this button from the main page (the page that lists all your torrents) and not from a torrent page, as clicking the Gear Icon on a torrent page brings up the Torrent Settings instead of the Settings Panel.
Another important thing to note is that only the Master can see the entirety of the options from the Settings Panel. To auto-login as Master start the app from either "Show App" or "Show in Browser" from the right click menu of the Tray Icon.
In order to create a user you will need to open Powder Web by right clicking the tray icon, selecting "Open App" or "Open in Browser" and setting the "Allowed Users" setting to "1" from the "Web Server" settings in the Settings Panel. (gear icon, upper right corner of UI)
If you visit http://localhost:3000/ again now, you will have access to registering 1 user. During registration, you will not receive any email notification from the service.
Locally, you can access Powder Web with http://localhost:3000/ in any browser. To use it through the LAN, on any device, you will need to locate your LAN IP and substitute localhost from http://localhost:3000/ with your LAN IP, then using the new URL in any browser from a device connected to the same local network.
In this case you will need to identify your Internet IP (you can see your IP here), then opening your router's settings under Port Forwarding and allowing the 3000 port from your LAN IP to be visible to the internet.
After doing this, you can substitute localhost from http://localhost:3000/ with your Internet IP, then using the new URL in any browser of any device connected to the internet.
If you prefer using an easier to remember domain name instead (for example: http://torrents.hopto.org/, etc), you can visit https://www.noip.com/, sign up for a free account, and use their Redirect feature to redirect to the aforementioned internet URL.
! Note: This setting requires restarting the application.
Powder Web supports enabling Self Signed SSL Certificates for added security. To do this, set "Use SSL" under "Web Server" to "True" in the Settings Panel.
Depending on the scenario, it is not recommended to use Self Signed Certificates if you want to use Powder Web as an Embedded Player in other websites. The reason for this is that you would need to go to http://localhost:3000/ each time you start Powder Web in order to set the SSL Certificate as trusted manually. On the other hand, if you wish to use Powder Web as an Embedded Player in a website that uses SSL itself, it is mandatory to use SSL in Powder Web too and also set the SSL Certificate to trusted manually. These are browser set limitations that we must abide by in order for Powder Web to be embeddable in other websites.
Be mindful when using torrents, using them is considered illegal in some countries and you could get finned for using this technology.
Powder Web is made to support the web, it's also made to stream torrents to your browser. But the fastest way to start torrent playback is to use a local video player (whichever video player you wish).
This is because streaming to your browser includes additional tasks that take time, while streaming to a normal video player is done with minimal (and fast) tasks.
To make Powder Web's Play Buttons always start with a local video player instead of the web player go to the Settings Panel and set "Play Button" under "User Interface" to "Download Playlist" instead of "Web Player".
You can use a local video player on any device. (either phone, tablet, PC, etc)
Another important tip to speeding up torrent play time is to associate Powder Web with magnet links or torrent files. You can do this from "Associations" in the Settings Panel. To set a local video player to open from associations, set the "Video Player" setting under "External Applications". You can also set the video player command line args.
It is also recommended to activate "Run on Start-Up" from the Tray Icon right click menu. This leads to better seeding ratios and also speeds up torrent play times by not having to wait for the app to load when running from file / magnet link associations. (as application loading was done on system start)
Searching for torrents on your favorite torrent sites is possible in Powder Web, but it requires installing Jackett (a separate application that handles searching) on your computer.
After installing and configuring Jackett with your favorite torrent websites, you can return to Powder Web and set "Jackett Host" and "Jackett API Key" in the Settings Panel in order to activate the search feature.
Most private torrent websites have a whitelist (others have a blacklist) of torrent clients that are allowed to use them or not. Powder Web is a new torrent client, although it seeds well and protects against torrent poisoning, which should get it whitelisted on private torrent websites when and if it will is something that we can't predict.
Until it gets famous enough to be considered to be taken into account by private trackers, users can spoof their Peer ID from the Settings Panel to mimic a different torrent client.
For example: setting the Peer ID to "UT3530" tells trackers that you're using uTorrent v3.5.3, which IS whitelisted by one private tracker that I know and thus downloads the torrent successfully.
Please be sure to check the websites whitelist or blacklist, which is usually visible in the footer of the website.
When using Powder Web in combination with other applications (like Plex, for example), the second application might not have access to the torrent folders (to delete them, for example) on the user's request. This is a common case on Linux / OSX. In this case you can set user defined commands to run when the torrent finishes. (by using the "Set Commands" under "Commands to Run When Torrent Finished" in the Settings Panel)
Setting the chmod 775 %folder% command should change the permissions of all the torrent download folders so other applications can have access to the folders too. You can set more commands if you want to and separate these commands with ;; (double semicolon)
You can set the "Always Delete Inactive" under "Clean Up" in the Settings Panel to "True". All files associated with torrents that are paused will be removed. Torrents are also periodically paused automatically based on the set "Concurrent Downloads" Settings.
Normally the torrent engine takes it's torrent trackers from the torrent file. If you instead want to use a personalized list as the default trackers you can set it from the "Set Default Trackers" setting under "Torrent Engine" in the Settings Panel. Separate trackers with ";" (semicolon, no quotes).
The "Force Download" action will clear the peer blacklist and attempt to reconnect to all known peers. This will give your torrent download the best chances it can have for a fast download. There is also a Forced Download setting in the Setting Menu that will use this action periodically to speed up torrents.
Yes, there is a "Speed Limit" setting in the Settings Panel under the "Torrent Engine". The speed limit is applied per torrent, not to the totality of their download speed.
Subtitles are gotten from Open Subtitles.
The subtitles are loaded automatically when using the Web Player. Auto-searching for subtitles in the Web Player can be disabled from the Settings Panel.
If you wish to use subtitles with other video players, you will need to click the Menu Button on a Torrent File, this will bring up a menu that includes "Find Subtitles". Pressing the button will lead to a list of subtitles by country, clicking on a country will open a folder with the subtitle file in it (if Powder Web was loaded locally) or download the subtitle. (if Powder Web is loaded from the LAN or Internet)
All Web Player hotkeys are documented here.
You can set "Video Quality" under "Web Player" in the Settings Panel. The options are either "Maximum" or "Auto". "Maximum" will obviously always use the maximum quality, "Auto" uses 360p or closest to it as that is presumably a viewable quality and uses low bandwidth which is ok for 4G use too on mobile devices.
The Web Player has a very diverse list of settings for user enjoyment. Current settings include: playlist, searches for subtitles automatically, add local subtitle file, quality selection, playback speed, aspect ratio, crop, zoom, subtitle delay, audio delay, hotkeys.
The Web Player has a history feature that can easily resume playback from any of the last 30 items you watched. You can use this feature by pressing the History Button, which is located in the top right of the screen (right of the settings button).
In the Settings Panel you can choose if you want the History Button to either show the history list (default) or always resume the last played item. To set this, use the "History Button" setting under "User Interface" in the Settings Panel.
Please write issues here. Writing and commenting on issues requires a GitHub account.
This is mostly likely a case in which a private torrent website was used. Read the Private Torrent Trackers for a solution on using such trackers.
This might happen for low-seeded torrents. Alternatively, if no torrents ever play in the Web Player, you can try:
! Note: These settings might require restarting the application to take effect.
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Setting "Use Matroska" to "False" in the Settings Panel. If that didn't work, then set "Use Matroska" back to "Auto" and try the next recommended solution.
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Setting "Browser Support" to "Maximum" in the Settings Panel. This will increase the normal time it takes the Web Player to start because instead of choosing a presumed video type for the player, we instead use all possible video sources it could support. This should guarantee playback in your browser.
This should not normally happen, but in the off chance that it does happen in your browser, try setting the "Preserve Timestamp" setting to "Always" in the Settings Panel. This option might require restarting the application to take effect.
Read Fastest Way to Play Torrents for an explanation of how to use a local video player instead of the Web Player.
This is highly unlikely, in the off chance that the torrent is downloading and the local video player is not starting:
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Make sure your local video player supports M3U playlists. If your player does not support this type of playlist then it can't work with Powder Web
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Try setting "Filename in Streams" under "Torrent Engine" in the Settings Panel to "False". This will simplify the stream link names and increase chances of playback in local video players.
You can synchronize playback with friends with Powder Web by combining two of it's features. You will first need to Create a User, then run Powder Web from the browser by going to http://localhost:3000/ and logging in with your user.
Next you would need to start the video that you want to sync with your friends with the Web Player. This will add the video to the History List that anyone using the same account can also access.
Now share your Internet Link with your friend(s), tell them the email and password that you logged in with, then explain to them how to use the History Feature in order to sync playback with you.
It is highly recommended that you always use a LAN cable when using torrents instead of WiFi. The reason for this is simple, through WiFi there is a limit on the maximum number of connections that you can establish and torrents use many such connections (one for each peer).
You can either reduce the number of "Maximum Peers" per torrent in the Settings Panel, or set a "Speed Limit" per torrent in order to safeguard against using too many connections or using the entirety of the internet bandwidth.
If you want to associate Powder Web with torrent files / magnet links but still use a different torrent client for torrents that do not include videos you can set the path to a different client with the "Torrent Client" setting under "External Applications" in the Setting Panel. There is also an option to set the torrent client's command line args.
You can reset all settings with the "Reset Settings" button at the bottom of the Settings Panel.