The browser extension
Add a magnet link or a .torrent, then watch. The extension
detects torrents, drives playback, and talks to the helper over a private
local channel.
How it works
Two pieces, one machine
Neither half phones home. The extension is what you see; the helper is what talks to the swarm. They meet on a loopback port nothing else can reach.
The native helper
A small program running a loopback daemon on your machine: it joins the swarm, fetches the bytes the player needs next, and streams the video back to the extension. Install it once and forget it.
Playback-ordered fetching
Pieces are requested in the order the player needs them, not the order the torrent lists them. That is why playback starts in seconds, and why seeking ahead does not mean downloading everything in between.
Privacy
Nothing routes through us
Stays on your machine
- The video. It is served from the helper to your browser over loopback.
- The torrents you open, and everything you play.
- Your settings and session state.
Goes over the network
- What BitTorrent requires: your machine talks to trackers and peers for the torrents you open, exactly as any other client would.
- Update checks for the helper, against a published release index.
There is no Flitplay server in the path, no account, and no telemetry. This page itself loads no analytics, no trackers and no remote fonts.
Install
Get the helper
The extension needs the native helper to stream. Grab the build for your system — it is the same binary the extension keeps up to date afterwards.
Installers are on the way. Check back soon — this page will offer the right download for your system automatically.
Prefer to build it yourself? The helper lives in trnt-host/ in the
project repository.
Questions
Before you install
How do I stream a torrent in my browser?
Install the Flitplay extension and its native helper, then open a magnet link or a .torrent file. The helper joins the swarm on your machine and serves the video to the browser over a private loopback connection, so the extension can play it like any other video file. There is no website to upload to and no account to create.
Do I have to download the whole file before watching?
No. Flitplay fetches pieces in the order the player needs them rather than in the order the torrent lists them, so playback starts once the opening pieces have arrived and continues while the rest download. Seeking asks for the pieces under the new position, so you can jump ahead without waiting for everything in between.
Does Flitplay upload or seed while I watch?
BitTorrent is a two-way protocol: while your machine has pieces, other peers can request them, and that is how the swarm you are downloading from exists at all. Flitplay exposes seeding as a setting you control, and shows when the helper is uploading rather than leaving it running out of sight.
What data leaves my computer?
The video never does. The helper runs on your machine and streams to your browser over loopback, so no server of ours sees the torrent, the file or the playback. What does leave is what BitTorrent requires: your machine talks to trackers and peers for the torrents you open, exactly as any other client would. The page you are reading loads no analytics, no trackers and no remote fonts.
Why does it need a separate helper app?
A browser extension cannot open the raw TCP and UDP connections BitTorrent runs on, and it cannot keep working while the browser is busy. The helper is a small local program that does that part and nothing else: it joins the swarm, fetches pieces and serves them back to the extension. You install it once, and the extension keeps it up to date.
Which video files can it play?
Anything the browser can already decode plays directly, meaning MP4 and WebM with common codecs. For the formats a browser will not touch, such as MKV with certain audio tracks, the helper remuxes or transcodes the stream on the fly so it still plays without you converting the file first.