Transmission 4.1.4 fixes bogus errors when pasting magnets on macOS

Transmission 4.1.4 fixes a macOS bug that could produce a bogus HTTP-download error when you pasted certain magnet links into the main window. If that matches your problem, update the macOS app. If you cannot update immediately, use Command-U to open the Open URL sheet, then paste the magnet there instead. The 4.1.4 release notes list the fix under macOS Client, not as an all-platform magnet fix.

Does your error match this bug?

The original bug report describes Transmission 4.1.1 on macOS displaying “Torrent download failed” after a magnet was pasted into the main window. The error named a malformed HTTP address derived from part of an encoded tracker URL and said the hostname could not be found.

The important clues are:

• You pasted a magnet into Transmission’s main window.
• The magnet included a percent-encoded tracker parameter, such as &tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.example.invalid%3A6969%2Fannounce—an illustrative fragment, not a working tracker.
• The error referred to an unexpected HTTP address, rather than simply waiting for torrent metadata.

The torrent may already be in your list despite the error. The developer’s testing found that the magnet was added while a separate, bogus HTTP download also generated an error. Check the list before trying to add it again. That distinction is documented in the fix’s corrected explanation.

Update, or use Open URL as a workaround

1. Check your installed version in Transmission’s About window.
2. Check macOS compatibility. Transmission 4.1.4 requires macOS 12 or later, so users on older systems cannot simply install this release.
3. Get the update from the official Transmission download page. As of November 3, 2026, it lists the macOS 4.1.4 disk image.
4. Retry with a magnet for content you are authorized to download, after checking whether the earlier attempt already added it.

For an affected older build, open Transmission, press Command-U, then Command-V to paste the complete magnet into the Open URL sheet and confirm the addition. This workaround was reported in the issue discussion, and the fix’s author confirmed that the Open URL sheet was unaffected.

What 4.1.4 changes

The corrected diagnosis points to macOS’s NSDataDetector plain-link scan mistaking a substring inside the magnet’s percent-encoded tracker parameter for a separate link and supplying an http:// scheme.

The final fix matches magnets against the raw pasted string and discards plain-link matches that overlap a magnet. A genuinely separate plain URL pasted alongside a magnet still opens as before. Although the pull request’s title describes “corrupted” magnets, its later explanation corrects the initial diagnosis: the observed failure was an extra, spurious HTTP-download attempt. Pull request #9062 records both that correction and the final behavior.

You therefore do not need to strip trackers or manually rewrite the magnet to address this bug.

If the magnet adds but metadata still stalls

That is a different stage. A magnet identifies the torrent; the client can then retrieve its metadata from peers through the BEP 9 metadata exchange. Fixing clipboard parsing does not guarantee that suitable peers are available or reachable.

If the entry is present without the bogus HTTP error but still lacks its file list, move on to peer discovery and metadata troubleshooting—not repeated pasting. Our magnet-link explainer covers that sequence.