One of the most requested features after Gnutella support was dropped over BitTorrent has been the ability to Preview the contents of a media file while it’s being downloaded. As of 6.0.7 FrostWire tries its best to collect download data to let you preview the file while it’s still being downloaded while not hurting the performance of the torrent’s swarm (sequenced piece fetching is done only for a very limited time or data amount depending on the download’s characteristics, once enough pieces are in for a preview the torrent resumes non-sequence downloading mode).

Download Previews are also available for most cloud (http) downloads.

Several search engine providers were fixed, including TPB and KAT, along with numerous upgrades and optimizations, including a refresh with the latest updates from the libtorrent project to make the torrent downloading experience the best out there.

Full Changelog
frostwire (6.0.7) stable; urgency=high
* New feature: Preview while you download.
* Memory and CPU savings when parsing search results on some search engines.
* BTJunkie fixed.
* TPB search fixed.
* KAT search fixed.
* Monova search fixed.
* Fixes bug where soundcloud, archive.org audio downloads would not be automatically
be scanned by iTunes.
* Croatian translation updates.
* Torrent creation and parsing now done using frostwire-jlibtorrent api. More
Azureus cleanups.
* Fixes run on startup issue on Windows. Thanks to @win32re.
* Upgraded java virtual machine to 1.8.0_40 with hundreds of fixes and upgrades.
* Upgraded H2 database engine.
* Upgraded frostwire-jlibtorrent to the latest code from libtorrent.
* UX-improvement: A repeated search will honor active search engines.

— FrostWire Team <contact@frostwire.com> Wed, 08 April 2015 22:24:00 -0500

FrostWire is a free, open source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including BitTorrent support. In version 5, Gnutella support was dropped entirely, and FrostWire is only a BitTorrent client. Development of the program has been active since the program was first released in September 2004.

New FrostWire for Android 1.5.0

April 4, 2015 ~ gubatron ~ Leave a comment

Download FrostWire for Android 1.5.0

This new FrostWire for Android release includes the latest improvements from libtorrent to make BitTorrent downloading faster and more energy efficient than ever.

TPB, BTJunkie, KAT and Monova search sources have been fixed for much better search results.

donation-icons

FrostWire for Android now recognizes Bitcoin and web tipping/donation addresses on compatible .torrents

Several bugs and crashes on the music player were fixed, and the Chinese, Polish and Spanish translations of the app were updated.

Users getting the app on Google Play will know that YouTube search has been disabled in order to comply with Google Developer Rules, those users looking for a full version of the app can download “FrostWire Plus” at frostwire.com/android

FrostWire 1.5.0 – APRIL/03/2015

– Upgraded frostwire-jlibtorrent to the latest code from libtorrent.
– TPB, BTJunkie, KAT, Monova searches fixed.
– Users can now donate to torrent creators, both Fiat and Bitcoin when available.
– New Bittorrent setting to enable/disable DHT connectivity.
– YouTube search disabled for Google Play distribution.
– Fixes annoying bug where user would be notified for old finished downloads.
– Fixes bug where songs that were deleted were not being cleared from playlists.
– Fixes bug where removing last song from Favorites playlist would not clear.
– Fixes bug where it would show “Play All” menu action on empty playlists.
– Fixes bug where sharing on WiFi from certain 3rd-party file explorers wouldn’t work.
– Fixes bug where file descriptors fetched by content:// uris wouldn’t have a disk path available.
– Fixes 2 crashes on music player.
– Chinese, Polish, Spanish translations update.

FrostWire now back on Google Play. Not Banned Anymore!

April 3, 2015December 20, 2015 ~ kademlia ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday FrostWire was temporarily removed from the Google Play Store and is now back up after a new stripped down version without YouTube got approved by the Google compliance team.

FrostWire.com and other App Stores will still distribute the full featured version, now dubbed FrostWire Plus.

With recent stability fixes FrostWire for Android has climbed all the way up to #30th on the Google Play’s Top Free Android Apps and was holding strong for weeks! Yesterday, April 2nd 2015, after an app review (probably prompted by the spike in user interest and app ratings), Google decided to remove it from the Google Play store.

We’ve received this email:

Google Play FrostWire Removal Notice Email

We were informed that FrostWire for Android distributed via Google Play can no longer have YouTube as one of its search result and download sources, as this functionality is not compliant with the YouTube Terms of Service and therefore the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement. We decided to remove this capability in order to adhere to Google Rules and continue to distribute and market our application on the Google Play Store.

Today, after submitting the stripped down FrostWire app, it passed the compliance review and it is back on the Google Play store. It took a little more than a day but we are happy to be back!

What does it all mean in practice?

Users downloading FrostWire from the Google Play store will receive the basic app version without YouTube as one of the search sources. All other features will not be affected. Depending on what keywords a user enters, he or she might get slightly less search results and therefore options for files to download.

We are already working on including more search sources, both BitTorrent and cloud based to offset the loss of YouTube content and will be still offering the full version – now named FrostWire Plus, on our homepage and in other App Stores.

Stay tuned for more updates shortly!

FrostWire 1.4.9 for Android

March 4, 2015March 4, 2015 ~ gubatron ~ Leave a comment

Download FrostWire for Android

CHANGELOG

FrostWire 1.4.9 – MARCH/03/2015
– New KAT search.
– Fixed BTJunkie search issues causing ANR crashes.
– Fixed Mininova search. Few results coming in due to low seed numbers.
– Removed Appia Search.
– Clean up: Removed Appia, RevMob, Google In-App purchasing libraries.
– Updated Croatian translation. Thanks @win32re.
– Refactors, cleanup, misc fixes.

Photo: Devyn Rose wearing the FrostWire Tee.

New FrostWire 6.0.6 out for Windows, Mac and Linux

February 18, 2015 ~ gubatron ~ Leave a comment

Download from FrostWire’s Official Website
Download Binaries and Source from Github
Download from SourceForge.net

Changelog

frostwire (6.0.6) stable; urgency=high
* Fixes bug where default save location for torrents would not be accounted for.
* New: When changing default save location, any ongoing torrent transfers are
moved to the new location.
* Romanian and Finnish translation updates.
* New: Option to turn off Bittorrent DHT.
* YT search upgrades.
* New: Supports shortened y2u.be url searches.
* OSX: When shutting down to start the installer for an update
now the window is focused to make sure the user doesn’t get lost during the
update process.

— FrostWire Team Thu, 17 February 2015 14:44:30 -0500

New FrostWire 6.0.5 for Desktop out, fixes YouTube search issues and a lot more.

January 30, 2015January 30, 2015 ~ gubatron ~ Leave a comment

Download FrostWire 6.0.5 now

frostwire (6.0.5) stable; urgency=high
  * Fixes out of memory crash and freeze when importing lots of songs from the FrostWire
    library to iTunes.
  * Removed Litecoin and Dogecoin from torrent creation dialog, Bitcoin and payment
    urls only. Litecoin and Dogecoin are pretty much dead compared to Bitcoin.
  * Remove Download and Data now enabled for http downloads too.
  * Fixes possible errors for SoundCloud downloads.
  * Updates on Hungarian and Romanian translations.
  * Fixes YT search issues.
  * New mplayer binaries with HTTPS support.
        
 -- FrostWire Team   Wed, 28 January 2015 14:18:12 -0500

FrostWire is a free, open source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including BitTorrent support. In version 5, Gnutella support was dropped entirely, and FrostWire is only a BitTorrent client. Development of the program has been active since the program was first released in September 2004.

New FrostWire 1.4.4 build 169 for Android available today

January 27, 2015January 30, 2015 ~ gubatron ~ Leave a comment

Get FrostWire for Android Now

Get FrostWire for Kindle Now
Get specific binaries for your CPU architecture on Github
(arm, arm64, x86, x86_64 mips, mips64 .apks available)

Lots of fixes for performance, stability and better user experience await on this new update. If you were having issues with YouTube search this release fixes these issues and others.

Here is the full changelog for FrostWire 1.4.4 build 168 for Android.

FrostWire 1.4.4 - JANUARY/29/2015
- Finished transfers no longer should show as paused.
- Fixes issue adding a whole torrent after having added a single
file belonging to that same torrent to transfers. Now the whole
torrent will be downloaded as expected.
- Fixes Out of memory errors on MobileCore library.
- Fixes possible crash when exiting the app right after launching it.
- If storage location has ran out of space available FrostWire
will show a descriptive error message explaining why the download
has failed.
- Removes free apps ads from home page and sticky ads on transfer screens.
- Fixes issue where toast about shared file would not go away.
- Fixes settings screen issue where some android devices would automatically
toggle the BitTorrent connection.
- Fixes issues with YouTube search.
- Urdu translation started.

FrostWire Wins 2nd Place at Miami Bitcoin Hackathon with decentralized shopping marketplace

January 12, 2015January 15, 2015 ~ gubatron ~ 3 Comments

This weekend our 2 lead developers spent 28 hours hacking away to bring home the silver at the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon organized by BitStop and Blockchain Beach.

FrostWire’s project was built using the frostwire-jlibtorrent library and the Bitpay API to create a proof of concept for a p2p shopping marketplace called Seller.Trade on which customers pay with bitcoins.

End users just need a Bitcoin wallet to pay and web browser to search for products available, and sellers run a server side p2p app that connects to other sellers that participate in the network using the BitTorrent Mainline DHT. Nodes help route searches and products announced.

We intend to create a binary release for Linux servers in the coming weeks and see where this experiment takes us.

The project is very simple and it allows anyone in the planet to start their own store on line and accept Bitcoin payments, with the twist, that all the stores are connected to each other using a combination of the Mainline DHT we use for decentralized torrent tracking and an HTTP Rest API.

Check out our presentation to the judges (We finished early and made a video to not leave the presentation to improvisation and Murphy’s whims, and also so the world could see it anytime later on)

And here’s us accepting the prize (In bitcoins of course)

and now it will be in front of our desk to make us proud 🙂

question… since you’re still reading all the way down here.

Would you like to see FrostWire yield search results of products that you could buy with Bitcoin?

Would you like to sell things using your own store server without paying any listing or comission fees?

Should we make Seller.Trade into a real world product?

New FrostWire for Android, now with full featured Music Player

December 25, 2014 ~ gubatron ~ Leave a comment

Get FrostWire for Android Now

After 4 years of fun and hard work we finally have a version of FrostWire for Android that starts to get close to our vision.

On this release we’ve finally put together a very stable BitTorrent and Cloud Downloader along with a FULL FEATURED music player for your phone/tablet.

What you see below is a graph that shows the number of reported crashes for the past 6 months, look at how it drops dramatically these last couple of weeks after the 1.4.x releases start to come out.

Please keep those reviews coming.

Here are some screenshots of the new music player we’ve included:
new-player-03
New “My Music” section on the main navigation menu.

Now you will be able to browse your music by Album, Artist, Songs, Genre and you will be able to organize your music in Android music Playlists, which should be available on other music player apps, so if you already had some playlists on your android you’ll be able to play them and manage them with FrostWire.

New FrostWire Music Player

Here’s a full list of the changes on FrostWire 1.4:

FrostWire 1.4.2 - DECEMBER/22/2014 - New: Music Player (forked out of Apollo Player). - New: Playlist support. - New: Browse music by Recent, Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres. - New: Change cover art on Playlists, Songs. - New: Shuffle All music. - Torrent/Magnet caching improvements reduce the number of DHT requests when searching, which makes search result parsing faster in most cases. - When sharing files from 3rd party apps with FrostWire, the file shared will be displayed by FrostWire as available via Wi-Fi sharing. If the file is a .torrent the torrent transfer will start. - Not using wifi multicast lock for energy savings. - 'Preferences' renamed to 'Settings' - About activity moved out of navigation menu and into Settings screen. - Audio files can now be set as ringtones from My Files > Audio. - Settings screen rearrangement.

FrostWire 1.4.1 - DECEMBER/02/2014 - Updated jlibtorrent binaries. - Resilience to file disk permission errors causing the app to not start in some environments. - Improved disk I/O when persisting states of torrent transfers. - Refactors, Cleanups and other misc. bug fixes. - Improved user experience on transfer list actions. - Preferences screen won't automatically kick user to search screen when BitTorrent connectivity changes.

FrostWire 1.4.0 - NOVEMBER/08/2014 - Replaced Vuze Bittorrent engine for frostwire-jlibtorrent, a java wrapper to the native libtorrent BitTorrent library. - Peak memory usage dropped 50% when searching. - Peak memory usage dropped 16% when downloading torrents. - Number of threads dropped 41% when searching. - Number of threads dropped 60% when downloading torrents. - Peak CPU usage dropped 66% when searching. - Peak CPU usage dropped 44% when downloading torrents. - Got rid of over 2,000 classes. - New Shutdown feature, stops all services and activities, FrostWire process ends gracefully. - Upgraded Picasso library to 2.4.0. - More responsive and stable torrent state handling experience. - Torrent downloads start faster. - Torrent downloads connect to more peers. - Updated German translation. - Updated Croatian translation. - Updated Polish translation. - Updated Spanish translation. - Updated Russian translation. - Gets rid of Transcommu. - Project is now built using gradle script. - Updated Preferences screen BitTorrent connection status button. - Fixes severe startup crash on Samsung Galaxy Mini devices. - Multiple bug fixes and crashes.