FrostWire

What's new in this version:

Built-in MCP Server:
- FrostWire now ships with a built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — a first for any BitTorrent client. This opens up FrostWire to the AI tooling ecosystem with 38 desktop tools across 8 categories, settings-pane controls, and client configuration support for:
- GitHub Copilot
- Codex
- Claude Desktop
- OpenCode
- Qwen
- ChatGPT Desktop
- AI agents can now interact with FrostWire's desktop functionality through a standardized protocol

Torrent Creation: Piece Sizes Up to 128 MB:
- The Torrent Creation Dialog now supports piece sizes up to 128 MB (previously capped at 4 MB). When creating a torrent, the dialog automatically recommends an optimal piece size based on your total content — targeting 1,000–3,000 pieces. This dramatically reduces RAM usage when seeding large files like 4K Linux ISOs.

Per-Torrent Save Location:
- When selecting files to download from a torrent, the dialog now shows the current save folder with Change... and Reset to Default buttons. You can pick a custom download location for each individual torrent without changing your global default.

Per-Torrent File Priority Control:
The transfer detail Files tab now gives you full control over which files to download and how much bandwidth each gets:
- "Show skipped files" checkbox — persisted globally (default ON). Skipped files appear dimmed in gray with a Download button to resume them individually.
- Priority column — right-click any file to open an 8-level popup menu (from libtorrent's IGNORE to SEVEN). Adjust bandwidth allocation per file within a torrent without affecting the rest.
- All JNI calls for file metadata run on background threads, so the UI stays responsive even with torrents containing thousands of files.

Restart Button Dialog:
- When you change settings that require a restart (language, theme, network mode), FrostWire now shows a "Restart Now" / "Restart Later" dialog instead of just a passive message. Clicking Restart Now gracefully shuts down and relaunches the app with the new settings applied.

YouTube Playlists & Channels:
- Pasting a YouTube channel or playlist URL now opens Telluride playlist search mode. Playlist partial results also appear correctly in the Video tab.

IP Filtering:
- The IP Filter settings pane is now fully wired to BTEngine — the clear and import buttons actually update the libtorrent ip_filter. The settings tab is no longer hidden.

No More UI Freezes:
- This release tackles the root cause of UI freezes across FrostWire. We identified and fixed 24 EDT (Event Dispatch Thread) violations that were blocking the UI during file I/O, torrent parsing, JNI calls, and dialog creation.

macOS Deadlock Fixes:
- Fixed a macOS EDT deadlock in FramedDialog where AppKit held awtLock during modal JDialog creation while EDT needed it for text rendering
- Changed APPLICATION_MODAL to MODELESS in CreateTorrentDialog, SendFileProgressDialog, and EditTrackerDialog to prevent nested modal dialog deadlocks
- Added pack() before setVisible(true) in SendFileProgressDialog, EditTrackerDialog, Options dialog, and About dialog to prevent macOS awtLock contention

Off-EDT Operations:
- The following operations now run on background threads instead of blocking the UI:
- Theme loading at startup — Nimbus and FlatLaf Look-and-Feel initialization is now performed on the main thread before any Swing components exist, eliminating a consistent >2 second EDT freeze on every launch
- Language flag image preloading — all locale flag icons are loaded into the ResourceManager cache before the setup wizard opens, so JComboBox layout no longer triggers MediaTracker.waitForID() on the EDT during startup
- ApplicationHeader image preloading — header button background images are loaded on the main thread before MainFrame construction, preventing another MediaTracker.waitForID() stall
- IconManager initialization — moved from the EDT to the main thread during late startup tasks
- File launching via Desktop.open() — opening files with the OS default application now runs on a background thread, preventing X11 Desktop integration stalls on Linux when playing media
- Transfer detail panels (General, Trackers, Peers, Pieces) — all JNI data gathering is now off-EDT
- Native magnet URI generation — no longer blocks >2 seconds on large torrents
- Resume data generation during pause/resume — need_save_resume_data() no longer stalls transfer actions
- File progress computation — table painting no longer calls libtorrent file_progress() JNI on EDT
- File I/O and torrent parsing in library table initialization
- Directory scanning in library table updates
- Future.get() blocking in library table selection removal
- Recursive I/O guards added to DirectoryHolder.getFiles()
- Drag-and-drop file existence checks — no longer triggers file.exists() syscall on EDT
- File priority changes — all libtorrent filePriority() JNI calls run off-EDT via BackgroundQueuedExecutorService

Stability & Crash Fixes:
JNI Crash Prevention:
We've hardened the app against macOS Java 21 font-layout JNI crashes caused by malformed Unicode content:
- Sanitize and de-HTML external text across search results, transfer names, locale labels, tooltips, and renderers
- Normalize library text before Swing/Nimbus measures it, stripping Unicode format/control glyphs
- Replace LineBreakMeasurer with JTextArea preferred-size calculation in tooltip UI
- Sanitize transfer detail table strings (Files, Peers, Trackers) before Swing paints them
- Added -Dsun.java2d.fontlayout=0 JVM argument to suppress JDK 21 SunLayoutEngine JNI warning spam during SynthComboBoxUI font layout on startup

Other Critical Fixes:
- Audio extraction crash: After extracting audio from a video download, selecting the newly added file in the library table could crash with IllegalArgumentException: Row index out of range if the file hadn't been scanned yet. Added a bounds check to LimeJTable.setSelectedRow() to prevent this race condition.
- Library Audio/Video nodes empty: Clicking Audio or Video in the library tree showed no files even though the Default Save Folder displayed downloads correctly. Fixed three root causes: MediaTypeSavedFilesDirectoryHolder.getFiles() was hardcoded to return an empty array instead of the cached files; LibraryMediator.scanInternal() refused to add newly downloaded files to empty caches; and SearchByMediaTypeRunnable didn't fall back to the torrent data directory when DIRECTORIES_TO_INCLUDE was empty.
- Shutdown hang: Added 30s timeout to LifecycleManager shutdown latch to prevent indefinite hangs
- File size precision: BTDownload.getSize() return type changed from double to long — no more precision loss above 2GB
- Library showing 0.0KB: File metadata loading now wrapped in try-catch with proper cell invalidation after background load
- Library refresh (F5): Now properly re-sorts files after async lastModified load without flooding the resort executor
- Transfer detail stale data: TransferDetailGeneral now discards stale async metadata updates when switching transfers quickly
- Piece panel sync: TransferDetailPieces now ignores late selection updates so piece counts stay in sync with the selected transfer
- Settings failures: UI notification now fires when settings load/save fails
- YCCK JPEG fix: Color inversion corrected using Adobe APP14 marker Transform field
- CreateTorrentDialog: Bottom buttons now visible on first open without requiring manual resize
- Speed limit controls: Added download/upload speed limit adjustment buttons to TransferDetailGeneral
- First-view detail panel: The transfer detail panel now populates correctly on first view. A HierarchyListener detects when the Transfers tab becomes visible and triggers an initial selection update, fixing the empty detail panel bug on first open.
- Checkbox flicker eliminated: The "Show skipped files" checkbox no longer flickers or corrupts its saved setting when toggled. Fixed a race condition between the 1-second refresh timer and user-initiated clicks.
- Checkbox lag fixed: The "Show skipped files" checkbox now responds instantly. Checkbox-initiated updates moved from the shared single-threaded BackgroundQueuedExecutorService queue to a dedicated thread (matching Android's HIGH_PRIORITY pattern), eliminating double-queueing with the 1-second refresh timer that caused multi-second UI lag on busy transfers.
- Checkbox truly instant: The checkbox no longer re-fetches file metadata from libtorrent on every click. A cached holder list means toggling is a pure-EDT filter operation with zero JNI calls — the table updates in milliseconds even for torrents with thousands of files.
- Table refresh fixed: The Files tab now rebuilds its table with fresh data on every refresh instead of calling tableMediator.update(), which was a no-op for immutable pre-computed holder objects.
- Large torrent table freeze fixed: Replaced the per-row fireTableRowsInserted storm with a single bulk model replacement (setHolders) that fires fireTableDataChanged once. The EDT no longer freezes for seconds when updating a torrent with thousands of files.
- Torrent file listing optimized: BTDownload.getItems() no longer performs a redundant piece-checking loop on every call. For a torrent with 10,000 pieces, this eliminates 10,000 th.havePiece() JNI calls per refresh. The tracker is now initialized once and kept up-to-date by libtorrent alerts.
- Torrent switch fixed: Selecting a different transfer now correctly updates the Files tab. Replaced the broken target != btDownload guard with a monotonic sequence counter, so stale background completions are skipped without blocking legitimate torrent switches.
- Library tree missing files fixed: SearchByMediaTypeRunnable no longer skips disk search when the cache is non-empty. Files that existed on disk before startup (or in directories not covered by scanInternal) now appear correctly in Audio/Video tree nodes.
- Library path consistency fixed: FileUtils.listFiles() now returns absolute paths, ensuring cache deduplication and canonical path resolution work correctly across platforms.
- Priority popup themed: The priority popup menu now uses FrostWire's themed SkinMenuItem/SkinMenu components for consistent dark theme rendering.
- File progress refresh: File progress percentages now update correctly after priority changes — no more stale 0% displays.

Settings Persistence:
- Tip of the Day: The "Show Tips at Startup" checkbox now saves immediately when toggled. Previously, the unchecked state could be lost if the app was force-quit before the normal exit save path ran.
- Setup wizard infinite loop fixed: The wizard now saves its completion state synchronously instead of asynchronously. Previously, force-killing the JVM (e.g., IDE stop button) before the background save task executed caused the wizard to run again on next startup, which in turn reset SHOW_TOTD=true every time.
- Setup wizard no longer resets tips unconditionally: The wizard only resets "Show Tips at Startup" on actual version updates, not when it appears for other reasons (intent window, associations, etc.).

HexHivePanel Overhaul:
The transfer Pieces panel (HexHivePanel) received a complete rendering overhaul:
Fixes:
- Consistent hex tiling math with the fast flat-hex path for large swarms — no more overlapping piece cells
- Restored the 3D cube-shaded look while keeping corrected tiling math and off-EDT cached rendering
- Rows now wrap against the full viewport width — no more missing right-edge cubes
- No longer cancels queued renders before rasterization starts — prevents refresh starvation (blank panel)
- Coalesces rapid refresh requests through a single background render loop — 1-second detail updates no longer invalidate in-progress rendering
- Merges retained viewport batches using non-overlapping seam bands — no more moving white gaps between rendered cube rows

Performance:
- Renders and publishes visible viewport cubes first — the Pieces tab paints quickly before the full scrollable bitmap finishes
- Tracks viewport movement and resizes — only renders the visible region plus directional lookahead margins instead of repainting thousands of off-screen cubes
- Retains a full-size backing bitmap and incrementally patches new viewport batches — previously drawn cubes stay visible when scrolling back
- Prioritizes a smaller visible-band render with directional buffer and shorter row batches — reduces transient blank patches while scrolling

Search & Download Improvements:
- Tracker list refresh: Default tracker lists updated across desktop torrent creation, magnet URLs, and CreateTorrentDialog with current reliable public trackers (opentrackr, openbittorrent, stealth.si, exodus, torrent.eu.org, moeking, explodie, coppersurfer)
- SoundCloud search now excludes tracks not marked as downloadable — only shows content the platform explicitly allows for download
- Idope search updated to the new idope.pics domain and filters placeholder "No results returned" API responses
- MagnetDL search parser now accepts both raw JSON arrays and quoted JSON-array payloads
- SlideDownload now extracts .zip downloads with zip-slip protection
- PerformersHelper now filters hidden files alongside pad files in search results
- QuotedStringTokenizer now supports backslash quote escaping
- TorrentFileFilter display string now properly internationalized
- GloTorrents search engine removed (domain gtso.cc is parked and no longer functional)