Panic Blog

Transmit 4. It’s easy to use, but there’s a whole lot under the surface. And while we try to design apps for the majority, sometimes we throw in some power user features for the pros. As the Finnish always say, “always add a few extra blood dumplings when cooking mykyrokka for a tonttu-ukko!”

So here are 15 “secrets” of Transmit 4. Hopefully you’ll learn at least one new thing!

1. Add Custom Icons to your Favorites

Every single one of your Transmit favorites can have its own, easy-to-recognize icon. Kenichi has provided a (beautiful) starter set of 16 — just click on the icon when editing a favorite!

You can also load your own images. (We’ve found the Flurry icon sets from the Iconfactory to be a particularly good set.) And if you choose “Use Server Favicon”, we’ll do our best to get the icon from the server itself and slap it on a nice little label for you.

2. Show the File Count

Add a counter to your path bar to see some useful numbers. Just choose View ▸ Show Item Count.

3. Skip Files Automatically

It’s a hugely powerful new feature that’s a little bit hidden: in Transmit 4, you can have Transmit arbitrarily skip files based on any number of rules. Hate .svn or .git folders? Never want to accidentally transfer your apps to a specific server? There’s lots to explore here.

4. Customize Your Favorites View

Right-click in a Favorites list to reveal a secret menu: “Use Small Icons” and “Arrange By”. The former gives you a much more compact list. The latter will allow you to perform a one-time sort of your items.

5. Try Dock Send

Inspired by the late Erik J. Barzeski (he’s alive), Dock Send is a great feature for those of you who quickly fling items to various favorites all day long.

First, edit a Favorite, and enable Dock Send.

Make sure the favorite has both a Remote Path (where your files go) and a Local Path (where your files come from) assigned to it.

Now, drag a file from your specified Local Path to the Transmit dock icon.

Transmit will look at the local path of the file you just dropped, then look at your favorites and say, “Hey, is Dock Send enabled for any favorite that uses this Local Path? Oh, here’s one! I’ll connect and upload this file to the specified Remote Path right away!”

Does that make sense? Based on where the file came from, Transmit picks the right place for it to go.

With judicious use of Dock Send, you can have a full suite of virtual droplets that are as easy as dragging items to the dock icon.

6. Make a Droplet

Don’t forget about droplets! Save them anywhere on your disk, send them to clients, or put them in your Dock, and get a system-wide drag target for instant uploads. Just click Save as Droplet… when editing a Favorite. (Make sure Transmit is installed on any machine using a Droplet.)

7. Quickly Copy a Web URL

First, edit your Favorite and set a proper “Root URL” for your Favorite. I.e., the base web URL that your files are served from. Then, connect to your server, right click an item, and choose ”Copy URL”.

(Bonus sub-tip: right click and choose Preview In Browser… for instant preview action!)

8. Navigate in Both Sides, Simultaneously

Do your local files share the same hierarchy as your remote files? With Linked Folder Navigation, why not have Transmit automatically change both sides at once when as you navigate?

Choose Go ▸ Link Folder Navigation, or add the Folder Linking button to your toolbar and click it.

Now, every time you open a folder, Transmit will check to see if there’s a folder with the same name on the other side. If there is, Transmit will open that folder too!

Transmit 4 is pretty smart about this — if you navigate into a folder that doesn’t have a twin on the other side, that’s fine. When you return to the folder you branched from, it’ll start paying attention again.

9. Make “Get Info” Automatically Update As You Change Files

The traditional Get Info window is good for learning about a single item. But maybe you want to Get Info on a whole bunch of things, and you don’t want to open 4,000 windows.

No problem. It’s easy to create a Get Info “Inspector” — just hit ⌥⌘I (Option-Command-I).

Now, as you change files, Get Info will automatically update.

10. Learn Some Drag and Drop Tricks

Did you know you can drag files into all areas of the path bar?

• Dropping on the folder icon will add a folder to Places for quick access.
• Dropping items onto any component of the path bar will either move or transfer those item to that folder.
• Lastly, dropping a folder into the empty space on the right (or the local/remote switch button) will change Transmit to that folder.

There’s also spring-loaded folders. When dragging, simply hover over a folder and watch it spring open allowing you to drill down the folder hierarchy mid-drag. The file lists also trigger activation, so dragging items from other applications or another Transmit window is quick and easy. While dragging pause over a file list for a second and Transmit will activate the window/application allowing for seamless drag and drop without obstruction.

Another useful AND “secret” feature is the ability to drag re-order file operations in the Transfers list. Simply grab a top-level row and drag it to a new location in the list, boom, instant prioritization of your transfers.

11. Show Folders Above Files

It’s totally possible. (This is a Windows thing, yeah?)

Choose View ▸ Show View Options, then check Show folders above files.

12. Zip Files Directly On an SFTP Server (And More)

If you’re connected via SFTP, and are connected to a Unix server, it’s super simple. Don’t waste a transfer!

Select an item, and choose File ▸ Send SSH Command. If you click on the little action button, we’ve pre-loaded “zip” and “unzip” shortcuts, but you can execute any UNIX command.

13. Hide iDisk/Bonjour Favorites or Prevent Transmit Disk from Opening Windows

Got your Terminal window open? This one’s for experts only.

If you want to prevent the Finder from automatically opening Transmit Disks after mounting, paste:

defaults write com.panic.transmit OpenMountedFinderWindow -bool NO
defaults write com.panic.transmitmenu OpenMountedFinderWindow -bool NO

If you want to hide the Bonjour collections from Favorites, paste:

defaults write com.panic.transmit RendezvousEnabled -bool NO

defaults write com.panic.transmit ShowiDiskInFavorites -bool NO

Hope these help somebody.

14. Get Image Dimensions using Quick Look

It’s a minor point, but worth mentioning — if you use Quick Look on any image, local or remote, we’ll put the dimensions in the title bar.

15. Make a Local/Local or Remote/Remote Window

This one is pretty fundamental, but seems to slip by some — it’s possible to set both sides of Transmit’s split window to the same view.

Just click the tiny icon on the right side of the path bar to toggle between a local or remote view.

If you want to manage your local hard drive with the ease of Transmit, or if you want to easily fling a file from one server to another, there’s no better way.

16. Bonus Tip! Customize Keyboard Shortcuts

It’s possibly one of the greatest hidden features in Mac OS X, and works for almost all apps.

Want, say, Send SSH Command… to have a keyboard shortcut?

First, open System Preferences ▸ Keyboard, and click Keyboard Shortcuts.

Now, select “Application Shortcuts” on the left, and click the “Plus” .

From the pop-up menu, choose Transmit.

Now, let’s type in “Send SSH Command…”, and give it the shortcut of our choosing!

(The ellipsis is important! If the menu item has one, you need one. Hit Option-Semicolon to type it.)

That’s it! Without even having to relaunch Transmit, your shortcut has been added. One note: this can be tricky for dynamic menu items that change based on what’s selected — you’ve gotta match the name exactly.

Enjoy the hot tips!

Max

Awesome. Thanks for the tips!

Shawn Grimes

Fantastic set of “secrets”! I _did_ in fact learn a couple new things. Greatly appreciated.

Christopher Pond

Awesome. Droplet Dock tip is great, along with the Drag and Drop Tricks! What if (feature idea) — when multiple tabs are open — you could drag and drop a file right onto a tab to send the file to that server?

Tom Schlander

Like you posted on Twitter. I learned one thing but honestly a lot of things were new to me. Thanks for this!

Matt @ DVQ

Nice! I didn’t know about several of these.

“defaults write com.panic.transmit ShowiDiskFavorites -bool NO”
ˆDidn’t work for me, anybody know why?

Ben Embery

I would love to see “Show Folders Above Files” appear in Coda.

Nice post.

Adam Scheinberg

Finally! I got a peek at this in RSS a few weeks ago and have been waiting for the rest!

Looks great. I’ve been considering an upgrade from T3. It really looks like it’s worth it!

macx

There is it, my lost article (twitter.com/macx/statuses/28867750044). Very thank you for the tips!

Jaddie Dodd

Thanks for sharing these nifty tips and tricks, Panic!

I wish I had an email client as cool as Transmit is as an FTP client.

BadCat

Thank you for the tips – Wish there was a secret to making Search function look in ALL fields such as Server, Username etc.

Johan Linnarsson

Awesome tips to an awesome software made by an awesome company

Cabel

Matt: There was a typo in the “Hide iDisk” defaults write. The post has been updated!

Heather St. Marie

Thanks for all the great tips!

ladycooper

haha. got to try this out. Nice tips sharing.

Abraham Vegh

Cabel (and Neven , I cannot thank you enough for documenting #13. THANK YOU!

alienlebarge

Great great great !!!
Thanks for this usefull tips ; )

Matthias Wehrlein

#2, didn’t see that! :-S I always selected all files in a folder and tried to delete them so that the upcoming confirm-dialog show me the count of the to-be deleted items.

Thank you!

JasonWD

Oh sweet; nice one Panic!

Isko Salminen

Absolutely great article!

But as a Finn I have to say, I have no idea what you meant with the “As the Finnish always say” part but kudos for including us Finns on this anyway

Robbie

I’ve never bothered with the Skip Files rules until today — thanks for pointing it out!

However, how do you delete unused Skip Files rules? I’m probably being a little slow today, but I can’t figure out how to delete a rule from the list.

Robbie

Nevermind — the +/- controls didn’t show up at first… or I just missed them!

Erik J. Barzeski

I’m alive! Whew. Was worried for a moment.

I use get info all the time to get image dimensions. About the only thing I’d like would be a “Copy tag” type functionality that would just put the height and width in the tag for me.

Likin’ 4.

Sheldon

In your Post you have ‘View ▸ Show File Count’ in Transmit I have ‘View ▸ Show Item Count’.

Great App !

Thibault

Thanks a lot for this great tips
We enjoy your work !

Jesse

I’m in love all over again. Does anyone else find themselves *looking* for reasons to use Transmit 4? Now thats great app development

Krishna

Very awesome tips! I learned quite a bit about Transmit’s power user features. (I did not know how to use the Droplets feature until this article.) Thanks for sharing!

Philipp

That’s pretty nice. Thank you!

Chad

The tips were useful to help flesh out some things I haven’t tried out. Especially liked the first tip.

Martin

The OpenMountedFinderWindow tip is not working. I’ve rebooted, I’ve verified the value is indeed set. But finder still opens everytime I mount a disk.

Cabel

Martin: Updated the post. You have to also set this for the “transmitmenu” app that sits in the menubar.

Martin

Now it works with OpenMountedFinderWindow off. But would love to see a growl or similar alert instead, when connection to a drive is established (or could not be established, or is lost) using transmitmenu. The same kind of alert you show, when uploading files using transmit. Just an idea.

Albert Kinng

Oh c’mon! I bought Dragster before reading this blog! Now I will be using two apps that do the same task… Bummer

shofty

number 11 in coda soon as you can please,

pim

Could it be possible to add preloaded SSH commands ourself?

Hutch

Hey
What size should server favourite icons be? 48×48?

Nik

Yeah any idea on how to add extra ssh commands like tar into the list ?

Sebastian

Thanks for these tipps. What I still miss on Dock Feature: I would like to drag and drop a mail from an email and transmit should save it in the local folder and on the remote folder. This will simplify my live. And I need this only for one folder!

aequalsb

i see here on this page about organizing “A favorites” list by name or address with a right-click – but how about organizing “THE favorites” list – i want to automatically organize by name (where THE favorites list is the list of folders in the left sidebar that contains iDisk, Bonjour, and History icons)

also, i would like to hide iDisk, Bonjour, and History from the Favorites list. how do i do that?

ps: Transmit is one of the most powerful and most droolingly incredible applications i have EVER used. i’ve been using it for over 5 years. recently, i spent over 4 hours searching for similar capability in Windows FTP apps, trying to find a parallel, and concluded it did not exist – features like mounting an FTP disk *omg drool* and others

Steven

I’m looking forward to a lot of these features making their way to Coda

quantize

Shame the icons for favorites are not syncable via mobileme

Any good reason they can’t be?

fingerscrossed

kudos for your ftp client…i’m serious!
it could have been casted for the movie kickass.
the only thing i’m missing is a fxp functionality. from time to time i have to transfer a huge amount of data of customers’ sites from one server to another. in those cases it would be really comfortabel to have a fxp feature instead of downloading everything locally and then uploading the stuff again to a remote server. this would really be the killer feature to knock out the rest completely.

more info on fxp: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_eXchange_Protocol

Cabel

Fingerscrossed: Transmit 4 fully supports FXP. Of course, your server(s) must also support it, and that’s pretty rare in 2010.

Luc Latulippe

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all your attention to these little details. Simply wonderful!

fingerscrossed

heh nice.
guess i missed it! sorry for that. didn’t recognize this feature made it into v4. just tried it on two glftpds and works like a charm.

kudocake for you 🎂

Hans Austria

Fantastisch! Hollodio Yodl Dioooo… I use transmit since years, but these “secrets” are awesome.

Zetaraffix

Koool, thanks!

Al

This has just taken FTP to a new level!
Almost all of the things I thought I wanted.. .are in Transmit 4!

You guys as ever…. ROCK!

Hamranhansenhansen

Local/Local and Remote/Remote! That is so useful!

What a great app! I’ve been using it since 1982 it is just awesome.

Bayswater

I never paid any attention to what Transmit does, other