Trawl

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A curated, terminal-native torrent & book finder. One search trawls a short list of reputable sources — games, movies, TV, anime, books — at once; pick a result and aria2 downloads it (magnets, direct http links, and ebooks). Just type trawl — no Node, no npx, no install step.

Trawl is a from-scratch Python TUI inspired by torlink (the look and feel) and driven by aria2 like its sibling Riptide — zero third-party packages, stdlib only.

Preview

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           A curated, terminal-native torrent & book finder.
               games  ·  movies  ·  tv  ·  anime  ·  books

    ╭─ Search ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
    │ ❯ Search, or paste a magnet or link…                         │
    ╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

                   type to search   ↵ browse   q quit

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  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
                    ╭─ Search ────────────────────────────────────────╮
  ▌ All             │ ❯ oppenheimer                                   │
    Games           ╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
    Movies
    TV              ╭─ Results · seeders ─────────────────────── (3) ─╮
    Anime           │ 3 results                                       │
    Books           │    Name                     Size       S:L   Src │
    Downloads       │ ❯  Oppenheimer (2023)…   1.83 GB   1240:88   YTS │
                    │    Oppenheimer 2023 2…  14.90 GB    910:41   KNB │
                    │    Oppenheimer.2023.P…   1.96 GB    540:30   TPB │
                    ╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

  ↑↓ move  ·  enter details  ·  d grab  ·  o page  ·  y copy  ·  q quit

Features

• Multi-source search — 18 sources (incl. the Knaben meta-aggregator) queried concurrently, results streamed in and merged, sorted by seeders (toggle to size / newest).
• aria2 engine — spawns a private aria2c over JSON-RPC; honors your ~/.aria2/aria2.conf. Magnet metadata → real download handoff handled; direct http(s) links download too.
• Downloads pane — live progress (animated bar), speed, ETA, peers; pause / resume / cancel / retry; pick individual files from multi-file torrents; reveal in Finder; a persistent Recently downloaded list.
• Inspect before grabbing — a details view, open the torrent's page in your browser, or copy its magnet.
• Resume — unfinished downloads resume automatically on the next launch; s additionally scans the download folder for stray partial *.aria2 files.
• Quality of life — persistent search history, completion notifications, clipboard magnet auto-detect, mouse-wheel scrolling, a settings overlay (toggle sources, set the download dir), and confirm-on-quit.
• Single file — ships as one stdlib zipapp executable on your PATH.

Requirements

• macOS (uses open, pbcopy/pbpaste, osascript)
• aria2 (Homebrew installs it for you)
• Python 3.10+

Install

Homebrew

brew tap araidz/trawl https://github.com/araidz/Trawl
brew install trawl

brew pulls in aria2 and Python automatically. Update later with brew upgrade trawl.

From source

git clone https://github.com/araidz/Trawl.git && cd Trawl
sh build.sh                                       # -> dist/trawl (one self-contained file)
ln -sf "$PWD/dist/trawl" /opt/homebrew/bin/trawl  # or anywhere on your PATH

Needs aria2 (brew install aria2). Or run without building: python3 -m trawl.

Usage

Trawl opens to a search bar. Type and press Enter to search, press Enter on an empty box to browse the latest, or paste a magnet or direct http(s) link to grab it.

Search

Key	Action
type · Enter	search (paste a magnet or link to grab)
↑ ↓	recall past searches / scroll results
Enter	result details
d	download selected
o	open the torrent's page in your browser
y copy magnet · v	grab a magnet or link from the clipboard
S	cycle sort (seeders / size / newest)
← → filter category · c	clear results
s	resume partial downloads found on disk
g settings · ? keys · q	quit

Downloads (Tab to switch)

Key	Action
↑ ↓	move / scroll
p	pause / resume · x cancel (asks: delete files or keep)
r	retry a failed download
f	choose which files to download (season packs)
o	reveal the file in Finder
s resume · g settings · q	quit

What it searches

Category	Sources
Games	FitGirl · DODI
Movies	YTS · The Pirate Bay · 1337x
TV	EZTV · SolidTorrents · The Pirate Bay · 1337x
Anime	Nyaa · SubsPlease · AnimeTosho
Books	The Pirate Bay · Nyaa (literature) · Library Genesis · Anna's Archive
All	Knaben (meta-aggregator) · TorrentGalaxy · Torrents-CSV

Toggle any source on or off in the settings overlay (g). If a source is down, the search carries on without it.

How it works

Trawl launches its own aria2c with JSON-RPC on loopback and drives it over HTTP. aria2 does all the downloading; Trawl is a thin native-feeling client plus a raw-ANSI TUI. Your ~/.aria2/aria2.conf is loaded as the base config (download dir, connection/seed settings, resume); Trawl forces only the RPC transport and uses a private session file so it never touches your own aria2 state.

State lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Trawl/: history.txt (searches), downloads.jsonl (completed), config.json (settings), aria2-session.txt (private session).

Privacy

Your files stay on your disk; nothing routes through a central server. Trawl only talks to the sources you search and the torrent network via aria2.

Credits

• aria2 — the download engine
• torlink — look-and-feel inspiration
• Riptide — the aria2 integration this grew from

No third-party code is used; Trawl is an independent stdlib-only implementation.

License

MIT