Dark Theme Transmission Web UI

Having a dark color scheme is becoming more and more popular. This post covers how to create and run a transmission docker container modified to have a dark website UI. The linuxserver.io transmission docker images provide the base, taking care of all the nitty gritty in getting transmission installed and ready for action. Installing transmission-web-soft-theme on top of the transmission image will give a nice dark web UI.

Credit to the transmission-web-soft-theme for the screenshot of the theme in action.

To get everything up and running we need:

1. Dockerfile defining our changes to the linuxserver/transmission image.
2. A docker-compose.yml telling docker how to run the container image.

The Dockerfile

The FROM statement sets the base image over which we can make our custom changes to linuxserver.io.

Using RUN it is possible to execute arbitrary shell commands. In this case the command is to download the transmission-web-soft-theme repository as a tar ball, extracting the files, and running the install script provided in the theme repository. All according to the installation instruction on the project wiki

Finally, we expose the necessary ports and declare the persistent volumes for configuration and downloads.

Save the Dockerfile in an empty directory.

FROM linuxserver/transmission:latest

RUN \
    curl --output transmission-web-soft-theme-master.tar \
    https://git.eigenlab.org/sbiego/transmission-web-soft-theme/-/archive/master/transmission-web-soft-theme-master.tar && \
    tar --extract -f transmission-web-soft-theme-master.tar && \
    cd transmission-web-soft-theme-master && \
    printf '%s\n' 1 | bash install.sh && \
    rm -rf transmission-web-soft-theme-master.tar transmission-web-soft-theme-master

EXPOSE 9091 51413
VOLUME /config /downloads

Docker Compose

In the same folder as the Dockerfile above create a docker-compose.yml file. Specify where save configurations and downloaded files. Also change the time zone if necessary. Documentation for all parameters

version: "3"

services:
  transmission:
    build: .
    container_name: transmission
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      PUID: 1000
      PGID: 1000
      TZ: Europe/Stockholm
    volumes:
      - <path to config>:/config
      - <path to downloads>:/downloads
    ports:
      - 9091:9091
      - 51413:51413
      - 51413:51413/udp

Running the container

In the folder where you placed the Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml run the command to build and run the container. If you haven’t already you will need to install Docker and docker-compose.

docker-compose up -d --build

Go to localhost:9091 and enjoy your dark themed transmission web UI.