BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer media sharing tool, but it’s not as simple as downloading content in a browser. Our guide shows you how to torrent and how to stay safe while doing it.
If you’ve spent any time on the internet since the early 2000s, you’ve probably heard of BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing tool used for movies, programs, and other large amounts of data. But BitTorrent is a little more complicated than the file sharing tools that came before it, so it helps to know its intricacies before using it. Our guide will help you get started.
What Is BitTorrent?
When you download a file from the internet, you’re usually downloading it directly from a server somewhere. How fast the file will download depends on the server’s location, speed, and how many people are trying to download the file at the same time. So, even if you have a 200Mbps connection from your internet provider, if the server serving the file is slow or swamped with requests, you may download the file slower than that.
BitTorrent is an alternative way to download large files that doesn’t share the same vulnerabilities. BitTorrent isn’t just a program – it’s a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol that any program can use (although there is a program called BitTorrent, which is owned by the same company that developed and maintains the protocol).
Instead of downloading a file from a single server, with BitTorrent you download pieces of that file from other users around the world who have the same file on their computers (hence peer-to-peer). The file or group of files you download is called a torrent, sharing those files is called seeding, and the group of people you download from is called a crowd. The more people that are connected to a given crowd and seed a file, the faster you can download that file.
BitTorrent is commonly known as a piracy tool due to its efficiency in sharing large movie files, music albums, software, and pornographic images. Using BitTorrent is not inherently illegal, and the protocol has also seen many legitimate uses, including sharing open source software like Linux, providing updates for programs like World of Warcraft, syncing files between computers Dropbox-style, and sharing media published by BitTorrent by artists. Microsoft uses a similar technique to customize Windows updates.
BitTorrent is often used for piracy because its efficiency, decentralized nature, and popularity have created a thriving community for sharing those files. If you want to download something, there’s a good chance that someone is sharing it with BitTorrent, whether legally or not. To be clear, at PCMag we do not condone plagiarism. If you use our instructions for that purpose, you do so at your own risk.
How to Download a Torrent
1. Get a BitTorrent Client
Downloading files via BitTorrent is a little more complicated than just clicking a link in your web browser. Most browsers don’t have built-in support for BitTorrent, so you need a specific program called a BitTorrent client that knows how to download and assemble pieces of a file into a torrent.
I’m personally a fan of qBittorrent, a free open source client that’s easy to use, available on multiple platforms, and offers a good amount of advanced features for those willing to get involved. Other popular programs include Transmission and Flush. We’ll discuss the differences between all of these in a future article.
2. Find a Torrent to Download
You can find torrents to download in a few different ways. If you’re downloading something available on BitTorrent creators, you’ll probably find a link to download the torrent somewhere on their site – for example, the Linux distribution Ubuntu offers torrents on its Alternative Downloads page. You can also visit the aptly named torrent search engine The Pirate Bay to find things.
3. Download the Torrent File
Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, you’ll need to download a .torrent file – a small piece of data that points your BitTorrent client to the torrent so it can download the actual files you’re looking for. So, if you’re downloading a video, you’ll first download a small .torrent file, then double-click it to open it in qBittorrent, where it will begin downloading the actual video.
This may seem like a bit of a roundabout way—downloading a small file that points you to another file—but that’s how BitTorrent works. Many BitTorrent sites and clients support “magnet links” that allow you to point your client to a swarm with a simple click of the mouse, bypassing the .torrent file. You can find .torrent files and magnet links on the download page for the file you want (if the creator supports BitTorrent) or on a BitTorrent search engine like The Pirate Bay.
4. Open the Torrent in Your Client Software
You double-click on the torrent and tell your OS to open it in the client software. From there, you can tell the software where to download your file from, as well as prioritize it over other things you want to download. These are client-specific steps, though.
How to Torrent Safely and Speedily
These are the bare minimum basics for getting started with BitTorrent, but they won’t give you the optimal experience. Below are a few things to do to help you stay safe and keep your downloads moving quickly.
Watch Out for Malware and Fake Torrents
Just like elsewhere on the Internet, you should be careful with what you download. While many, most torrent files do what they claim to do, some may trick you by promising one thing and delivering malware instead – especially when you’re browsing dubious corners of the Internet for torrents.
Many torrent sites have comments on each page that help you determine the trustworthiness of a given torrent based on what other users have written. Some directories put badges next to the uploader’s username, indicating users with a good record of uploading safe files. And, of course, you should run good antivirus software that automatically scans everything you download.
Use a VPN
Because you connect directly to other users to download your torrent, you can see the IP address of every user in the crowd—and they can see your IP address. That IP is then traceable to you, allowing anyone in the crowd to see what you’re downloading. Some ISPs, especially outside the US, may throttle your speed if they find you using BitTorrent. To prevent both of these problems, you should use a reliable VPN whenever you’re torrenting—one that hides your IP address from the crowd and encrypts your traffic so your ISP doesn’t know what you’re doing.
Avoid Dead Torrents
BitTorrent allows you to download files faster and more efficiently than a direct connection to a server – even when sharing a large group of files. If a torrent has only two followers, you’ll download the file much slower, and if there are no followers, you won’t be able to get the file at all. When you download a torrent, be sure to download the latest torrent with the most followers to ensure the best speeds (many sites will list the number of followers on the torrent’s download page).
Make Sure You’re Open to Connections
These days, most torrent clients are optimized out of the box – they create a Windows Firewall rule for themselves, and automatically open a port using UPnP or NAT-PMP so that seeders can send you their files. If a program has a lot of followers and the file isn’t downloading, you may need to manually forward a port on your router or take other troubleshooting steps to ensure you’re connecting to peers in the swarm.
Follow BitTorrent Protocol
Although it’s not critical to success, it’s considered a good idea to pass the buck and give others the opportunity to download their own data after you’ve downloaded it. After all, if there were no followers, BitTorrent wouldn’t work very well and we’d all be left downloading files at a snail’s pace. If you can’t always seed the file, at least seed it until you’ve shared as much as you downloaded (also known as a 1:1 “ratio”) before deleting the torrent from your client.
If you want to explore your client’s settings, BitTorrent is a remarkably powerful tool, so we can explore that more here. But for most beginners, it will help you get started, keep you safe, and avoid the dreaded “slow download servers” as much as possible.
