qBittorrent 4.0.4

Undoubtedly the main competitor of the ubiquitous uTorrent client, qBittorrent can be considered not only its open-source counterpart but the torrent client that is making a significant number of uTorrent users stop and look for greener pastures. A comprehensive download manager for torrent files with a user-friendly interface, qBittorrent misses very few of its competitors’ features if any.

Its “uTorrent-like interface” – as described by its own developers – is certainly very similar in both its looks and its functionality. You can load not only .torrent files but also magnet links and manage all of your downloads with ease. You can download them all simultaneously, apply different levels of priority to them, or download your torrents in sequential order. You can view the files inside each torrent and decide which of them to download and which to leave out, either when loading the .torrent file or at any time during the download process.

The overall functionality doesn’t differ much from what you may find in the most popular torrent clients. Thus, you can define the ports to be used and how, the number of connections per torrent and the upload slots, the number of active torrents being downloaded and/or uploaded at a given time, manage your rate limits, etc. You can use the client to create your own torrent files and determine the size and number of pieces, the level of privacy, and the ratio limits. Besides, you can access your qBittorrent client and activity remotely using its Web UI.

When it comes to its search capabilities, though, qBittorrent is light-years ahead of many of its competitors thanks to its support for third-party plug-ins, search engine plug-ins, to be more specific. Thus, you can download and install the search engine for a number of well-known public and private sites, such as bt.etree.org, demonoid.pw, LimeTorrents, TNT Village, or RuTracker. A couple of other things that I haven’t seen anywhere else are its e-mail notification service for completed downloads and the strict super-seeding option.

That said, not everything is rosy in qBittorrent’s world. Problems with large numbers of torrents have been reported, as well as some stability issues that will make you reinstall the program every now and then. Besides, its “stall” function may keep your torrents inactive for an unlimited period of time for reasons beyond me. However, if you want to get rid of uTorrent’s annoying ads, and move to the open source realm without losing any of its functionality, qBittorrent is probably your best option.

Francisco Martínez

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