uTorrent

About uTorrent

The reason this client has survived every attempt to replace it is size. The whole thing is a few megabytes, it starts instantly, and it will sit in the tray on a machine with almost nothing to spare while still saturating a fast line. On an old box acting as a seedbox in the corner of a room, that footprint is the entire argument.

This build strips the promotional layer that the stock client carries. There is no sponsored panel in the sidebar, no offer screen during installation, and no bundled extras waiting behind a checkbox. What is left is the transfer engine and the interface around it.

The transfer controls are more capable than the size suggests. Per-torrent and global bandwidth caps, a scheduler that switches between full speed, limited and seeding-only by hour of the week, queue rules based on ratio and seeding time, and per-file priority inside a multi-file torrent so a single episode can be pulled without the rest of the season.

Beyond that it covers the protocol properly: magnet links, distributed hash table, peer exchange, local peer discovery, protocol encryption, IP filtering, sequential download for previewing, and a web interface for driving it from another machine on the network. Disk cache settings and preallocation keep a mechanical drive from thrashing on large transfers.

What is included in this build

• Very small install footprint with near instant startup
• No sponsored panels, offer screens or bundled extras
• Magnet links, distributed hash table, peer exchange and local peer discovery
• Per-torrent and global bandwidth limits with a weekly scheduler
• Queue rules based on seed ratio, seeding time and active transfer count
• Per-file priority and selective downloading inside multi-file torrents
• Protocol encryption and IP filter list support
• Web interface for controlling the client from another machine on the network

Changed in version 3.6.0

• Promotional and sponsored components removed from the build
• Improved handling of torrents with very large file counts
• Better disk cache behaviour on mechanical drives during heavy seeding
• Fixed a rare hang when a tracker returned a malformed response
• Refreshed interface language files

Installation walkthrough

These steps assume a clean machine. If a previous release of the same application is present, deal with that first, since an overlapping install is the most common cause of a setup that stops halfway.

1. Close any existing torrent client and let running transfers finish or pause cleanly.
2. Extract the archive to any folder and run the installer as administrator.
3. Decline any automatic update prompt, since updating restores the stock build.
4. Set the incoming port and enable it through the firewall on the first launch.
5. Point the completed downloads folder at a drive with room before adding transfers.

System requirements and file details

Frequently asked about this title