KickassTorrents (commonly abbreviated KAT) was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the. QBittorrent Tixati Transmission μTorrent WebTorrent Desktop. In many locations pointed to a fake KAT site that prompted visitors to download malware.
- Oct 15, 2018 - Find out everything you need to know about torrenting and how to stay safe. A BitTorrent software such as uTorrent, Transmission or BitTorrent for the. Flock to popular websites such as The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents.
- Find out who won in the battle for the best VPN for torrenting. Alternatively, our favorite torrent client, qBitTorrent, includes a feature called “bind to VPN. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. This includes The Pirate bay, Kickass, and 1337x.
- Nov 8, 2017 - Torrent clients, such as uTorrent Vuze and the official BitTorrent client, are. Related: How to Download Torrents onto Your iOS Device Without.
- Due to this reason, you must be looking for some Best Torrent sites to download torrent files. So check out the below sites to get your best torrent sites. So check out the below sites to get your best torrent sites.
There are more BitTorrent clients than we could possibly compare, but some of the most popular—and best—have been under the spotlight lately for sleazy ads and bad behavior. It’s time to check in on a few of our favorites to see how they fare, which deserves your downloads, and which you can trust.
The Contenders
The world of BitTorrent clients is vast and infinite, but of the most popular apps out there capable of downloading torrents, scheduling downloads, remotely managing those downloads, and more, three apps stand out pretty clearly:
- µTorrent (Windows/Mac/Linux): µTorrent has, for the longest time, been your favorite BitTorrent client. It’s cross-platform, free, easy to use, and is packed with useful features. Like any good torrenting client, it can resume stopped downloads, merge trackers, download items in sequential order, supports encrypted files, and lets you manage downloads remotely via mobile apps. It can schedule downloads, supports port forwarding, and it can even throttle itself depending on your overall bandwidth usage. Plus, it’s cross-platform and is simple to use whether you need the advanced features or not.
- qBittorrent (Windows/Mac/Linux): Free, open-source, and designed to pick up the community that µTorrent left behind, qBittorrent has garnered a huge following for being slim, trim, and super fast without skimping on the features that matter. Its interface may look sparse, but under the hood you’ll find just about everything you need, whether you’re heavy or a light downloader. IP filtering, sequential downloads, built-in search, encrypted downloads, web-based remote control, port forwarding, it’s all there. It, too, is cross-platform, and works flawlessly on just about every system you throw it at.
- Transmission (Windows/Mac/Linux): Transmission is in this roundup for an unfortunate reason (more on that later), but also because we’ve often recommended it in the past—and for good reason. It’s lightweight, and for the longest time was the best torrenting app available for the Mac. It’s since gone cross-platform, with variants both first-party and third-party available for macOS, Linux, and even Windows. Like our other contenders, it supports encryption, sharing your own files, IP filtering, download scheduling, and remote management. Unlike some of our others here though, it has a killer headless mode ideals for NAS devices, home servers, HTPCs, and even Raspberry Pis, and it’s customizable to completely automate your downloads. It’s been through some rough patches as of late, but it’s still a strong contender.
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These particular clients are just the tip of the iceberg. They’re some of the most popular, but others, like Deluge (Win/Mac/Linux) and Vuze (Win/Mac/Linux) are also great contenders. We just couldn’t possibly compare them all in a showdown like this. Maybe we’ll pit them against the winner here, or against each other in the future showdown if there’s interest. The bottom line here though is that there are plenty of options, even if you don’t these three—and there are even more options out there if you don’t like any of the ones we’ve mentioned so far.
µTorrent and Transmission Have Histories of Malware or Bad Behavior
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Let’s get this out of the way right out of the gate. Transmission is in this roundup because it’s been—for the second time now—caught distributing malware. This isn’t of its own design or choosing of course—in both cases its more likely that malicious actors injected the malware into Transmission install .DMGs and then uploaded them to Transmission’s own servers, masquerading as legitimate copies of the program for users to download and install. Back in March, the issue was that the installer came bundled with ransomware, and just this week, malware designed to steal a Mac’s keychain and give itself a backdoor made its way into Transmission installers. In both cases, the developers behind the Transmission project acted quickly to remove any malicious downloads, but, well, it’s not a good look (and a good reminder to check hashes to make sure files you download are what the owner promises they’ll be.
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Read more ReadOver on the µTorrent side of things, more than a few people (and private trackers) abandoned the software when they started introducing sleazy banner ads and then bundling adware and crapware with their installer (which, to this day, you still have to manually deselect, or else you’ll get crap like the “Spigot Toolbar” and custom search apps and widgets in both Firefox and Chrome.) Then came the “premium” versions of µTorrent available without the crapware, and that little matter of a version that came with a Bitcoin miner bundled along with. Put all of this together and you have a client that’s steadily eroded the trust of its users. A little over a year ago, when we asked you for your favorite BitTorrent clients, you definitely mentioned µTorrent, but it came with a ton of caveats, and many of you saying you’d never use a version beyond 2.2.1 (and, to be fair, many of you pointing out that it’s easy to disable the ads, and easier to click “decline” when you install it.)
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Read more ReadOf course, malware that will backdoor your machine and steal your passwords or ransomware are both way more serious than adware that just sticks around, makes money off of you, and makes itself annoying—but both underscore a problem with torrent clients, especially the popular ones: They’re either easy targets to get to the myriad computers running them, or they demand tons of time and resources with very little return on that investment, so they desperately try to monetize. In either case, it’s important to be informed of the security and privacy implications of their use, and the historical issues they both have—especially considering they’re two of the most popular clients in wide use.
qBittorrent Offers the Best of µTorrent Without the Bloat
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qBittorrent was designed specifically to be the “anti-µTorrent,” in a way. Its feature set is very similar, and the project is completely open source so you could, if you were so-inclined, check out the changes between versions and revisions, and fork the application on your own and make your own contributions to the project. That said, most of us won’t, but it’s nice to know that there’s a community with its eyes on what happens behind the scenes with the project.
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Read more ReadEven though qBittorrent was designed to be an alternative to µTorrent specifically, it’s not just a clone. qBittorrent stands on its own, with features like email for completed downloads, web-based remote management (ideal for HTPCs or home servers), built-in search so you don’t have to deal with seedy (and often changing or closing) public trackers, IP filtering for privacy, port forwarding so you don’t have to use the defaults, bandwidth scheduling so you’re not downloading while you’re also trying to game or stream movies or music, and even a torrent creation tool so you can share your own large files using the technology if you want to.
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Read more ReadOf course, while qBittorrent is fast, lightweight, and cross-platform, it shines on some platforms more than others (more on that in a moment.) It compares well with µTorrent, since that’s what it was designed to replace, but qBittorrent is more difficult to compare to an app like Transmission. It doesn’t have the same headless capabilities out of the box that Transmission does, and Transmission can be configured to automatically download from folders, RSS feeds, and other sources without your interaction, which makes it ideal for downloading anything you want as soon as its available. It also has command line features to run on linux without a GUI enabled, or remote management—near necessary if you plan to run it on a Raspberry Pi, a home theater PC, or a network-attached storage (NAS) device. None of this is to say qBittorrent can’t be cobbled into a similar solution, just that Transmission is much easier for that purpose.
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Your OS Matters, but Not as Much as Your Use Case
When we say “your OS matters,” what we’re really talking about is your use case. Do you torrent from a Windows PC occasionally, when you need something, or do you run a home server that downloads tons of data for you while you sleep, or while you’re at work? Are you a Mac user, or a Linux user? All of those things matter, but only to the extent of how complicated you need your downloading solution to be.
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Transmission was designed for natively for Macs and Linux systems (let’s hear it for GTK+,) with Transmission-QT and a semi-official version for Windows users. Run your own seedbox, or installing Linux on a new home server? It’s possible Transmission is already there, or a few keystrokes away, and you can be sure it will play nice with your system. µTorrent, for its part, probably has the broadest client base, with native apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android, but its features aren’t angled towards headless downloads either. qBittorrent is cross-platform and works well everywhere, but its development priority is on being cross-platform and easy to manage (based around Qt,) not around native clients for any specific platform.
What all of this boils down to is whether you care about the UI, or you need your torrenting app to be a native one. If you’re a casual downloader, you probably don’t. If you’re running your own seedbox and your peers on private trackers depend on you, or you let your server do the downloading and you want something rock solid and reliable without the need to jump in and troubleshoot, you might. Consider your use case as well as your operating system before deciding. Maybe the geeky, super-customized, headless lure of Transmission is too strong to resist. Maybe you just download occasionally—in which case qBittorrent or µTorrent are just fine.
qBitTorrent Is the Leanest, Transmission Is the Most Advanced, and µTorrent Is Good but Hard to Recommend
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If you’re a casual user, download when you need to and seed when you want to, we’d recommend qBitTorrent. It’s lightweight, easy to install, cross-platform, and super fast. Web-based remote management is great if you can set it up, and its features are enough for even advanced users to download whatever they want, when they want.
If you love open APIs, have a home server and download everything in volume, and subsequently seed a lot of files as well, Transmission is ideal for your use case, assuming you’re using a Mac or you’re running it on a Raspberry Pi or Linux-based system. Heck, Transmission has versions specifically for embedded systems like that NAS or HTPC you’re running, and despite its recent malware scares, it’s still solid. Its development team just really needs to earn back the trust of its user community, which is a difficult thing to do when the same community is also (rightfully) concerned with privacy and anonymity, security, and entirely based on trust.
Finally, µTorrent may be the “standard,” as in, a lot of people use it, but it’s difficult to recommend to someone looking for a new torrenting client. Sure, it works, and it works well. It has features and mobile management apps that the other two don’t. Its UI is sleek, easy to use, and easy to navigate, even compared with qBittorrent, which was designed to replicate the experience. However, it’s tough to tell someone to use an app, but also make sure to decline all the crapware, disable the ads, make sure each new version doesn’t come with something insidious (or wait until the community finds out if it does or not before you install it), and so on. Unless you’re completely happy with the version you have, or there’s a feature you need that’s not available elsewhere, you may want to leave it behind—and if you’re looking for a new client, you have faster, lighter options available.
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Still, we can’t choose for you. At the end of the day, all three have their merits, and again, these aren’t the only ones worth considering. Maybe none of these are up your alley and you should check out Vuze, or Deluge, or Tixati, or rTorrent, for example. The bottom line is to always consider your use case and needs, not just what’s popular, and choose something that fits them first.
Image by jacobian
How To Download Torrent Movies
Heard of BitTorrent, but not quite sure how to use it, or wonder whether you should use it at all? Here’s a quick guide for newbies on how it works and how to get started downloading torrent files.
![How to use torrent downloads How to use torrent downloads](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126142148/674879667.png)
What is BitTorrent?
BitTorrent is an internet peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that works in a sort of decentralized fashion. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that as you download portions of your files from the the person who originally shared the file, you are also getting portions from fellow downloaders to maximize data exchange.
BitTorrent is one of the most commonly used protocols for transferring very large files because it doesn’t overload web servers that provide downloads—since everybody is both sending and receiving, it’s much more efficient than everybody downloading from a single server.
How BitTorrent Works
To better understand how this all works, take a look at this diagram from Wikipedia detailing the process:
“In this animation, the colored bars beneath all of the 7 clients in the upper region above represent the file, with each color representing a individual piece of the file. After the initial pieces transfer from the seed (large system at the bottom), the pieces are individually transferred from client to client. The original seeder only needs to send out one copy of the file for all the clients to receive a copy. To stop animation, click browser’s Stop or hit ESC key.”
Indexers
An “indexer” is a site that compiles a list of torrents and descriptions and is a place where users form a community (with rules!) around BitTorrent content. When you want to share, download, or request files, the indexer’s community is where you go. These usually take the form of a forum and/or an IRC channel.
Trackers
A “tracker” is a server that assists in directing peers, initiated downloads, and maintaining statistics. Since most indexers have their own private tracker, most people just refer to them both as trackers. In this article, we’re going to use this more general definition to avoid confusion with whatever you may find yourself on the internet.
Trackers route little pieces of data, or packets, to downloaders and assist them in connecting to their fellow peers—as you download chunks of files, you also upload them to other people who have different chunks of the file, and because everybody’s sharing with each other while downloading, it tends to zip along quickly.
Seeders and Leechers
Once you’re done downloading, you become a “seeder” and you continue to upload to other peers. If you disable uploading and you only download, you’re referred to as a “leecher,” and aside from its ethical misgivings it can lead to being banned from the tracker. As such, it’s generally good practice to seed at least as much as you download.
Image by nrkbeta
Public vs Private Trackers
Another aspect of trackers are whether they are public or private—the “Private” trackers are based on membership, so only registered users can download, upload, and/or have access to perks like additional downloads. “Public” trackers usually don’t require registration, or if they do, it’s free and always open. In general, the best experience comes from a private tracker with a strong community, so be sure to look around and see if you can’t find one that suits your tastes.
BitTorrent Clients
The other side of the BitTorrent equation can be found on your local computer: a client. The client’s job is to manage your torrents, actually connect to other peers, manage statistics on your end, and, of course, download and upload. While the tracker gives instructions on what to do and how to connect, it’s the client that actually does the heavy-lifting. Because of this, it’s important that you choose a client you trust as well as a client that performs amiably.
There’s no lack of free, feature-packed BitTorrent clients, but we strongly recommend uTorrent (for Windows) and Transmission (for Mac OS and Linux). uTorrent is a powerhouse of an app, and easily one of the lightest to run on Windows. Transmission is installed by default on Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions, and the Mac version runs extremely well and has Growl support. They are both novice and resource-friendly but don’t skip out on some of the more useful options for advanced users.
Note: uTorrent, by default, enables an Ask.com toolbar during installation and offers to make your default search Ask.com. This can be turned off without any problems, but it bears mentioning.
Legality of BitTorrent
![Utorrent Utorrent](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126142148/874043349.png)
BitTorrent itself is a protocol, so it falls to individual trackers as to what’s legal and what’s not. If a copyright violation occurs, it is the tracker that is primarily held responsible, and subsequently its users. You probably should avoid blindly downloading copyrighted works on public trackers, since your IP address can be easily tracked.
There are many legal uses for BitTorrent, however—for instance, most community-driven Linux distributions offer torrents for their ISOs. Phish fans often record live shows (so long as they comply with Phish’s policy on music trading) and share them online, as do many artists themselves.
There are plenty of legal trackers out there, as well as torrent aggregators that compile links to legal downloads hosted on other trackers. Here’s a couple of examples:
- Jamendo is a free music tracker that distributes Creative Commons-licensed albums, and artists can contribute their own album if it’s licensed in the same way.
- Linux Tracker provides downloads to Linux distributions, both popular and low-key, and serves as a great alternative for downloading ISO files.
- Clear Bits offers “open licensed digital media” downloads for free, charging content providers instead. And, as always, Google can be a powerful ally in finding legal torrents.
We here at How-To Geek do not condone piracy and we urge you to please download responsibly.
Downloading Torrents
Things are shared through “torrents,” small files containing text that act as instructions for the tracker. In order to download files, you hop on your tracker’s website and download the torrent file, which is usually under 30 KB. You then open that torrent in your chosen BitTorrent and you’ve started to download! The process is that simple, although there is a lot you can do to make the most of your connection if you play around with your client.
Step by Step
First and foremost, download and install your chosen BitTorrent client. Here, I’m using uTorrent as my chosen client on Windows. If you’re using Mac or Linux, it won’t be too hard to follow along using Transmission.
Next, we need a torrent file. I’ve got a torrent of Countdown’s album “Break Rise Blowing” from Jamendo.
Once you have your torrent file in an easy-to-reach (or well-organized) location, all you have to do is double-click on the .torrent file to load it in your client.
You’ll see uTorrent pop up and you’ll get a dialog with option for the specific download.
Here, you can choose where the torrent will download to, whether or not you want to add it to the top of your queue of torrents, and you can even unmark individual files from being downloaded. Once you’ve settled on what you’d like, you can go ahead and click on OK.
In the main uTorrent window you’ll see your queue. From here you can manage your torrents:
- The Pause button will pause downloading, but keep its connections open.
- The Stop button will stop downloading and close its connections.
- The Play button will start downloads once they’ve been paused or stopped.
- The red X button will give you a prompt to delete your torrent (and files, if you choose).
- The Up arrow will raise your torrent’s priority amongst all of the currently active torrents.
- The Down arrow will lower its priority in the queue.
How To Download Torrent File To Qtorrent From Kickasstorrents Free
Getting started is just that easy. The world of BitTorrent is vast, but hopefully this introduction will give you the incentive to take the plunge. Happy torrenting!