#Setting up bittorrent for mac how to
#Setting up bittorrent for mac movie
#Setting up bittorrent for mac software
#Setting up bittorrent for mac Pc

Once you find what you're looking for, you'll need to download the. You can also visit a torrent search engine like the aptly named Pirate Bay to find things.

If you're downloading something that the creator has made available on BitTorrent, you'll probably find a link to download the torrent somewhere on their site-for example, the Linux distribution Ubuntu (Opens in a new window) offers torrents on its Alternative Downloads page (Opens in a new window). You can find torrents to download in a few different ways. We'll discuss the differences between all these in a future article. Other popular programs include Transmission (Opens in a new window), and Deluge (Opens in a new window). I'm personally a fan of qBittorrent (Opens in a new window), a free open-source client that's easy to use, available on multiple platforms, and provides a good amount of advanced features for those who like to dig in.

#Setting up bittorrent for mac how to

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 the pieces of a file in a torrent. Get a BitTorrent Clientĭownloading files with BitTorrent is a bit more complicated than just clicking a link in your web browser. If you use our instructions for that purpose, you do so at your own risk. To be clear, we at PCMag do not condone piracy. If there's something you want to download, there's a good chance someone's sharing it with BitTorrent, legally or not. Microsoft even uses similar tech to optimize Windows updates (Opens in a new window).Īll that said, BitTorrent is often used for piracy, since its efficiency, decentralized nature, and popularity have produced a bustling community around sharing those files.

#Setting up bittorrent for mac software

Using BitTorrent isn't inherently illegal, and the protocol has seen many legitimate uses as well, including the sharing of open-source software like Linux, delivering updates for programs like World of Warcraft (Opens in a new window), syncing files between computers Dropbox-style, and sharing media released over BitTorrent by the artists themselves (Opens in a new window).

#Setting up bittorrent for mac movie

The more people connected to a given swarm, seeding a file, the faster you'll be able to download that file.īitTorrent is commonly known as a piracy tool, thanks to its efficiency in sharing large movie files, music albums, software, and porn. 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 swarm.

#Setting up bittorrent for mac Pc

Instead of downloading a file from a single server, with BitTorrent you download pieces of that file from other users across the globe who have the same file on their PC (hence peer-to-peer). BitTorrent isn't just a program-it's a peer-to-peer (p2p) protocol that any program can use (though there is a program called BitTorrent (Opens in a new window), owned by the company of the same name that develops and maintains the protocol itself). So, while you might have a 200Mbps connection from your internet provider, you may download a file much slower than that if the server providing the file is slow or getting hammered with requests.īitTorrent is an alternative way of downloading big files that doesn't share the same weaknesses. How fast you download that file can vary depending on the server's location, speed, and how many people are trying to download the file at the same time. When you download a file from the internet, you're typically downloading it directly from a server somewhere. But BitTorrent is a bit more complex than the file-sharing tools that came before it, so it helps to acquaint yourself with its ins and outs before using it. If you've spent any time on the internet since the early 2000s, you've probably heard of BitTorrent, the popular file-sharing tool used for movies, programs, and other large chunks of data.

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