Frequently Asked Questions
qBittorrent is Free Software (more than just freeware! Free as in Freedom) released under the GNU GPLv2 license.
You don't have to pay for it and this won't change. Its code is open and available to everyone and reusable under certain conditions (see the license text for more information).
qBittorrent –of course– does not contain any malware, spyware, advertisements or undesired third-party programs.
The qBittorrent issue tracker is located right here, on the top bar of this page.
Please do not hesitate to report any problem you may experience with qBittorrent. We will do our best to address it.
On our issue tracker here.
All ideas and feedback are welcome.
Just know that we want qBittorrent to remain low-footprint software and that we do not want to integrate heavy features that are not really useful to most people.
The simple answer is that "priority" has no significance for payloads, or part thereof that are completed.
"Priority" is there to arrange in numerical order the requests for pieces that your client makes to other peer nodes in the swarm for pieces that are still required by your client to complete the selected payload. It has no relevance to other peers as it is purely a 'local' setting.
Because of this it is excluded from the context menu that is accessed via a 'right click' or 'menu' button on a keyboard.
You can enable all 3 of those options and your private torrents will stay private. You can verify this by viewing the trackers tab on a private torrent and the status for DHT/PEX/LSD will be "Disabled" and the message column will say "This torrent is private".
You can fork our GitHub repository and make a pull request on GitHub.
qBittorrent was created in March 2006 by chris@qbittorrent.org and was actively maintained/developed by him until July 2013.
After that sledgehammer999@qbittorrent.org is maintaining the project.
Many other people have contributed or are still contributing to the project.
If you like the software and you would like to help the project to subsist by giving some money, please do so here.
We thank you in advance.
qBittorrent code compiles on Unix-like systems (GNU/Linux, BSD, OS X, ...) and Windows.
Windows is officially supported as of qBittorrent 2.2.9.
qBittorrent is included in the official repositories of several major GNU/Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, Arch Linux, …).
Binary distributions are usually available to the other distros through 3rd party repositories.
If not, please file a request at your GNU/Linux distribution's issue tracker.
qBittorrent is a peer to peer (P2P) file sharing software.
Although the software is perfectly legal, it may be illegal to download restricted content with this software, depending on the law in your country.
A lot of other BitTorrent clients exist but qBittorrent has several advantages:
- It is Open-source/Free/Libre Software (you can see the code and see what qBittorrent is doing).
- It is the closest open-source equivalent to the extremely popular (and Windows only) BitTorrent client: µTorrent.
- Its development team is very active and friendly.
- It is stable and it has a low footprint (generally, 20-60 MiB of RAM used), whilst providing all the features you may need.
- It uses the high-tech libtorrent-rasterbar library, which means greater download and upload speed as well as excellent support of the latest features of the BitTorrent protocol.
- It is easy to use and all of its features are well documented.
- It is an international program, supporting Unicode and containing translations into more than 70 languages.
You are probably using GNOME ≥ 2.28. By default, this window manager is no longer displaying menu icons.
You can change this behavior by issuing the following two commands in a terminal:
gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /desktop/gnome/interface/buttons_have_icons true gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons true
Well, actually I lacked inspiration on this one. :p
qBittorrent is simply a BitTorrent client written using the Qt Framework for its user interface.
Most programs developed with Qt toolkit use a 'q' as the first letter of their name.
The qBT abbreviation is also commonly used to refer to the qBittorrent client. However, please do not use the abbreviation qtorrent since another BitTorrent client with this name already exists.
Windows:
- preferences:
-
%APPDATA%\qBittorrent=C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\qBittorrent
-
- .torrent files, logs, etc:
-
%LOCALAPPDATA%\qBittorrent=C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\qBittorrent
-
- preferences:
~/.config/qBittorrent/
- .torrent files, logs, etc (This is the standard XDG data folder):
~/.local/share/qBittorrent/-
~/.local/share/data/qBittorrent/(in case legacy data directory was used)
- preferences:
~/.var/app/org.qbittorrent.qBittorrent/config/qBittorrent/
- .torrent files, logs, etc:
~/.var/app/org.qbittorrent.qBittorrent/data/qBittorrent/
- preferences:
~/snap/qbittorrent-arnatious/current/.config/qBittorrent/
- .torrent files, logs, etc:
~/snap/qbittorrent-arnatious/current/.local/share/data/qBittorrent/
- preferences:
~/.config/qBittorrent/
- .torrent files, logs, etc:
~/Library/Application Support/qBittorrent
- Remove all files in the preferences folder.
You need to delete the qBittorrent .plist files from ~/Library/Preferences:
~/Library/Preferences/org.qbittorrent.*~/Library/Preferences/com.qbittorrent.*
$ killall -u yourname cfprefsd
Where yourname is your OS X user name.
I configured qBittorrent to not download some files in a torrent but they still appear on my hard disk, why is that?
As you may know, a torrent is split into pieces of equal size that do not take files into consideration.
As a consequence, a piece can contain information relative to more than one file and qBittorrent only operates at piece level.
Because of this, if two files are adjacent and you choose to download only one of them, it is likely that the filtered one will be partially downloaded and thus appear on the hard-disk.
Try disabling MSI mode for that drive see this Microsoft forum page answer.
For external drives, you may need to shuck them and use them as internal drives. Or just get a new motherboard/PCIe card with better SATA controllers.
See also this issue comment.
Tick Tools → Options... → Advanced → Always announce to all trackers.
qBittorrent is handling torrent seeding priority by itself in order to optimize sharing and benefit to the swarm as much as possible.
qBittorrent uses 2 sets of colors depending if you're using a dark theme or not.
Here is the list (github doesn't allow changing the text color):
Light theme:
- Forest Green (rgb(34, 139, 34)) for torrents in downloading, forced downloading or downloading metadata status
- Black for torrents in allocating or stalled(up and down) status
- Royal Blue (rgb(65, 105, 225)) for torrents in uploading or forced uploading status
- Salmon (rgb(250, 128, 114)) for torrents in paused(downloading) status
- Dark Blue (rgb(0, 0, 139)) for torrents in completed (paused seeding) status
- Red (rgb(255, 0, 0)) for torrents in error or missing files status
- Teal (rgb(0, 128, 128)) for torrents in queued, checking, queued for checking or checking resume data status
- Lime Green (rgb(50, 205, 50)) for torrents in downloading, forced downloading or downloading metadata status
- Gray 80 (rgb(204, 204, 204)) for torrents in allocating or stalled(up and down) status
- Steel Blue 1 (rgb(99, 184, 255)) for torrents in uploading or forced uploading status
- Salmon (rgb(250, 128, 114)) for torrents in paused(downloading) status
- Steel Blue 3 (rgb(79, 148, 205)) for torrents in completed (paused seeding) status
- Red (rgb(255, 0, 0)) for torrents in error or missing files status
- Cyan 3 (rgb(0, 205, 205)) for torrents in queued, checking, queued for checking or checking resume data status
- Grey color means inactive (include download, upload and check)
- Green color means active download
- Orange color means active upload
- Red color means paused or error.
Most users want to keep the torrents they are downloading or seeding when switching to qBittorrent from another BitTorrent client. This is of course possible and it is quite simple to achieve.
Here is how you should proceed:
- Add the *.torrent files corresponding to your torrents to qBittorrent
- Deluge stores its *.torrent files in ~/.config/deluge/
- KTorrent stores its *.torrent files in ~/.kde4/share/apps/ktorrent/
- Vuze stores its *.torrent files in ~/.azureus/torrents/
- Transmission stores its *.torrent files in ~/.config/transmission/torrents/
- rTorrent stores its *.torrent files in ~/.session/ (as a default)
- Edit the download path in the torrent addition dialog and choose the path where the original torrents were being downloaded/seeded.
- For the torrents that are complete, you can select the Skip file checking and start seeding immediately option in the torrent addition dialog in order to save time and CPU. Basically, qBittorrent will trust that the local files are not corrupt and will start seeding them without rechecking all the files.
We have written a full explanation describing the advanced options in the guide here.
Yes and Yes!
qBittorrent can be run on your server and controlled remotely through its WebUI. As a default, the WebUI is running on http://server-ip:8080 (user: admin, password: adminadmin).
There is a guide for Ubuntu Server install here.
For other distributions, if your server does not have X server running, then you will need to disable the qBittorrent graphical user interface at compilation time (≥ v2.1.0 only).
Pass --disable-gui parameter to the configure file before compilation to disable the GUI.
Instructions on disabling the qBittorrent GUI is available here.
Provided you have at least shell access you can follow the instructions on this page.
Yes, there is a great Firefox add-on called Link to qBittorrent WebUI that can send torrent and magnet links directly to the qBT Web UI server when clicked.
This add-on works with many popular WebUI clients including qBittorrent.
And yes, there is a Chrome/Chromium extension that works great with qBittorrent : Remote Torrent Adder
Support for cookies in RSS feeds was added in qBittorrent 2.3.0.
To use feeds that require cookies, you must find the cookie for the site, and extract the UID and pass parameters from it.
- Firefox users will find their cookies in Tools → Options → Privacy → Show Cookies
- Opera users will find their cookies in Tools → Advanced → Cookies
- Internet Explorer users will find their cookies in %USERPROFILE%\Cookies
- Users of other browsers will have to consult their browsers documentation.
For example:
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
| uid | 1234 |
| pass | asdjh12378912y3lk |
Not every site uses UID and pass as the cookie variable names and they may include additional variables. You MUST use the exact variable name and the extra variables they specify. For example, a certain site may use id, password, and secure as its cookie variables.
Each BitTorrent client is identified by a string called Peer ID.
This ID is sometimes used by trackers to whitelist only a limited amount of trusted clients.
The size of the Peer ID field is 20 bytes.
qBittorrent Peer ID is formatted as follows: -qBXYZ0-<12 random bytes>
Where:
-
Xis the major version number -
Yis the minor version number -
Zis the bugfix version number (in hexadecimal so that we can go up to 15)
- qBittorrent v2.4.10:
-qB24A0-<12 random bytes> - qBittorrent v3.0.2:
-qB3020-<12 random bytes>
Change your regional formatting settings:
In most GNU/Linux distributions, you can go to Tools → Options → Connection then click on IP Filtering.
As far as adding the ipfilter file is concerned, see http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=113690 for a potential way.
When restoring qBittorrent from the tray in an Openbox desktop environment, it doesn't restore the window's initial geometry, so add this to the end of ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml:
<application class="Qbittorrent" name="qbittorrent">
<focus>no</focus>
<iconic>no</iconic>
<fullscreen>no</fullscreen>
<decor>yes</decor>
<shade>no</shade>
<maximized>yes</maximized>
<layer>normal</layer>
</application>
This is if you desire to have qBittorrent to be maximized on the whole screen.
If you want to have the window restored to a specific size, obapps can be used.
You can copy the class and name from the above XML code and set it according to how you like it.
obapps can be launched from the terminal.
A Dutch step by step tutorial can be found here.
P = Peer is using μTP (Micro Transport Protocol)
D = Currently downloading (interested and not choked)
d = Your client wants to download, but peer doesn't want to send (interested and choked)
U = Currently uploading (interested and not choked)
u = Peer wants your client to upload, but your client doesn't want to (interested and choked)
O = Optimistic unchoke
S = Peer is snubbed
I = Peer is an incoming connection
K = Peer is unchoking your client, but your client is not interested
? = Your client unchoked the peer but the peer is not interested
X = Peer was included in peerlists obtained through Peer Exchange (PEX)
H = Peer was obtained through DHT.
E = Peer is using Protocol Encryption (all traffic)
e = Peer is using Protocol Encryption (handshake)
L = Peer is local (discovered through network broadcast, or in reserved local IP ranges)
See this page for definitions of BitTorrent terms.
Ctrl+O = Add Torrent File
Ctrl+Shift+O = Add Torrent Link
Ctrl+R = Recheck selected torrents
Return = Double click action
Alt+O = Options
Ctrl+N = Torrent Creator
Alt+G = General widget
Alt+C = Trackers widget
Alt+R = Peerlist widget
Alt+B = HTTP Sources widget
Alt+Z = Content widget
Alt+D = Speed widget
Alt+4 = Execution Log tab
Ctrl+S = Resume
Ctrl+P = Pause
Ctrl+Shift+S = Resume All
Ctrl+Shift+P = Pause All
Ctrl+Shift++ = Top Priority
Ctrl++ = Increase Priority
Ctrl+- = Decrease Priority
Ctrl+Shift+- = Minimum Priority
Ctrl+L = Lock qBittorrent
Ctrl+Q = Exit qBittorrent
Ctrl+M = Minimize (macOS only)