- Tixati Bittorrent client review by Martin Brinkmann on August 17, 2012 in File Sharing, Internet - Last Update: November 11, 2019 - 44 comments Tixati is a Bittorrent client - a program to download torrents - for the Windows operating system and Linux.
- QBittorrent is a free and open source torrent client that helps users download content off the internet. It is one of the very few torrent clients that offers a minimalist and ad-free user.
Torrent clients with great downloading capabilities have been developed to mitigate these issues, but not many of them are both good and free. If 'good', 'free' and 'download manager' all have to be included in the same sentence, it can be done for only one particular client: BitComet. And in this review we'll tell you why. Let's get started.
qBittorrent is a lightweight 100 percent free and open source (FOSS) BitTorrent client. We awarded it our Editor’s Choice award thanks to its combination of having a small install size yet featuring most tools any BitTorrent user might ever need.
Arguably, the best of these is the ability to bind qBitTorrent to your VPN interface. This ensures your IP address is never exposed while torrenting.
Features
- Free in every sense of the word.
- Lightweight
- Can bind to VPN interface
- Torrent search engine
- RSS feed support with advanced download filters
- Many BitTorrent extensions
- Remote control through web user interface
- Sequential downloading
- Torrents queueing and prioritizing
- Torrent content selection and prioritizing
- Bandwidth scheduler
- IP Filtering (eMule compatible)
- IPv6 compliant
- UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support
- Torrent creation tool
- Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OS/2 clients
qBittorrent is not as fully-featured as heavyweight clients such as Vuze, but it has pretty much every feature most torrent users are ever likely to actually want. We look at many of qBittorrent’s key features a little later in this review.
The qBittorrent client interface
qBittorrent uses a very 'classic” BitTorrent interface. This means that anyone familiar with mainstream torrent clients such as Vuze or uTorrent (especially Windows users) will feel instantly at home with it.
The interface may look rather old-fashioned and clunky, though, to Mac and Linux users used to the svelte aesthetics of Transmission.
As usual with BitTorrent clients, you can keep track of things like trackers, peers (other people downloading the same files) and HTTP sources.
The above screenshot, which shows the IP address of all peers, illustrates perfectly why you need a VPN to protect your privacy when torrenting!
BitTorrent allows you to select individual files from within a torrent or Magnet Link to download. Although a common feature among torrent clients, it is not universal.
The Options menus are easy to use and provide access to all the settings most downloaders could ever hope for.
And the Advanced options menu lets serious torrent-heads fiddle with all manner of arcane parameters!
qBittorrent is easy to use even for torrent newbies and presents all information in a clear and accessible manner. It won’t win any UX design awards, but when you just want to get the job done that may be no bad thing.
Key features in detail
Lightweight
The 64-bit Windows download weighs in at just 21.98 MB, the Mac download at 18.57 MB, and Linux at 7.1 MB. In 64-bit Windows, qBittorrent has a total install size of 133MB.
Below is a comparison between the 64-bit Windows 10 system resources used BitTorrent and Vuze when downloading the same file.
Note that resource use fluctuates somewhat, so this is not a scientific test. It does fairly accurately reflect, however, the kinds of figures we observed.
Torrent search engine
You can search for torrents directly from within the qBittorrent client by installing search engine plugins. Plugins for over 30 public torrent sites are available, including popular sites such as 1337x and Demonoid.
Of course, searching from within qBittorrent means that you miss out on the comments and user ratings found if you visit many websites directly. It is also worth noting that the search engine feature requires installing Python. This is not a major hardship, but may put some people off.
RSS feed support
Instead of regularly checking your favorite torrent site to see if the latest episodes of your must-watch TV shows are available yet, you can subscribe to them via RSS. qBittorrent will then automatically download them for you when they become available.
qBittorrent allows you to fine-tune your RSS feeds using a selection of user-defined rules.
BitTorrent Extensions
Magnet links, DHT and PEX replace traditional torrent trackers and remove the need to download .torrent files. Championed by The Pirate Bay, these technologies are becoming increasingly common, so it is good that they are supported by qBittorrent. A good explanation of what they are how they work together is available here.
The private torrents feature allows you to share files only among selected friends, while BitTorrent protocol encryption attempts to make traffic harder to identify by ISPs. Unfortunately, deep packet inspection techniques can be used to identify the obfuscated protocol with over 96% accuracy. If you don’t use a VPN it is probably better than nothing. But really... just use a VPN.
Remote control through web user interface
You can control and manage your qBittorrent downloads remotely via a web interface or via the qBittorrent Controller and qBittorrent Controller Pro apps for Android.
The web interface looks very similar to that of the software client, and allows you to do pretty much everything you can in the client. Just remember that files are downloaded to the location of your qBittorrent client, not the device you are running the web interface (or Controller app) on.
If using a VPN to protect yourself while downloading (as you should!), you will need to setup port forwarding on the client device in order to access the qBittorrent client from the internet.
Sequential downloading
qBitTorrent usually downloads torrent pieces in random order. This is the most efficient way to download torrents, as pieces are downloaded in whichever order they become available. The problem with this is that you cannot watch video files until the entire file has finished downloading.
Sequential downloading forces the client to download the pieces in… umm... sequential order. This allows you to start watching a video file while it is still downloading. This means qBittorrent to stream content very much like Popcorn Time!
Although this is very cool, there are strong arguments that sequential downloading is not good for the BitTorrent ecosystem. It is, therefore, good netiquette to only use sequential downloading for video files, and only when you actually plan to watch them immediately.
qBittorrent helps enforce this by requiring you to manually enable the feature for each file (right-click torrent -> Download in sequential order).
Bandwidth scheduler
Torrenting uses up bandwidth, which slows down the internet not just on the device you are torrenting on, but all devices using the same internet connection. Upload rates, in particular, can have a big impact for many users because ISPs provide much lower upload bandwidth than download bandwidth.
As with most torrent clients, qBittorrent allows you to set upload and download bandwidth limits. A neat trick, however, is that you can set alternative limits for a scheduled time.
This means you can, for example, torrent at full speed while everyone in your house is asleep but limit qBittorrent’s bandwidth use during the day so it does not affect their internet speeds when awake.
IP Filtering
This feature is most often used to block IP addresses known to belong to copyright enforcement bodies and similar. You can add IP’s manually, but most people download pre-compiled blocklists such as these ones.
This does effectively the same thing as using the popular PeerGuardian program. It does provide some protection against infringement organizations, but can only be effective against IPs known to belong to such bodies. Using a VPN provides much greater protection and makes this feature redundant.
UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support
These technologies aim to automate port forwarding through a router’s NAT firewall, and work seamlessly with most modern routers.
They are not useful for port forwarding through a VPN server’s NAT firewall, however, and should be disabled when doing so. This is because, if enabled, they may try to route connections through your router rather through the VPN interface. This may result in your real IP address being exposed, even when using a VPN.
Torrent creation tool
qBitTorrent allows you to create and seed your own torrents. Once a .torrent file is created it can be seeded to the wider BitTorrent network via DHT, or can be privately shared with friends only.
Bind qBittorrent to a VPN interface
One of the best features of qBittorrent is that you can you can bind it to your VPN interface. This prevents qBittorrent from downloading or uploading anything outside your VPN connection. This means that if your VPN connection drops (or you forget to turn it on), you will stay safe.
The instructions below are for Windows, but the process is very similar for MacOS and Linux. They also assume that you are using OpenVPN because… well… why wouldn’t you?
Ensure your VPN is running, then click Start and type cmd. Select Command Prompt and at the command prompt type: ipconfig/all. Look through the list of your internet adaptors until you see one that says 'TAP-Windows Adapter.” Make a note of the adapter name this appears under. In the example below, it is 'Ethernet.”
Start qBittorrent and go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced. Under 'Network Interface” select the name of the adapter you made a note of in Step 1. Restart qBittorrent.
Torrents will now only download and upload when the VPN is running.
Other platforms
qBitTorrent is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OS/2. Minor UI differences aside, it is identical on all platforms.
qBittorrent for macOS
qBittorrent for Linux running on Ubuntu).
There are no mobile qBittorrent mobile client apps, although, as already mentioned, there is a qBittorrent Controller app for Android which comes in both Free and Pro (USD $2.49) versions. And, of course, you can remote control the client from any web interface.
Support
qBittorrent is a non-commercial project developed by volunteers. As such, you won’t find any 24/7 live chat support desks! There is, however, an extensive FAQ, and a Wiki that provides documentation on all of qBittorrent’s features.
While this appears to be quite comprehensive, it does little in the way of hand-holding. The information is there, but it helps to understand how the BitTorrent protocol works to make full use of it. On the plus side, though, the documentation is available in whopping 70+ languages making it accessible to people everywhere.
There are also official forums where you can ask questions and seek assistance. These are fairly active, although not every question posted receives a reply.
Newbies to torrenting may therefore still find themselves a bit lost getting to grips with everything, but fortunately, there are many qBittorent setup guides on YouTube to take up the slack.
Criticisms
It must be said that there is not an awful lot negative to say about qBittorrent . We did experience some torrents not automatically starting when first added to the Windows client, but this may have been an issue with our setup.
We did not experience this problem in macOS or Linux, and the latest Windows version update appears to have resolved the issue anyway.
It is possible to find reports on the internet of stability problems with qBittorrent. These include reports of torrents freezing indefinitely, and timestamp and file corruptions occurring when large numbers of torrents are added (between 300 and 1000).
Many such reports are quite old, however, and we have never experienced any problems in this regard (this reviewer has used qBittorrent as his personal torrent client for over a year now, although has never tried adding 300+ torrents at once!).
The user interface is definitely 'classic,” which may be an issue for some. But then again, if it isn’t broken, then why fix it? Using a classic BitTorrent interface also makes it much easier to migrate to and from other clients.
Conclusion
We liked
- 100% free and open source (FOSS)
- Lightweight
- But still very fully featured
- Can bind to the VPN interface
- Remote control through web user interface or Android app
- Sequential downloading (allows you to stream video files)
- Documentation is 70+ languages
We weren’t so sure about
- Occasional reports of instability and other bugs (which may have been fixed by now)
- Support options could be more newbie friendly
We hated
- Hate is a strong word for anything this good and... this free, isn’t it?
qBittorrent looks much like every other classic BitTorrent client and does nothing that is truly unique. It does, however, do everything you might realistically want a BitTorrent client to do in a lightweight and easy-to-use FOSS package.
For our money (or not, as its 100% free!), qBittorrent is one of the (if not the) best BitTorrent clients out there.
- Fastest VPN we test
- Servers in 94 countries
- Unblocks Netflix, iPlayer and more
The fastest VPN we test, unblocks everything, with amazing service all round
Large brand with very good value, and a budget price
Longtime top ranked VPN, with great price and speeds
One of the largest VPNs, voted best VPN by Reddit
If you want a simple, fast BitTorrent client with no ads, qBitTorrent may offer the right solution. It’s a completely free, open-source program that delivers a clean torrenting experience.
While it provides a simple and clean way of downloading files, it may not appeal to everyone. To determine if qBitTorrent meets your needs, you should check its features, advantages, and disadvantages.
qBitTorrent Features
qBitTorrent is based on the Qt toolkit and runs on all major platforms. As an open-source program developed by volunteers, it is completely free to use, without any paid versions. However, if you like the software, you can always donate to the developers.
The main features of this torrent client include:
- Simple, lightweight user interface
- No advertisements
- RSS feed support
- Built-in search engine
- Supports search engine plugins
- Remote torrent management
- Bandwidth scheduler
- Torrent creation tool
The GUI looks almost identical to uTorrent. While the style is slightly different, both options include a sidebar with a quick menu. Another similarity is the simplified layout that makes it easier to check the progress of your torrenting activity.
The similarities between the two programs is not a coincidence. The developers of qBitTorrent set out to make an open-source alternative to uTorrent after the program started including advertisements.
qBitTorrent has no advertisements. Open-source programs do not need ads. Volunteers design, test, and fix this software in their spare time.
The software also includes quite a few useful features, including the ability to add an RSS feed. With RSS feed support, you can automatically download torrents added to the feed.
User Experience
The simplified user experience is one of the top benefits of using qBitTorrent. As an open-source torrent client, it does not include any pesky advertisements.
Requirements
You simply receive a clean, streamlined user interface. The layout resembles uTorrent. A sidebar on the left contains a quick menu while the top bar includes a search bar.
The Built-in Search Engine
This software also features a built-in search engine. However, to increase the functionality of the search feature, you need to find and install plugins.
Most of them are search engine plugins and you can download and install them for free. You currently have over three dozen user-created search engine plugins. They allow you to use the built-in search engine to search for files on popular torrenting sites. In other words, the search plugins allow you to look for torrents within qBitTorrent, without visiting pirate sites, which ISPs frequently track.
Cached
This offers extra security, as you avoid the need to visit torrent sites with a bad reputation. Your ISP may even throttle your bandwidth if you decide to visit this type of sites.
Capping the Bandwidth
As with most BitTorrent programs, qBitTorrent allows you to cap the download and upload speeds of your torrents. You may want to cap the speeds to avoid using all your available bandwidth. That way, you will be able to do other things with a decent speed, such as browsing the Internet.
While you can cap the speeds globally, you also have the option to schedule the bandwidth caps. For example, you can limit the download speeds during the day and allow unlimited downloading at night.
Remote Torrent Management
If you plan to download large files, you may occasionally want to reprioritize your download list or adjust the bandwidth caps. With qBitTorrent, you can perform these tasks remotely through any browser.
You just need to enable the web user interface in the options menu. You can also select a port or use the default 8080. After enabling this option, you can access the GUI through your browser.
This is useful when running the torrent software on a desktop computer. With the remote management, you can check in from other devices.
Is qBitTorrent Safe to Use?
Yes, qBitTorrent is a safe program. If you download it from a trusted source, you should not need to worry about accidentally downloading malicious software.
BitTorrent
You also do not need to worry about accidentally installing other software when installing qBitTorrent. The installer file does not try to trick you into installing additional programs.
As we always recommend, make sure that you use a VPN to download torrents anonymously. Without a good VPN software, your ISP and anyone else watching can see what you are downloading. Here are a few suggestions of good VPN providers:
NordVPN
The best all-round VPN
ExpressVPN
One of the fastest VPNs
SurfShark
A great low-cost VPN
qBitTorrent is Lightweight and Simple
With qBitTorrent, you get a lightweight program without advertisements. The software has limited features and customization settings to ensure that the program has a minimal footprint. However, you still get the basic features that you need from a BitTorrent client.
One of the best features is the available plugins. You can choose from dozens of search engine plugins that you can easily add to the software. Thanks to these plugins, you don’t even have to leave the software to search for torrent files.
Overall, qBitTorrent has one of the simplest interfaces. Even if you have never used a BitTorrent program before, you should have no problem figuring out how to add torrent files or magnet links. If you enjoy the lightweight and simple design of uTorrent, but dislike the advertisements, try using qBitTorrent.