Guns don’t share illegal files. People share illegal files. Or, wait, how does it go again? What I mean to say is, BitTorrent has a bad reputation for its piracy potential, but it shouldn’t. BitTorrent is a tool that allows people to share and receive files4 Things You Didn't Know About BitTorrent4 Things You Didn't Know About BitTorrentWhat do you think of when you hear the word “BitTorrent”? It probably depends on who you are. If you're an average Internet user, you think of free stuff. If you’re the president of a..Read More with other people and there are legal uses for BitTorrent8 Legal Uses for BitTorrent: You'd Be Surprised8 Legal Uses for BitTorrent: You'd Be SurprisedLike HTTP, which your browser uses to communicate with websites, BitTorrent is just a protocol. You could use your browser to download pirated content, just as you could use a BitTorrent client to download pirated..Read More unrelated to downloading illegal files.
Torrenting is so popular that there are dozens of great clients out there, but many of them are packed with bloat and extra features that the average user will never use. What if you want a clean, simple, and easy client instead?
Sometimes you want to pop open your torrenting client and download a range of items as soon as possible. Maybe you want to do this on an old computer that rattles and whines with every spin of the hard drive. Maybe you just don’t care for all the bells and whistles. A lightweight BitTorrent client is exactly what you’re looking for, and thankfully there are several good ones from which you can choose. Here are the ones I’d recommend.
Note: If you’re a complete newbie to the concept of torrenting, fear not. We have a fantastic beginner’s guide to BitTorrent written by our very own Saikat and it’ll get you started off on the right foot.
A lightweight BitTorrent client is exactly what you’re looking for, and thankfully there are several good ones from which you can choose. Here are the ones I’d recommend. Note: If you’re a complete newbie to the concept of torrenting, fear not. When you locate a torrent file from a torrent website, you'll need a free torrent client to download files over the BitTorrent network. There are several kinds of free torrent clients. Some torrent clients have more features than others and some run from a website, meaning you don't need to install any software.
Tixati [Windows, Linux]
As of right now, Tixati is my BitTorrent client of choice. I’ll admit that it’s not the most beautiful client around – frankly speaking, it’s actually quite ugly – but it certainly gets the job done without hogging too many resources. Just look at the screenshot above and you’ll get a sense of what Tixati is all about: sharing files! You’ll find no built-in media managers, social networking, or web browsing here.
With regard to performance, I’m impressed. I don’t know if it’s all in my head or what, but my own experience is that Tixati’s speeds are faster than other competitive torrenting clients. When prioritizing files, they do indeed download much faster than files with low priority. Perhaps it has something to do with Tixati’s special algorithms for efficient peer selection. And best of all? No spyware, no malware, and built-in encryption for improved security.
Hadouken [Windows]
Hadouken is one of the more recent creations in the realm of BitTorrent clients. The thing that separates Hadouken from pretty much every other client is that it runs as a headless Windows service, meaning that it doesn’t have an actual program interface that shows up in the taskbar or the system tray. In fact, the only way to use Hadouken is to install it, then interact using its Web-based interface.
The cool thing is that the Web-based interface is actually based on uTorrent’s Web UI, which means Hadouken’s interface will be familiar to a lot of you. On top of that, Hadouken has a powerful plugin system that can be used to implement a whole slew of features – sending emails, unpacking files, mounting images, etc. – at your whim.
Once Hadouken is installed, you need to go to your browser and type in the following to access the Web-based interface:
URL: http://localhost:8080
Username: hdkn
Password: hdkn
MiniGet [Windows]
At first glance, MiniGet doesn’t look like anything spectacular. There’s no real eye candy and it looks about as barebones as it gets when it comes to torrenting clients. Well, that’s what we’re looking for, right? Like its name implies, MiniGet is all about being as small as possible while still providing power and efficiency in file sharing, and it accomplishes this by throwing out ALL features that aren’t absolutely essential.
MiniGet can handle the HTTP, FTP, and BitTorrent protocols. It can handle Magnet links, DHT, web seeds, as well as NAT traversals (also known as NAT punchthrough). And, of course, it can pause and resume downloads. Those are the core features deemed necessary by MiniGet. You won’t find much more, but at least it results in a tiny CPU and RAM footprint.
qBittorrent [Windows, Mac, Linux]
Ever since µTorrent sold out and went down the drain, qBittorrent was considered to be its replacement. There are a lot of similarities between the two, namely that they’re both simple, straightforward, and lightweight (this is before µTorrent began to bloat up). This is no surprise since the creator of qBittorrent originally intended qBittorrent to be the µTorrent for Linux as there were no good alternatives at the time.
qBittorrent handles all of the core features you’d expect in a torrenting client – encryption, priorities, IPv6, etc. – as well as some neat advanced options, such as sequential downloading and remote control of the client through a Web-based interface. All this comes wrapped up in a package that’s lightweight and easy on the resources, which is why qBittorrent remains as one of the best torrenting clients ever.
Conclusion
Sometimes you need a big all-in-one torrenting solution, and there are plenty of options out there if that’s the case, but when you need little more than the core functionality of a client, the ones listed here will serve you well if you ask me. And if none of these fulfill your torrenting needs, you could always check out these lesser-known but still effective BitTorrent clients6 Lesser Known BitTorrent Clients That You May Not Know About [Windows]6 Lesser Known BitTorrent Clients That You May Not Know About [Windows]If you know about BitTorrent, then you’ve likely already heard about the big name programs - uTorrent, Vuze/Azureus, BitComet, BitTornado, etc. They’re so well-known in fact, that they don’t really need any more publicity -..Read More.
Which BitTorrent clients do you use when you want something lightweight and easy on the resources? Are there any that I missed? Please share them with us in the comments!
Image Credits: Feather Via Flickr
While you have a few choices of BitTorrent client on Windows, uTorrent is hands down the best we've ever used: it's feature-filled, very lightweight, and completely free.
Note: If you don't know much about BitTorrent and want to learn, check out our beginner's guide to BitTorrent.
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A beginner's guide to BitTorrent
Click to viewDespite the fact that BitTorrent has been around for a good 6 years now, the lightning …
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µTorrent
Platform: Windows, Mac OS X
Price: Free Download Page Features
Where It Excels
uTorrent does something few other apps can: it's incredibly feature-filled, while staying pretty simple and lightweight. It's perfect for novice and expert users alike, and you can tweak uTorrent to fit nearly any download routine. You can search directly on uTorrent or from your favorite torrent site, add RSS feeds for automatic downloading, or even share files with a simple drag and drop. uTorrent's automatic bandwidth management feature is also great, though if you prefer, you can run it on a schedule, so it uses more bandwidth at night (when you aren't using the computer) and less during the day. The ability to stream audio and video as it downloads is also a killer feature.
If you want to know why it's our pick, just open its preferences box—the insane number of checkboxes shows just how configurable uTorrent really is.
Where It Falls Short
There's very little wrong with uTorrent. If you are a very advanced user, you might prefer something like Vuze, but for the vast majority of users, uTorrent has all the features they could ever need.
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uTorrent is, however, owned by BitTorrent, meaning it's closed-source, contains ads, and comes bundled with crapware. That said, you can remove the ads and avoid the crapware, but if you're opposed to such things on principle, you might want to look elsewhere.
How to Disable Ads in uTorrent
uTorrent is a great app, but it can be annoying to have ads on your desktop apps. Fortunately,…
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The Competition
The closest competition uTorrent has is qBittorrent, which aims to be an open source alternative. The two are quite similar, but uTorrent still has qBittorrent beat on sheer number of options. However, if uTorrent's ads, crapware, and genearl proprietary nature leave a bad taste in your mouth, qBittorrent is a fantastic alternative.
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Lightweight Torrent Client Windows Open Source
You can also download an older version of uTorrent, before it got bought by BitTorrent, at sites like FileHippo. Version 2.2.1 was the last version before the acquisition, though it is banned on some trackers these days.
If you're looking for something simple (and cross-platform), Deluge is another popular option. It doesn't measure up to the others in terms of features, and it isn't pretty, but it's got a pretty nice plugin system and an interface very similar to uTorrent's.
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Vuze is a popular client for the more advanced crowd, offering more features than you'd ever know what to do with—which would be great, if it didn't make the app so much slower. If you want to tweak the inner workings of BitTorrent, or stream movies from BitTorrent to your TV, Vuze is worth checking out, but be prepared for a much heftier program than uTorrent.
Best Torrent Client Windows
Those are far from the only BitTorrent clients on Windows, but these days, the above choices should appeal to nearly any user looking to download large files. Do you have a favorite that we didn't mention? Share it with us in the comments.
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Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
Torrent Downloader For Windows 10
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