How To Use BitTorrent

Looking for a description of what BitTorrent is or how it works? Thats over here now.

Download and install one of the BitTorrent clients. There are lots of them now, so take your best guess at which one would be best for you and try it. Look at the popularity rating to get an idea of how others like each client (scale of 0 to 100). I usually use Bit Tornado, but many other people seem to like Azureus. Don't worry if your client doesn't create any icons anywhere - not all of them do.

Find a site hosting torrent files. My links page and will give you some sites that keep track of websites hosting torrent files. Remember that I do not endorse copyright infringement, and whatever you download is your business and what you do could have legal implications.

Find a file you want to download. You can either left click on the link as you would any regular link, or right click it, save the .torrent file to your hard drive, find its location and double click on it. Either of these should initiate your client. For those clients with a GUI you can usually add a torrent file within the program as well. The client may ask you where to save the file you are downloading in a pop-up box. A few of them have default locations now and will just start. If you want to resume a download just tell it the same directory as before.

The program will make empty files, then start downloading and filling in the pieces as it goes. Just sit back and wait for it to complete or play a game or get some food or something. The speeds and estimated times for many files fluxuate a great deal, so don't sit there and get hung up on it too much. Some are real fast, some real slow, sometimes you may upload much more than you downloaded when it completes, sometimes not.

Please leave your client open for as long as possible after your download is complete. Do this especially if you did not like your speeds. Try to leave it open at least until you have uploaded as much as you downloaded. If everyone closes it as soon as it is done, it will be slow for other users, and will quickly die out. Do your part and help the community.

Answers to more usage questions now available in the BitTorrent FAQ section. Or if you can't figure out what to do with the file types you have downloaded check the file type guide or the video file guide.