For the majority of torrent users, the popular uTorrent and BitTorrent clients are the only ones that exist. For instance, a large percentage of torrent users don’t even know about other clients such as Transmission, qBittorrent, Deluge, and Vuze, which could potentially be better than the former ones.
Fortunately, there are also innovators swimming in their own blue ocean, without any clear competition. Although innovating torrent technology can be risky, there are promising torrent clients bound to change the entire game and even make the BitTorrent technology more popular. Below are four innovative torrent clients that will likely make history.
- Tribler.
- BiglyBT
- Deluge
- Web Torrent Desktop
Bear in mind that although some of these clients attempt to provide you with features to protect your privacy, there is still no guarantee that a client will hide your torrenting privacy from prying eyes.
Without that extra protection from third-party distributed servers like VPNs, proxies, or seedboxes, there is just no guarantee. Always protect your privacy and enhance your torrenting experience with a seedbox.
- Tribler.
According to a Business Insider post, researchers from the Delft University of Technology created a torrent named Tribler, which they claim “Police can’t take down.”
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Tribler is a torrent client that doesn’t require the user to contact a website (public tracker like ThePirateBay) to get torrent files. With Tribler, it all happens within the client. In addition, the Tribler system is “decentralized,” so users can share files without having to contact a central “tracker server.” To launch this process, Tribler had to use a large seedbox running 24/7.
When you use a standard torrent client, your public IP address is shown within the torrent swarm, so every peer participating (seeding, uploading, or downloading) will get to know your IP. Tribler, on the other hand, uses TOR-inspired onion routing to wrap torrent data with encryption. It is more secure than the traditional torrent sites because it uses a network similar to the TOR anonymous network.
Features:
- A truly decentralized torrent client.
- Impossible to censor or shut down.
- Search and find torrents internally.
- Create and follow channels for hand-selected content.
Verdict. Tribler will likely change the torrent game. The channels are a fantastic option for people wanting to share content without restrictions. Even if the torrent sites shut down as long as users continue to seed the files, the channels will continue to exist.
- BiglyBT
BiglyBT is a young open-source BitTorrent client project. It’s the “open-source fork” from the Vuze/Azureus torrent client. It comes with a massive number of interesting features, so it needs to run on a robust computer with decent Internet bandwidth.
BiglyBT will likely shine out from the rest because it is the first torrent client that fully supports the BitTorrent v2 specification and the hybrid torrents.
Cool Features.
- Swarm Discovery. A window console that recommends other similar torrents to what you are currently downloading.
- Device Support plug-in. Convert downloaded media on the fly to a compatible format with the client’s built-in video conversion tool. You can also stream content to your TVs, game consoles, or streaming boxes.
- Support for BitTorrent v2. The new version of BitTorrent provides a new hash function (SHA-256) to torrents. BitTorrent v2 was created soon as Google announced the first collision of the traditional SHA-1.
- Support for hybrid torrents. Due to the new hash function of BitTorrent v2, new torrent files will need to have their own swarms, separate from v1 torrent swarms. A hybrid torrent is capable of participating in both BitTorrent v1 and v2 swarms.
Verdict: Starting with this feature-rich client around 2017-2018, users noticed that the client was too heavy, loaded with ads, bloatware, and unnecessary features. According to many users, it is too resource-intensive as it uses Java, but this torrent client will soon stand out due to its supportability to BitTorrent v2 and its rich feature set.
- Deluge.
The best way to describe Deluge is, according to Rapidseedbox’s unofficial guide, “Deluge seems like a VW Beetle from the inside, but once you open the hood… you could be looking at a Ferrari engine.”
This torrent client is known to be the king of customization and supportability, as you can turn it to suit your needs and install it anywhere. Deluge is a fully-featured cross-platform BitTorrent client, supported by Windows, macOS, and Linux distributions.
As you begin with Deluge, you’ll notice that there are few options to configure your torrents. The reason for this is that Deluge wants you to customize it with its robust plug-in system. For instance, you can enable plugins like auto-add torrents from specific folders, customizing actions for completed torrents like auto-extraction or labeling.
Features.
- It is open-source, free, and ultra-light.
- No embedded ads.
- Customize its functionality with plugins.
- Encrypt BitTorrent traffic with MSE/PE.
- Supports the basics including DHT, PEX, prioritization, magnet links, proxy config, etc.
Verdict. Since Deluge is customizable and supportable, you can make it “almost” perfect to suit your needs. But still, there are a couple of missing features such as the lack of a built-in search engine and streaming. But still, you can install plugins and optimize them to deal with these imperfections, but this would require more of your time and attention, something that not many people like.
- WebTorrent Desktop
WebTorrent Desktop calls itself “a streaming torrent app,” which is more than just a torrent client. The reason for this is because Web Torrent Desktop supports two key protocols, BitTorrent and Web torrent (WebRTC). So, you can connect to BitTorrent peers but also talk to web torrent pages like instant.io. Supporting WebRTC peers (which not many clients do) increases your swarm for the ability to stream from websites.
This torrent client is supported by Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu Linux.
Features
- Lightweight, fast, and ad-free console.
- Instant playback. Stream video and audio as torrent downloads.
- Stream video to devices with AirPlay, Chromecast, and DLNA
- Supports magnet links and normal torrent files.
- Supports the WebTorrent protocol for connecting to WebRTC peers.
Verdict: The idea of WebTorrent Desktop is innovative but still runs in beta. Another disadvantage is that the client lacks a good amount of customization capabilities. Fortunately, the source is 100% open, and its community is growing substantially.
Final words.There are some elements of the BitTorrent protocol that torrent clients would be able to improve, but there are others that they would never be able to alter. These elements are mainly your computer (resources) and the torrent swarm. This is why, Tribbler when launching, had to use a massive seedbox to host content, as they needed the storage and computational capacity to begin their major decentralization project.
You can do the same. To improve your experience, security, and speed, complement your torrent client with a seedbox. These servers can bring various features to the table that clients still can’t and probably won’t for a long time. For instance, a seedbox integrates streaming with torrenting (Plex+uTorrent, or Kodi+Vuze), improves your sharing ratio while you sleep, provides you with top resources dedicated to torrenting, protects your anonymity, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
