ari's guide to bittorrent
tips and trips on how to not get arrested and gangraped in prison for downloading Harold and Kumar Go to White Castlethe client
to download torrents, you need a bittorrent client. there are a ton of good options out there, such as transmission, motrix and qbittorrent. for this guide we'll be using qbittorrent.
download qbittorrent from the provided links here and run the installer. open the app and you should see something like this:
this might look scary but don't fret! i'll explain everything :)
the client pt 2: the vpn
unless you're a masochist who WANTS dmca letters from comcast, you need a vpn. luckily, i have a PIA account lying around :3
download pia and run the installer. afterwards, you should see this screen:
i have the username and password of my account in this paste, the password to the paste is my discord username
thankfully there are no settings you need to change in private internet access! i'd recommend using the server closest to you while you're connected
HOWEVER THIS NEXT STEP IS CRUCIAL!!! DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP OR YOU RISK EXPOSING YOUR REAL IP ADDRESS
go into qbittorrent and click the settings icon, then 'advanced'
you should see a setting called 'network interface', MAKE SURE THIS IS SET TO 'PIA OpenVPN' THIS IS IMPERATIVE
having this set ENSURES all bittorrent traffic goes through the vpn, you must have the vpn on to use qbittorrent or else you risk your personal IP being visible! if they have your ip, they have enough to send you dmca letters
after this, you're ready to find torrents to download! there aren't any other settings you need to change in qbittorrent but if you're interested there is documentation here
the torrents
there are a lot of good places to find torrents to download. here are my favourite public sites:
- 1337x - good site, decent quality, good retention
- Rutracker - good for movies and obscure movies, entire site is russian so use a translator!
- Nyaa - best anime torrenting site
- EZTV - for TV only, decent selection
- ext - has a bit of everything!
now you may be wondering, how do i download the torrent? there are two methods: magnet links and .torrent files
i will be showing how to use magnet links since it's very simple, you just copy the link starting in magnet:
notice the bottom of the screen? simply right click and press copy link!
after that, click the blue magnet icon in qbittorrent! (the leftmost one). the magnet link should automatically paste into the box.
after this, simply click download, and specify the download path! (i have it set to my normal downloads folder). you don't have to change any fancy settings, just click ok, and it should start downloading!
just wait for the torrent to finish downloading...
if your torrent says "stalled" this means there is noone around that has the files on their computer. my advice: find a more seeded torrent!
the more seeders, the better!
after a while, your torrent should be finished downloading. now, since you PROBABLYYYY don't want to leave the torrent seeded (as it uses insane amounts of bandwidth, requires you keep the vpn up, and is probably best suited for external servers), you'll want to stop the torrent.
simply right click the torrent, click 'remove' and remove it without deleting the files.
this is kind of a dick move but who cares :P
finally, check your files, you should have the torrent files on your computer!
if you have any questions or need any help hmu :3