Only download the BitTorrent client from the BitTorrent website. There are other torrent clients available, but the one called BitTorrent should only be downloaded from the developers.

BitTorrent will attempt to give you free music along with some adware during the installation process. Make sure that these are disabled before continuing with the installation (unless you want them).

Click the Directories option. This page will allow you to set where new downloads will be placed. You can also have downloads move to a different folder after the download is finished. Click the Bandwidth option. You will be able to set the maximum limits for uploading and downloading, which is useful if you have a data cap. Setting these to “0” will make transfers happen at the maximum speed your connection allows. Click the Queuing option. You can set how many different torrent files can upload and download at once. This setting can help you focus on one download at a time, or download many files at once. You can also set your seeding goals, which dictates how long the file is shared for.

Public trackers are available to anyone. These are the sites you will find when doing a web search for torrent trackers. Because of their public nature, many torrents are tracked by copyright holders, and downloading copyright protected files, commercial software, etc. can result in action from your internet service provider. Private trackers require invites. These sites are not accessible until you have been invited by another member. They often have requirements such as payment for access, maintaining a ratio of downloaded to uploaded data / titles, etc. . Private trackers are much less likely to result in cease and desist letters from copyright holders.

Use popular shorthand for finding the file you want. For example: if you want the third episode from the fifth season of “Law and Order” in an HD format, search for: “Law and Order s05e03 720p” or “Law and Order s05e03 1080p”.

Most torrent sites allow you to sort search results by the number of seeders. Look for files with a large number of seeders. Not only will you download it faster, but it is less likely that the file is fake or infected with a virus. The number of leechers will affect your download speed as well. A leecher is a user that is downloading, but is not currently seeding. A leecher becomes a seeder when the full file has been downloaded. If there are significantly more leechers than seeders, the amount of bandwidth you receive will be lower, resulting in slower downloads.

On the flipside, downloading a larger file can take significantly longer depending on your connection. Read as many comments as possible to determine if other users feel that the quality of the file is good and worth your time. Some trackers have a rating system which allows users to vote on if the file is good or not.

It can take some time to connect to seeders, especially if you have a poor connection or are downloading a weak torrent. You can monitor your downloads in the main window of BitTorrent. Each file will have a progress bar next to it.

VLC Player is a free, open-source media player that can play virtually any media file that you download. It is highly recommended if you are downloading lots of different video files. ISO files are disc images, and either need to be burned or mounted in a virtual drive in order to run them. These can be direct copies of discs or packages of folders. If you want to play the media file on another device, you may need to convert it into a format that will work on that device.

Scan every file that you download for viruses. Try to download files that have been released by trusted sources in the community. Always check comments and ratings to see if anyone else experienced virus attacks with the torrent.

Seeding is what keeps a torrent community alive. Without seeders, no one can download the files.

Running a torrent client in the background should not have a large effect on web browsing or word processing. More intensive applications such as streaming video and playing games may benefit from exiting the torrent application first.