qBittorrent

qBittorrent is a cross-platform free and open-source BitTorrent client written in native C++. It relies on Boost, OpenSSL, zlib, Qt 6 toolkit and the libtorrent-rasterbar library (for the torrent back-end), with an optional search engine written in Python.^[8][9]

qBittorrent

A screenshot of qBittorrent v4.3.9 running on Arch Linux
Original author(s)	Christophe Dumez^[1]
Developer(s)	Sledgehammer999, Chocobo1, glassez, pmzqla and others^[2]
Initial release	May 16, 2006; 17 years ago (2006-05-16)^[3]
Stable release	4.6.4^[4]  / 23 March 2024; 36 days ago (23 March 2024)
Repository	github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent
Written in	C++ (Qt),^[5] Python
Operating system	Cross-platform: FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, OS/2, Windows
Platform	ARM, x86, x64
Available in	≈70 languages^[6]
List of languages Default UI: English ≥ 99% translated: Basque, Catalan, Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Galician, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian ≥ 50% translated: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Chinese (Hong Kong), Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian (Latvia), Malay (Malaysia), Norwegian Bokmål, Occitan (post 1500), Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish ≥ 10% translated: Croatian, Esperanto, Arabic, Armenian, English (Australia), English (United Kingdom), Georgian, Hindi (India), Icelandic, Latgalian, Uzbek (Latin), Vietnamese
Type	BitTorrent client
License	GPLv3+^[7] with OpenSSL linking exception
Website	www.qbittorrent.org

History

 

QBittorent Mascot

qBittorrent was originally developed in March 2006 by Christophe Dumez,^[1] from the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM).

It is currently developed by contributors worldwide and is funded through donations,^[10] led by Sledgehammer999 from Greece, who became project maintainer in June 2013.^[11]

Along with the 4.0.0 release a new logo for the project was unveiled.^[12][13]

In February 2023, a security vulnerability affecting versions 4.5.0 and 4.5.1 was discovered in the Web UI running on Windows systems. This vulnerability enabled unauthenticated access to all files on the host computer via a path traversal bug.^[14] This issue has been patched in version 4.5.2, which was released to the public on February 23, 2023.^[15]

Features

Some of the features present in qBittorrent include:

• Bandwidth scheduler
• Bind all traffic to a specific interface
• Control over torrents, trackers and peers (torrents queueing and prioritizing and torrent content selection and prioritizing)
• DHT, PEX, encrypted connections, LPD, UPnP, NAT-PMP port forwarding support, µTP, magnet links, private torrents, v4.6.0 added (experimental) I2P support^[15]
• IP filtering: file types eMule dat or PeerGuardian
• IPv6 support
• Integrated RSS feed reader (with advanced download filters) and downloader
• Integrated torrent search engine (simultaneous search in many torrent search sites and category-specific search requests, such as books, music and software)
• Remote control through a secure web user interface
• Sequential downloading (download in order). Enables "streaming" media files
• Super-seeding option
• Torrent creation tool
• Torrent queuing, filtering and prioritizing
• Unicode support, available in ≈70 languages^[6]

Versions

qBittorrent is cross-platform, available on many operating systems, including: FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, OS/2 (including ArcaOS and eComStation),^[16] Windows.

As of July 2017^[update], SourceForge statistics indicate that the most popular qBittorrent version of all supported platforms, 81% of downloads were for Windows computers.^[17]

As of May 2020^[update], FossHub statistics indicate qBittorrent as the second most downloaded software with over 75 million downloads.^[18]

Packages for different Linux distributions are available, though most are provided through official channels via various distributions.^[15]

qBittorrent Enhanced is a fork of qBittorrent intended for blocking leeching clients such as Xunlei. It is hosted on GitHub.^{[citation needed]}

Reception

In 2012, Ghacks suggested qBittorrent as a great alternative to μTorrent, for those put off by its controversial adware and bundleware changes.^[19]

See also

•  Free and open-source software portal

• Comparison of BitTorrent clients
• List of free and open-source software packages
• Usage share of BitTorrent clients

References

1. "Authors file". qBittorrent.org. from the original on 2019-02-17. Retrieved 2012-08-26.
2. "Contributors to qbittorrent/QBittorrent". GitHub. from the original on 2020-06-21. Retrieved 2019-07-01.
3. "Oldest available changelog". GitHub. from the original on 2019-02-17. Retrieved 2016-02-17.
4. "release-4.6.4". 23 March 2024. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
5. "qBittorrent", Analysis Summary, Ohloh, from the original on 2014-02-25, retrieved 2012-08-23
6. . qBittorrent.org. Archived from the original on 2013-08-14. Retrieved 2012-08-23.
7. "Copying file", qBittorrent.org, from the original on 2019-02-17, retrieved 2012-08-26
8. qbittorrent/qBittorrent, qBittorrent project, 2022-05-22, from the original on 2022-05-22, retrieved 2022-05-22
9. "qBittorrent/CONTRIBUTING.md". GitHub. 13 August 2022. from the original on 22 May 2022. Retrieved 22 May 2022. Make sure you have python installed correctly (remember the search functionality requires a working python installation).
10. "Team members", qBittorrent.org, from the original on 2013-08-19, retrieved 2012-09-25
11. "qBittorrent is under a new maintainer". qBittorrent official forums. from the original on 2019-06-09. Retrieved 2013-06-26.
12. "Change qbittorrent logo. Issue #6467. by sledgehammer999 · Pull Request #6484 · qbittorrent/qBittorrent". GitHub. from the original on 25 May 2021. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
13. "New Icon/Logo Proposal · Issue #6467 · qbittorrent/qBittorrent". GitHub. from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
14. "Web UI - apparent path traversal vulnerability · Issue #18618 · qbittorrent/qBittorrent". GitHub. from the original on 2023-02-28. Retrieved 2023-02-28.
15. "News Releases". www.qbittorrent.org. from the original on 2019-12-13. Retrieved 2023-11-13.
16. "Network / Networking / Internet applications". from the original on 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-09-03.
17. "Download Statistics: All Files". SourceForge. from the original on 2016-10-11. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
18. "FossHub Download Statistics: All Files". FossHub. from the original on 2019-03-01. Retrieved 2019-02-10.
19. Brinkmann, Martin (21 February 2012). "Looking For A uTorrent Alternative? Try qBittorrent". Ghacks. from the original on 10 January 2017. Retrieved 17 December 2014.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to QBittorrent.

• Official website  
• qBittorrent on GitHub
• qBittorrent on FossHub