Crowdsource the Bandwidth

A guide to download torrents with magnet links

Google Drive, Dropbox, and other centralized hosting services present a critical choke point in the process of disseminating digital information. While those services may have a use in sharing small files with a few friends or coworkers, in this age of elite corporate information control, the single best way to quickly and effectively share large files is through the use of torrents. If you have no idea what a torrent is, don't worry, the entire process has been refined for well over a decade resulting in many simple to use apps (AKA clients) available on any platform (Win/Mac/Linux/Android/etc). By sharing files via torrent, you get exponentially faster speeds during times of massive demand, and on top of that, the very nature of how torrents hash the file ensures the data isn't corrupted during transmission. In essence, torrents crowdsource bandwidth and ensure data integrity.

The torrent client I will be using for this guide is Transmission, which is available on Win7 and up, OS X, and Linux.

Q. Torrents sound great. How do I use them?
First, you need the client, which will depend on what type of device you are using. To get the one used in this guide, choose from the list below:

• Click here for Mac OS X
• Click here for Windows 7 and up
• Linux: Search "transmission" in your official repository or build from source.
• Android/iPhone/iPad: search your respective app store for "torrent client". Even if Transmission is not listed, this guide will still likely help.
• Any device not listed may be found here.

Now find and run the file you just downloaded, and follow prompts for installation.

Q. Okay, I got the client installed, now what?
Now you're ready to download torrents using magnet links. What a magnet link does isn't as important as how to recognize and use one for our purposes here. Magnet links always start with the prefix "magnet:", and following that prefix is a long string of characters that directs your client to the right file.

Here is an example of a magnet link to a very small torrent I made specifically for those following this guide:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:bb6248598c0869a275161a906b7c59e99c676a10&dn=Crowdsource%20the%20Bandwidth&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers

Q. Now I know what a magnet link looks like, what do I do with it?
If you use Firefox:
Copy/paste the magnet link in the url field in a New Tab on the Firefox browser. That will automatically open Transmission (or your default torrent client), and will bring you straight to the Torrent Options Dialogue (more on that below).
If you don't use Firefox:
Open Transmission. Select File>Open URL. Copy and paste the above example magnet link in the dialogue box that pops up. Click Open to continue to the Torrent Options Dialogue.
Here is a simple video showing this step:

Torrent Options Dialogue

Here you can select the Destination Folder you wish to store the data you are downloading. Your Download folder will be selected by default. After you're happy with the location of the incoming file, click Open. This will start the download of your torrent.

After your download is completed, you can access it by navigating to folder specified in the Torrent Options Dialogue, or right-click the torrent and select "Open Folder". You may now either leave Transmission open to continue sharing (seeding)to others, close Transmission and seeding will continue when you open Transmission again, or right-click the torrent and select "Remove", and you won't share the file/s any longer.

Now you know how to get files via torrent with a magnet link, follow this link if you want learn how to make a magnet link to share a file or folder with others.