µTorrent,
or uTorrent (see pronunciation) is a freeware, ad-supported, proprietary BitTorrent client owned and developed by BitTorrent, Inc.
With over 100 million users it is
the most widely used BitTorrent client outside China; globally only behind Xunlei. The "µ"
(Greek letter "mu") in its name
comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to
use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to
larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. The program has received
consistently good reviews for its feature set, performance, stability, and
support for older hardware and versions of Windows.
The
program has been in active development since its first release in 2005.
Although originally developed by Ludvig Strigeus, since December 7, 2006, the
code is owned and maintained by BitTorrent, Inc. The code has also been employed by
BitTorrent, Inc. as the basis for version 6.0 and above of the BitTorrent client,
a re-branded version of µTorrent. All versions are written in C++.
Early
development
Out of
general discontent with bloatware,
Serge Paquet suggested to Ludvig Strigeus that he should make a smaller and more
efficient BitTorrent client. Strigeus began to conceptualize the plans for the
program's development, which, at the time, did not include making the client
feature-rich. After initially working on it for about a month during the last
quarter of 2004 (the first build is dated October 17, 2004), mostly during his
free time before and after work, Strigeus ceased coding µTorrent for a year. He
resumed work on September 15, 2005, and three days later, the first public
release (version 1.1 beta) was made available as freeware,
and began generating feedback.
PeerFactor SARL
On
March 4, 2006, PeerFactor SARL announced the signing of a six-month contract
with Strigeus for the development of "new content distribution
applications on the Web." PeerFactor SARL is a relatively new company
formed by former employees of PeerFactor, which was a subsidiary of the French
anti-piracy organization Retspan.
Ludde
stated that his coding for PeerFactor SARL was to use his expertise at
optimization of the BitTorrent protocol to
create a .dll which
PeerFactor SARL intended to use as part of a distribution platform for files in
a corporate setting. At the time there was some speculation that
μTorrent may have been modified to spy on users on Peerfactor's behalf, however to date (even following
μTorrent's acquisition by BitTorrent, Inc.) no evidence has been produced to
support these allegations.
Ownership change
On
December 7, 2006, µTorrent was purchased by BitTorrent, Inc., as it was announced on their
official forum.
On
September 18, 2007, BitTorrent 6.0
was released, which is a re-branded version of µTorrent. As a result,
BitTorrent 6 is closed-source
Magnet
Link (URI) Support
Support
for Magnet Links (URIs) was added in version 1.8,
released on August 9, 2008. Magnet Links were designed as an
alternative to traditional tracker torrent files and became popularized when
sites such as The Pirate Bay included native support for the format.
Features
·
Teredo tunneling / IPv6 support
·
Micro Transport Protocol (µTP) preliminary support as of 1.8.2
with full-support added in 2.0
·
UPnP support
for all versions of Windows, without needing Windows XP's
UPnP framework
·
Protocol encryption (PE)
·
Peer exchange (PEX)
with other BitTorrent clients:
·
libtorrent and
clients based on it like Deluge or qBittorrent have full µTorrent PEX support
·
Transmission and clients based on libTransmission
have full µTorrent PEX support
·
KTorrent has full µTorrent PEX support as of
2.1 RC1
·
Vuze,
formerly Azureus, has full support as of version 3.0.4.3
·
RSS ("broadcatching")
·
"Trackerless" BitTorrent support using DHT, compatible with the original BitTorrent
client and BitComet
·
User configurable intelligent disk caching system
·
Full proxy server support
·
HTTPS tracker support
·
Configurable bandwidth scheduler
·
Localized for
67 languages.
·
Initial seeding of
torrents
·
Customizable search bar & user interface design.
·
Configuration settings and temporary files are stored in a
single directory, allowing portable use
·
WebUI: A plugin currently
in beta testing that allows µTorrent running on one
computer to be controlled from another computer, either across the internet or
on a LAN, using aWeb browser
·
A new web user interface, codenamed Falcon, is in development.
It supports encrypted sessions and the ability of going through firewalls
without port forwarding, while being more complete and easier to start using
than its predecessor.
·
Embedded Tracker: a simple tracker designed for
seeding torrents, lacking a web interface or list of hosted torrents. It is not
designed for secure or large-scale application.
·
Quick-resumes interrupted transfers
·
Versions of µTorrent up to 1.8.5 build 17091 can use as little as 14 MB of RAM
running on a 486 processor on Windows 95.
·
Two "easter egg" hidden features in the About
subsection of Help: clicking the µTorrent logo plays a Deep Note-like
sound effect,] and typing the letter "t" starts
a Tetris-like game
called μTris, which in 2008 was
selected as #1 of the "Top 10 Software Easter Eggs" by LifeHacker.
Size
µTorrent
is shipped as a single stand-alone compressed executable file, installed at first run. Recent
versions have included the ability to install themselves on first run. Small
executable size is achieved by avoiding the use of many libraries, notably the C++ standard
library and stream
facilities, and creating substitutes written specifically for the
program. The executable is then compressed to roughly half of its compiled and
linked size using UPX.
Operating
system support
µTorrent is available for Microsoft
Windows, Mac OS X,
and Android. A µTorrent Server is also available for Linux.
The
first test version for Mac OS X, running on Mac OS X 10.5,
was released on 27 November 2008.
On
September 2, 2010, the native Linux version of µTorrent Server was
released. Firon, an administrator of the µTorrent community forum, said that
they had been working on this project for a few months prior to the release as
it was the most requested feature for some time. This release is intended for
users who are seeking a fast command-line interface based BitTorrent client
with a remote web-based management. They also mentioned that a full featured
client with a GUI is a work in progress. He also said: "This is a
native Linux port and is known to work on Ubuntu 9.10+, Debian 5+ and Fedora 12+.
Others may work, but they are not officially supported. Kernel 2.6.13 or newer
required. 64-bit host systems currently have some problems, so 32-bit only for
now. For trackers who whitelist, the user agent is
"uTorrent/300B(build#)(server)". The peerid is identical to the
Windows 3.0 client. They share version numbers because of a common codebase.
Currently
μTorrent supports Windows XP or newer and Mac OS X 10.5 or newer.
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