Best Torrent Clients For Chrome OS
WIth commitment and dedication. Google has turned what was once considered to be a low-end platform geared towards a small and niche market into one of the most complete operating systems around.
It has gotten to a point where you can do with a Chromebook nearly everything else you could do with a Windows or Mac OS machines with a few exceptions of course.
Owning a Chrome OS-powered device means you might at some point want to store files in it and some of the most conventional means work the same way no matter the platform –Transfer from USB capable storage medium, download from the web or torrenting.
Yes! Like on Windows or any other system, torrenting or downloading torrent files works Chromebooks and all you need is a torrent client and a website that archives torrentable content.
What are Torrents And How do They Work?
Using a well-known protocol called BitTorrent, the method allows you to download anything from movies, music, software applications.
The technology uses a peer-to-peer sharing mechanism allowing you to download several parts of the same file from multiple sources. When you initiate a download process, the file you may be trying to download is sliced into segments or pieces and as each peer/node receives a new part of that segment or piece of the file, it becomes a source for others like yourself relieving the original seed from having to send that piece to every computer or user that needs a copy.
There quite some sophistication involved with the process but most of the heavy lifting is done by the BitTorrent client and all you usually have to do is initiate the download process and wait.
BitTorrent Clients for Chromebooks
Before, setting your Chromebook up to download torrents relied heavily on Chrome Extensions. Now, Chrome Extensions are great but they lack stand out features like those found on other platforms. With support for both Linux and Android apps being firmly stationed within the Chrome ecosystem, looking for a torrent client that suits your needs is literally a walk in the park.
To help you decide, here is our recommended list of applications.
JSTorrent
Chrome Extensions aren’t necessarily the best of programs to rely on as daily drivers especially if you are used to full-blown variations on other platforms but there are times when they do what do and do it pretty great.
To have JSTorrent running in your Chromebook, all you need to do is add the extension to your Chrome browser. Additionally, The platform isn’t free but you can test drive it with support for about twenty download instances. If you like the app, you can pay a one time fee of just $2.99.
qBittorrent
qBittorrent, on the other hand, is a torrenting platform native to traditional GNU/Linux. The program is a well-known
Qt-based torrent client that’s cross-platform and open-source and in no doubt requires your system to support Linux (beta). The torrent client also integrates a search function for torrent repositories within the app.
The qBittorent application is ideal for those wanting to run Linux apps atop their Chrome OS-powered system as it is both lightweight and feature-rich.
Put.io
One of the most challenging experiences you will encounter while using a Chromebook is managing the limited local storage. While Chromebooks today come with up to 512GB of internal storage, the majority of Chromebooks in the market at the time of this writing are within the 32gb-64gb category.
However, if you are rocking a Chromebook that comes with a small storage space, you might want to consider using a torrent platform that comes with cloud storage intergration like Put.io.
The platform isn’t free though the base plan offers about 100GB cloud storage and cost about $9.99.
uTorrent
If you are not into paying for torrent services like the ones listed above, you might want to look into an ad-riddle uTorrent client.
Like almost every other torrent client, uTorrent uses the same peer-to-peer file sharing technologies like those found in other clients.
Being a cross-platform software, the program is available as a standalone Android app making it extremely simple to download, install, and use.
Though the application and all its services are offered as a freemium software, you are going to have to deal with ads spontaneously popping every time the program is in use.
BitTorrent
BitTorrent is by far the best client to utilize the BitTorrent protocol and a cousin of the uTorrent client. BitTorrent allows users to search and download torrents using its built-in search box in the main window which opens the BitTorrent torrent search engine page with the search results in the user’s default web browser.
This is quite handy and allows you to quickly look for torrents with a few simple steps and the software also supports multiple parallel downloads.
Conclusion
These are some of the best Torrent clients are I have found to work flawlessly on Chromebooks and you can’t go wrong with any of them. If you have tried any of the programs on the list, please feel free to share your thoughts and experience with us in the comments and we’ll be updating this list with even more options as time goes on.
