Bittorrent Surf Beta: download torrents with Firefox or Chrome
A first alpha version of Bittorrent Surf was released in January as an extension for the Google Chrome web browser by Bittorrent Inc.
Surf integrated a program into the web browser allowing users to download torrents right from within the browser. While that is nothing new for users of the Opera web browser, it certainly had its appeal for some Chrome user who wanted a simple option to download torrents to their system.
The main idea behind Surf is to provide users with an easy to use program to download torrent files. While it is possible to use dedicated clients such as qBittorrent or uTorrent for all torrent downloading needs, Surf promised torrent downloading without having to worry about configuring software.
Update: Bittorrent Surf is no longer available. Comparable extensions that download torrent files from within Chrome or Firefox are not available. While you find plenty of Torrent search extensions, none integrates the downloading in the browser. We suggest you use qBittorrent to download torrents as it offers great functionality but should work out of the box.
Bittorrent Surf
Bittorrent Inc has released the Surf Beta extension today, and the biggest change introduced in this beta version is support for the Firefox web browser. So, Surf is now available to Firefox and Chrome users.
Surf adds a single icon to the browser's address bar that you can click on to manage your current downloads and search for new downloads using one of the three search engines - Google, Bing or Yahoo - and various sites that are automatically integrated into Surf such as Archive.org.
Each torrent result is listed with its name, location, size, health and download link. So, all it takes is a single click to download any of the torrents. Downloads are then displayed underneath the results listing. Here you see the time remaining before the torrent is downloaded to your system, and have options to pause or cancel the download. You may also want to click on the options link displayed here to modify a couple of preferences.
While you cannot modify the upload or download bandwidth assigned to Surf, you can at least change the sharing percentage for files you download, configure the download folder for complete downloads, and associate Surf with torrent files and magnet links. If you want to stop seeding a file after download, remove it from the list of files that you have downloaded.
Surf has another interesting feature. You can add or remove search sites from the extension. Just click on the search settings button to manage the list of search engines currently supported by Surf. You can turn each engine on or off individually, and add new sites with a click on the add site from url button. Another option to add sites is to visit a torrent indexing site to add it to Surf by clicking on the Surf icon and selecting to add the site to the list of search providers.
Bittorrent Surf is not really something for users who are already using a client to download torrents. It is simply not flexible enough in regards to the customizations that you can make to the program. New and inexperienced users may enjoy the ease of use the program, but many Bittorrent clients offer a similar experience as well but with the added benefit that you can make lots of modifications to the application if you want to or need to.
Here is a short demo video of Surf created by Bittorrent Inc.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.