Bittorrent client qBittorrent 4.4.0 released with v2 torrent support

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 8, 2022
Internet
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The developers of qBittorrent, a popular cross-platform Bittorrent client, have released qBittorrent 4.4.0 to the public.

qbittorrent 4.4.0

The new version introduces support for a Qt6 build for Windows 10 and newer, which promises better HiDPI compatibility according to the developers. The qBittorrent 4.4.x release branch could be the last to support Qt5, and that would also mean that it would be the last branch to support Microsoft's Windows 7 and 8 operating systems. Releases will continue until at least Summer 2022.

Windows 10 and 11 users may select to install the Qt5 version until then, or switch to the Qt6 version at any given time.

An AppImage is offered for qBittorrent on Linux. It "uses the latest versions of Qt6, libtorrent, boost, openssl" and is created on Ubuntu 20.04. The developers note that it is not tested well at this point.

Mac OS X builds are not yet available, but scheduled for a release in the coming days.

qBittorrent 4.4.0

The new version of the torrent client includes several new features and improvements. Besides added support for Qt6, qBittorrent 4.4.0 does introduce support for v2 torrents and libtorrent 2.0.x.

The Bittorrent v2 protocol improves the standard by introducing new features to it. Among the changes are that torrents use SHA-256 hashes instead of SHA-1. The new torrent version is not backwards compatible, which means that two different versions of an offering are created when version 1 and version 2 torrent files are downloaded or created. The option to create hybrid torrents is provided, however.

Another option that is introduced is the ability to download files from multiple torrents reliably thanks to unique file hashes.

The introduction of support for v2 torrents guarantees that qBittorrent users won't run into any issues when downloading these new torrent versions.

QBittorrent 4.4.0 includes a new option to set the temp folder per torrent or category, and an option to skip hash checks for monitored folders. Another folder-specific improvement is support for folder-based user interface themes.

Existing installations can be upgraded to the new version as usual. Interested users find the full changelog, listing all new features, improvements and bug fixes here.

Closing Words

Support for Windows 7 and 8 will run out later this year when qBittorrent 4.4.x reaches its end of life. Users on those systems may use the older versions, but these won't receive any more feature updates, bug fixes or security fixes anymore once development jumped to a new version.

Now You: do you use torrent clients? If so which and why that one?

Summary
Bittorrent client qBittorrent 4.4.0 released with v2 torrent support
Article Name
Bittorrent client qBittorrent 4.4.0 released with v2 torrent support
Description
The developers of qBittorrent, a popular cross-platform Bittorrent client, have released qBittorrent 4.4.0 to the public.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Steve99 said on January 15, 2022 at 12:08 am
    Reply

    Never 10, Windows 7 fo eva! On Windows 7 SP1, still running uTorrent 3.3 build 26977 on a highly secured, network isolated, throwaway machine. In 15+ years of downloading (kazza, edonkey2000, et al) (cough, Linux ISO’s of course) never once got hit with malware. Had a few close calls where an exe came over, causing an immediate halt & reimage the drive. Other than that, no issues. That said, will have to check out this qbittorrent. I do have issues with uTorrent every now & then.

  2. Jozsef said on January 12, 2022 at 4:05 pm
    Reply

    This one’s been fine on a fully patched Windows 7 system, at least so far.

  3. TS said on January 11, 2022 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    The usage of hybrid mode was a really well-thought detail, and enables trackers agnosticism regarding protocol version.

  4. Nebkod said on January 10, 2022 at 9:38 pm
    Reply

    Enough cpu and memory consumption, I considered stay in version 4.1.8

  5. valeriy said on January 9, 2022 at 10:55 pm
    Reply

    I don’t use any desktop clients. Only online services, much faster, more bandwidth, no load on the system I work on. I order a job, they do it, I pick up the order and goodbye :)

  6. gmoises said on January 9, 2022 at 9:20 pm
    Reply

    The new release 4.4.0, at least in Windows 10 dropped the option to move files
    – Set Location … no longer appears in the context menu

    1. Mr getdown said on February 4, 2022 at 9:39 pm
      Reply

      It threw me too at first.
      Putting files into categories with the torrent option “auto management” saves time overall.

  7. Anonymous said on January 9, 2022 at 5:42 pm
    Reply

    Qbit 4.4 uses 95% of ram. Rolled back to 4.3.9

  8. Gerard said on January 9, 2022 at 5:15 pm
    Reply

    Users of Ubuntu, or a derivative, may have noticed that v. 4.4.0 is not in the qBittorrent team’s PPA (stable version):

    https://launchpad.net/~qbittorrent-team/+archive/ubuntu/qbittorrent-stable

    It is in this PPA maintained by the qB team (unstable version):

    https://launchpad.net/~qbittorrent-team/+archive/ubuntu/qbittorrent-unstable

  9. JonSnow said on January 9, 2022 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    Transmission on my Ubuntu Laptop works fantastic…..I dislike qBitorrent because of too many unnecessarily options…I prefer a simple Bitorrent client to do what it meant to do not bloated with options one never uses.

  10. Anonymous said on January 9, 2022 at 1:34 pm
    Reply

    Check out Github before updating.
    They messed up badly again.
    Crashes, memory leaks etc.

  11. motang said on January 9, 2022 at 12:51 am
    Reply

    Love qBitorrent. I just can’t decide between that and Ktorrent. They both do what I want them do to. I will give this one a shot soon.

  12. Lorac said on January 8, 2022 at 10:58 pm
    Reply

    Going back to 3.9… This version freezes a lot when selecting an alternate download location and the method of selecting an alternate location is way more cumbersome than 3.9

  13. beemeup5 said on January 8, 2022 at 9:50 pm
    Reply

    I’m still using the 11 year old uTorrent 2.0.4 because a torrent client doesn’t need to be bigger than 300 KB. Also, if any software can work without issue for over 10 years, don’t fix what ain’t broke! People still use MS Office 2010 for similar reasons.

    1. :-) said on January 9, 2022 at 1:39 am
      Reply

      “Don’t fix what ain’t broke”, LMAOOOO.

      Yeah bro keep using outdated software with bugs and vulnerabilities, what a great advice!!

      1. Anonymous said on January 9, 2022 at 3:14 am
        Reply

        Tell us about these mysterious deadly vulnerabilities in uTorrent.

      2. beemeup5 said on January 9, 2022 at 3:11 am
        Reply

        What bugs? I’ve actively used it for over a decade and haven’t encountered any bugs personally. Has it ever occurred to you that not everything NEEDS to be updated because some programs only need to do one simple thing? A 300 KB program has far fewer lines of code than a 28 MB program. The fewer things that can go wrong, the fewer things will go wrong.

        And as far as I know, there was only one potential security vulnerability that was related to the web interface which could be solved by simply disabling the feature. A torrent client basically fetches files using a hash. It’s virtually impossible to “hack” someone from across the internet through their torrent client. Almost all home routers prevent intrusion attempts through the WAN port by default so hackers have to first get the target to download and run some malware beforehand.which is a PEBKAC issue more than a software issue.

      3. Anonymous said on January 10, 2022 at 4:27 am
        Reply

        Updated software is not always more safe, ever heard 1 day vulnerabilities regression? Simpler software has less bug, that’s the truth.

        @beemeup5
        I still use the ancient utorrent too, and I like how small software can do all the things big softwares do. don’t worry about that.

      4. Anonymous said on January 10, 2022 at 8:57 am
        Reply

        Simpler software has less bug, It’s good, but if you like simple software then I prefer proper built software with simple yet advanced functionality more.

      5. Anonymous said on January 9, 2022 at 10:31 am
        Reply

        It’s not only related to bittorrent client but also every software out there, if you think you are good with massively out-dated software which is commonly or regularly maintained, you are not doing “Cyber Hygiene” right, for your safety and even health, you should observe for update, and update.

    2. FanboyKilla said on January 9, 2022 at 12:09 am
      Reply

      Same here except I’m using v2.2.1 which was the last version released before it went to shit!

    3. John Wold said on January 8, 2022 at 10:49 pm
      Reply

      I like qbittorrent, because I can select the files I want to download. Sometimes they include multiple versions of the same files and I don’t need them all.

      1. beemeup5 said on January 9, 2022 at 3:28 am
        Reply

        @John Wold

        Pretty much all torrent clients can do this if you load a torrent file. It’s slightly different for magnet links though, since magnets only tell the client which swarm to connect to, which then allows it to torrent the torrent file (yes, really) where it then obtains the file table where you can select which files to download or exclude. Some clients start downloading automatically when a torrent is loaded but there is almost always a setting to change this somewhere.

      2. Anonymous said on January 9, 2022 at 12:24 am
        Reply

        @John
        The 11 year old uTorrent 2.0.4 can do it too

      3. FanboyKilla said on January 9, 2022 at 12:07 am
        Reply

        Wow no way really? That would be so cool if uTorrent had that same feature! Oh wait, IT DOES! LMAO!

        Preferences -> UI Settings -> (When Adding Torrents) Show a window that displays the files inside the torrent

  14. Anonymous said on January 8, 2022 at 8:21 pm
    Reply

    RIP qBittorrent. Time to move to alternatives on Windows 7.

  15. walter said on January 8, 2022 at 7:39 pm
    Reply

    I upgraded if the cve show high red rated score risk.

  16. Janne said on January 8, 2022 at 6:04 pm
    Reply

    Check your network settings after update to Qt6. Mine reset to default.

    1. Richard Allen said on January 9, 2022 at 4:03 pm
      Reply

      Same here. Had to re-enable all of my proxy settings. Other than that v4.4.0 qt6 appears to be working just fine for me on Win10 Pro.

      I also noticed that 4.4.0 is using much less memory than my previous v4.3.6 and download speeds are right where they should be. I could swear that there was an advanced option to increase memory used and can’t seem to find it, I assume that option was removed?! I vaguely remember using up to 1GB of memory and with the update just now saw like 24MB being used. Not complaining but I have plenty of memory and if it helps to speed things up I would rather use it. Anyway, still getting the job done quickly. For now I’ll stay on the qt6 version.

      1. zava said on January 17, 2022 at 4:22 pm
        Reply

        Well, libtorrent 2.0 eliminates disk caching and completely relies upon Windows for it (reads and writes).
        That means the uTorrent road – lower RAM usage, even with 16/32 GBs of RAM machines but definitely much lower upload speeds, as caching is essential for seeding (random reads etc). Where with 4.3.6. I had 600/700 mbs upload speeds with a 4000 mb cache (I have a Gigabit conection) now I have maybe 100 mbs upload speed and 300-400 mb of RAM used. Worse, the disk usage time is now 90/100% because without good caching uploads determine more reads aka high disk usage. Needless to say, Windows caching is very bad since the beginning of torrenting, even Win 11.
        By the way, uTorrent reliance on Win caching is equally bad. On the same machine, same torrents/disks I somehow manage to get around 400 mbs upload speeds with slight more RAM usage but uTorrent has a BIGGER problem instead – even if task manager shows RAM usage staying under 1 GBs, there is a RAM leakage that sometimes eats up almost 30 GBs ! After restarting the program the problem reappears, so it’s quite obvious who the guilty party is.
        Meanwhile, Qbit 4.3.6. is the best piece of torrenting software ever created – practically bug free and enough features.

  17. Anonymous said on January 8, 2022 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    I use qBittorrent on both Windows and Linux.. I use it because I am too lazy to look for anything else, and it seems to do a good job to my unsophisticated way of thinking.

  18. Ariweee said on January 8, 2022 at 1:45 pm
    Reply

    Qt6 – link for download please?!

    Qbittorent went the wrong way, not hearing users and dropping Windows 7!

    It’s time for an alternative!

    Please provide an alternative to Qbittorent!

    1. Dumbledalf said on January 9, 2022 at 8:59 am
      Reply

      I like Windows 7, but it’s outdated and unsupported. Using something outdated and unsupported like the torrent client BitSpirit, which hasn’t seen updates since 2010 or 2011 seems about right.

      1. DaveyK said on January 9, 2022 at 2:22 pm
        Reply

        Microsoft still regularly patches Windows 7, and those patches can be downloaded freely from Microsoft’s website. It’s a very simple manner to get them to install and hence it’s perfectly possible to keep Windows 7 patched and up-to-date still. As for “outdated”, it runs everything I want to run and that’s good enough for me. Plus of course it looks a hell of a lot better than Windows 10, and is far more feature-rich than Windows 11 right now.

    2. asu said on January 9, 2022 at 8:23 am
      Reply

      Transmission, PicoTorrent, Tixati.

      1. beergas said on January 11, 2022 at 11:05 pm
        Reply

        Tixati yes goody old timer. New ver. released https://tixati.com/ Tixati v2.87 for 64-Bit Windows
        Compat back to XP. This qbittorrent looks ok enough with a simple left hand panel of controls.
        Somehow though I intuit Tixati might be better for advanced users. Careful though, loads of vermin loaded
        s/w out there if don’t sandbox/isolate them especially if they claim to “help you with paid s/w”.
        Thanks for review & comments.

    3. Mike Murphy said on January 8, 2022 at 10:48 pm
      Reply

      You can get QT6 here:

      https://www.qt.io/product/qt6

      That’s a framework, not a bittorrent client.

    4. epicguy said on January 8, 2022 at 8:55 pm
      Reply

      picotorrent is an option, though its development has slowed down

    5. zeom said on January 8, 2022 at 5:27 pm
      Reply

      What a typical Ghacks user response. I don’t know if this is a troll or real.

  19. Software tester said on January 8, 2022 at 1:16 pm
    Reply

    I use portable qBittorrent 4.4.0 , thanks

  20. Richard Allen said on January 8, 2022 at 12:21 pm
    Reply

    Whoops! I’m still on v4.3.6 so thank you Mr. Brinkman for the info, much appreciated!

    I absolutely Love software that I don’t have to impatiently wait for the next “bug fix” update so why am I so hesitant to update? Probably because I’ve been trained by googly to expect an unending supply of bug fixes with every Nexus and Pixel phone I’ve owned and I’ll not bore everyone with the great job microsoft is doing. Anyway, it’s nice that qBittorrent does what it’s supposed to without being a problem child.

    Qt6? Don’t have a clue, what is that a new programming language?

    v2 torrents? Still clueless! Damn, I definitely need to do some homework! ;)

    1. VioletMoon said on January 10, 2022 at 2:05 am
      Reply

      Not alone; I admire programmers. Far beyond my understanding.

      I love and use QBit.

  21. Akina said on January 8, 2022 at 11:47 am
    Reply

    I was using Qt6 unstable version for months and I think it’s the best torrent client I used up to now. Nice work.

    1. Anonymous said on February 13, 2022 at 2:12 pm
      Reply

      introduced more bugs and some featured dont work.

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