Sunday, 23 November 2014
BitTorrent is such a simple concept. Transferring files from one user to another directly without interference from any server. But the process of downloading torrents is anything but. You need special torrent clients and have to monitor things like peers, seeds, trackers, and a lot more.
For someone just getting started, all of this can be annoying. If a dedicated torrent client is too complicated for you or someone you know, check out this Firefox add-on. It’s a simple torrent download manager written exclusively in JavaScript. What that means is that it will run inside the Firefox window and it will run fast.
How To Use Torrent Tornado
Go to the add-ons page and download it. Once it’s installed you’ll need to restart Firefox. You’ll see a new icon in the add-ons bar.
To download a torrent, go to the torrent site of your choice and click the magnet link. This will open up a menu box in Torrent Tornado.
First, Torrent Tornado will scan the magnet link and look for all the trackers. Once that’s done you can click the Next Step button.
This will show you all the files contained in the folder. You can click the Start button to start the download directly or go to the Next Step and manually select the destination for the download.
Once that’s done, the torrent will start downloading.
Torrent Tornado’s UI is much like any other download manager. The top half of the screen lists all the torrents, their names, seeds, peers, download speed, etc. The bottom half shows detailed information of the selected torrent.
Torrent Tornado has a navigation bar up top with options to add a new torrent file, stop, resume, or cancel all downloads, and a button that takes you to the settings page.
Pros
- The add-on is lightweight and you don’t need to install an extra piece of software. If your work machine bans program installs, this can be a workaround.
- The add-on itself is fast. You can close the tab and it will keep working in the background. Clicking the extension button springs it back on in a second.
- It has all the basic features. From the settings you can change the memory cache and maximum seeds allowed.
- Unlike a lot of torrent clients for the desktop (looking at you uTorrent), it has no ads.
Related: Speaking of uTorrent and being tired of all the ads, check out our top 4 alternativesthat are just as good or better. If you just can’t give it up, learn how you can disable the ads in uTorrent.
Cons
- It’s a download manager made from web languages that lives as an add-on in a browser. Of course it’s not going to be the most stable thing ever.
- The speed fluctuates a bit too much. Sometimes I get full speed and a couple of seconds later I’m down to 10% of the bandwidth. Although this might be my internet connection’s fault.
Verdict
Above all, Torrent Tornado gets the job done. While the speed drops were alarming at first, I did complete a couple of BitTorrent Bundle downloads. The trick is to let it be and not stare at the download speed like a maniac.
