Introduction
These are some additional µTorrent settings that users have expressed interest in.
Since µTorrent and BitTorrent are identical bittorrent clients, developed by the same company, these guides apply to µTorrent or BitTorrent.
Additional µTorrent & BitTorrent Settings Help
Setting Remove Options
I often see posts from people who have hit the red X at the top of µTorrent by accident, which ends up deleting the torrent and data.
The settings for the remove X can be adjusted with a right-click on the X. Below is a screen shot of the options available. I suggest using Remove as this will remove the torrent from µTorrent, but not delete the torrent or data.
A right-click on the torrent in µTorrent and selecting Remove and will give the different options for removal.
Remove - just removes the torrent from uTorrent, but saves the torrent file and the data downloaded.
Remove and delete torrent - removes from uTorrent and deletes the torrent, but saves the data.
Remove and delete torrent and data - removes from uTorrent and deletes everything.
Remove and delete data - removes from uTorrent and deletes the data downloaded, but not the torrent.
Move to trash if possible - will delete to Recycle Bin, if it is not full
Best settings are to "Remove" and enable "Move to trash if possible. Many people hit this button by accident and lose everything. If you want to delete the torrent and/or data, then it is better to right-click on the torrent in question and usse the context menu to do this.
IP Filter
Enabling this requires creating an ipfilter.dat file and placing it in the µTorrent Application Data folder and enabling ipfilter in the Advanced settings of µTorrent. The µTorrent IPfilter.dat blocks the IPs entered within it. Most commonly, the blocklist from BISS is used to block IPs that are "known" to interfere with bittorrent. There is some controversy over whether these lists are useful. There is some evidence to support their use in this article and there is some evidence that they are not useful in this post. The µTorrent website is on the BISS list (wrongly so, I believe). This will not affect downloads, but will affect the results of the µTorrent built in port test. I leave it up to you as to whether an IP Filter is necessary for your situation. µTorrent only supports manual updating of the IP Filter. There are two sources for blocklist download, BISS and Nexus23. For BISS use the nipfilter.dat.gz (extract) and for Nexus23 use the ipfilter.dat.
To enable IP Filter in µTorrent follow these steps:
- Download the filter list you want to use.
- Go to Start->Run and type %APPDATA%\uTorrent\
- Place the ipfilter.dat file in that directory.
- In µTorrent go to Options>Preferences>Advanced and set ipfilter.enable to True.
The lists are updated regularly, so it is a good idea to update them at least once a week. To reload the list in µTorrent, there are several ways:
- Highlight a torrent and go to the Peers tab at the bottom. In there, right-click and select Reload IPFilter
- Close uTorrent, and open it back up.
- Disable ipfilter.enable and re-enable (see above)
You can check to see if the IPFilter was re-loaded under the Logger tab at the bottom.
Also, you will see all blocked IP requests on that Logger tab.
Creating Your Own Blocklist
I often see users requesting a way to block those who they believe are leeching from them. µTorrent does not have a ban feature and probably never will. At least that is what they have been telling users who have requested such a feature.
µTorrent does not have a ban feature because they believe most users will not work it properly and in the long run this would cause issues with bittorrent. So I advise caution when creating your own IP Filter file.
Creating the .dat file necessary for this is easy. Using Notepad, or a similar text editor, enter the IP(s) of who you wish to block. Each IP must be on its own separate line. When done entering, choose File>Save as. The default file type for saving in Notepad is Text Documents (*.txt). This must be changed to All files (*.*). Then name the file ipfilter.dat. The location save and enable process is the same as above.
How To Pronounce µTorrent
Obviously, this is not an issue, but I do see a lot of talk on the web on how to pronounce µTorrent. I did run across a post by the µTorrent developer Ludvig (Ludde) Strigeus on this, so I will pass it on. The usual offerings are:
- you-torrent
- mu-torrent
- micro-torrent
- my-torrent
The correct answer is any of these or any way you want, although Ludde used you-torrent.
Enabling µTorrent Status Icons
In µTorrent 3.0 the option to display status icons (the arrows) on the torrent screen is inOptions>Preferences>Advanced. The option gui.show_status_icon_in_dl_list needs to be set to true as in image below:
The icons are part of the Name column, so the Name column needs to be showing for the icons to show. If the Name column is not showing, right-click the gray bar where the column names are and select Name on the list.
