Rookparcel

The µTorrent 2.2.1 window, recreated

The Windows GUI is a faithful recreation of the µTorrent 2.2.1 main window: the category list, the torrent list with every column, the detail tabs, Preferences and the dialogs. It uses none of µTorrent's code or artwork.

On every desktop

On macOS the same main window and dialogs are a native Mac app, and on Linux and BSD they run on GTK 4, from the same frontend code as the Windows window.

Or leave the daemon running headless on a server and use it from a browser, or from either desktop GUI in remote mode.

It shares your PC

A torrent client should not be the reason a game lags or the whole computer feels slow. Rookparcel can step aside on its own, for your line and for your disks.

• Gamer mode: keep your ping low

  Tick Keep ping low in Preferences > Bandwidth. Rookparcel finds the first router past your line and watches its ping while it downloads and uploads. As soon as the line starts to queue, it slows itself down, then speeds up again when the queue clears, so games and video calls stay responsive. There is no game list and nothing to set up.

  On a test line with half a second of buffer, the ping fell from about 480 ms to 10 ms while Rookparcel kept 80-92 % of the line's speed. It works on Windows, Linux and macOS; on BSD it goes by the delays its uTP peers measure.

• Smart disk I/O

  Rechecks run gently: at the system's background disk priority, without pushing other programs' files out of memory, and giving way whenever another program needs the disk. Rookparcel tells SSDs, hard disks and network shares apart. It checks one torrent per drive, several drives at once, and gives a hard disk only two jobs at a time so it doesn't spend its time seeking.

  If you want it, it also slows downloads or uploads down while a disk is busy, and caps checking at a speed you choose: Preferences > Advanced > Disk I/O.

What is in it

• A complete engine

  TCP and uTP; HTTP, HTTPS and UDP trackers; magnet links, DHT, peer exchange and local peer discovery; protocol encryption, web seeds, SOCKS and HTTP proxies, UPnP / NAT-PMP and IP filters; super-seeding, sequential download and per-torrent speed limits.

• BitTorrent v2 and hybrid

  v2 and hybrid torrents (BEP 52): adding, downloading, seeding and creating them.

• The whole 2.2.1 client

  Detail tabs (General, Trackers, Peers, Pieces, Files, Speed, Logger), Preferences, Add, Create and Properties, the RSS downloader, the scheduler, Auto Shutdown, the tray icon, and file and magnet associations.

• Built for scale

  The goal is 100,000 torrents on a modest PC with an instant UI. On the author's PC the Windows GUI lists 100,000 torrents in about a second, with idle GUI CPU under 0.1 %.

• Headless, with a Web UI

  rookparcel-nox runs as a daemon with its own Web UI (laid out for phones too), HTTPS, and a qBittorrent-compatible Web API subset so existing tools can talk to it. It runs as a service under systemd, FreeBSD's rc.d or Windows. The Windows GUI serves the same Web UI over its own torrents, RSS Downloader included: Preferences > Web UI.

• Search and RSS

  Search for torrents through the Prowlarr or Jackett you already run (Torznab), from either GUI or the Web UI. No search plugins of its own, so nothing breaks when a site changes. The RSS downloader picks up new releases by your filters.

• Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr

  Add Rookparcel to them as a qBittorrent download client, against rookparcel-nox or the Windows GUI. Indexer seed goals arrive with each grab and Remove Completed works; an API key and a subnet whitelist are there if you want them.

• Remote mode

  Either desktop GUI can drive a rookparcel-nox on another machine: File > Connect to Remote..., or start it with --remote.

• English and 34 more languages

  Right-to-left layouts for Arabic, Hebrew and Persian included. The translations are machine-made and unreviewed, so corrections are welcome.

• Small and self-contained

  Single self-contained executables with minimal dependencies. On Windows: statically linked, no runtime to install, and a portable mode.

Where it runs

Free for noncommercial use

Rookparcel is free for personal use, study, hobby projects, and use by charities, schools, research and public institutions, under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. You may share and change it on the same terms. Commercial use needs separate permission. More in the FAQ.

Rookparcel is an independent project. It recreates the look and behaviour of µTorrent 2.2.1 but is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by µTorrent or BitTorrent, Inc., and uses none of their code, artwork or trademarks.