rqbit - bittorrent client in Rust
rqbit is a bittorrent client written in Rust. Has HTTP API and Web UI, and can be used as a library.
Also has a desktop app built with Tauri.
Usage quick start
Optional - start the server
Assuming you are downloading to ~/Downloads.
rqbit server start ~/Downloads
Download torrents
Assuming you are downloading to ~/Downloads. By default it'll download to current directory.
rqbit download [-o ~/Downloads] 'magnet:?....' [https?://url/to/.torrent] [/path/to/local/file.torrent]
Web UI
Access at http://localhost:3030/web/. See screenshot below (torrent names and speeds are simulated).
Desktop app
The desktop app is a thin wrapper on top of the Web UI frontend.
Download it in Releases for OSX and Windows. For Linux, build manually with
cargo tauri build
It looks similar to the Web UI (screenshot above).
Streaming support
rqbit can stream torrent files and smartly block the stream until the pieces are available. The pieces getting streamed are prioritized. All of this allows you to seek and live stream videos for example.
You can also stream to e.g. VLC or other players with HTTP URLs. Supports seeking too (through various range headers).
The streaming URLs look like http://IP:3030/torrents/<torrent_id>/stream/<file_id>
Integrated UPnP Media Server
rqbit can advertise managed torrents to LAN, e.g. your TVs and stream torrents there (without transcoding). Seeking to arbitrary points in the videos is supported too.
Usage from CLI
rqbit --enable-upnp-server server start ...
mDNS advertising
rqbit can advertise its HTTP API on your LAN via mDNS/DNS-SD, so you can open the Web UI at http://rqbit.local:3030/web/ from any device without knowing the server's IP.
Usage from CLI (requires a non-loopback listen address):
rqbit --enable-mdns --http-api-listen-addr 0.0.0.0:3030 server start ...
IPv6
rqbit supports IPv6. By default it listens on all interfaces in dualstack mode. It can work even if there's no IPv6 enabled.
Shell completions
Assuming bash, add this to your ~/.bashrc. Modify for your shell of choice.
eval "$(rqbit completions bash)"
Socks proxy support
rqbit --socks-url socks5h://[username:password]@host:port ...
Supported schemes: socks5h:// (DNS resolved by the proxy), socks5:// (DNS resolved
locally).
Watching a directory for .torrents
rqbit server start --watch-folder [path] /download/path
Systemd socket activation
rqbit can be started on-demand via systemd socket activation by installing the service and socket systemd units into $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/systemd/user/ (~/.config/systemd/user) and customizing them to your needs. If the associated rqbit.conf file is installed in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/rqbit/rqbit.conf (~/.config/rqbit/rqbit.conf), it will be used to configure rqbit when started via the provided systemd unit.
Performance
Anecdotally from a few reports, rqbit is faster than other clients they've tried, at least with their default settings.
Memory usage for the server is usually within a few tens of megabytes, which makes it great for e.g. RaspberryPI.
I've got a report that rqbit can saturate a 20Gbps link, although I don't have the hardware to confirm.
Installation
There are pre-built binaries in Releases.
Homebrew
rqbit can be installed using Homebrew.
brew install rqbit
Cargo
If you have the Rust toolchain installed then you can use the following.
cargo install rqbit
Docker
Docker images are published at ikatson/rqbit
Build
Just a regular Rust binary build process.
cargo build --release
The "webui" feature requires npm installed.
Some useful options
Run rqbit --help to see all available CLI options.
-v
Increase verbosity. Possible values: trace, debug, info, warn, error.
--list
Will print the contents of the torrent file or the magnet link.
--overwrite
If you want to resume downloading a file that already exists, you'll need to add this option.
-r / --filename-re
Use a regex here to select files by their names.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
