Lars Pind

Xtorrent is yet another smash hit by David Watanabe. It’s the first bittorrent client I’ve seen that gets it just right.

The download itself isn’t what’s magic, it’s the search for torrents that’s brilliant. Normally, you have to go on multiple trackers, which can often be slow, download the right torrent file, open it up with your torrent client, and then delete the torrent file. I’ve been trying to walk some friends through this process, and it’s confusing to say the least.

Xtorrent solves this problem the right way. You enter a search term, and it searches whatever trackers it already knows about, and presents the results beautifully in a table in the app that you can sort and mess with, including seeing the files that are inside a torrent. Check file sizes, sort by the number of available copies out there (called Swarm), pick a file, and just click Download, and it starts right away.

If you don’t find the file in that list, however, it also opens up two tabs with Google and Yahoo searches for your torrent file. Or you can open yet another tab and use your favorite tracker. And this is where the magic happens: When you download the torrent file, Xtorrent automatically discovers that it’s a torrent file and starts downloading it. No more torrent files filling up your dashboard.

I love how this app takes the complexity out of torrents. Beautiful work.