How to Download a Magnet Link with or without uTorrent [2024]

From the article below you will learn how to download from a magnet link with uTorrent in detailed instructions. If you don’t like using the normal magnet link downloader like uTorrent, the article offers you another way to freely download a magnet link without uTorrent by using MultCloud.

Quick Search:

What is Magnet Download in uTorrent?

Before learning about how to download from magnet link using uTorrent or without using uTorrent, it would be best if you could get an overview of the magnet link and uTorrent.

Magnet Link

Magnet links are mainly used in P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing networks that are combined by several computer servers. The magnet links allow files to be referred to without the need for a continuously available host. These files can be generated by anyone who already has the file without a central authority. When you download a shared file from the P2P network through the magnet link, actually you download the file piece by piece from various servers which own part of the shared file. In this way, a magnet link can save a lot of bandwidth on downloading files.

uTorrent is free software and also a famous BitTorrent torrent client which is used to download large files in a file-sharing environment, especially in P2P networks. It is part of BitTorrent’s portfolio and is designed to work with major mobile and desktop operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Android, etc.

If you occasionally get a magnet link from the Internet or your friends, you may be confused about how to download files from magnet links. Therefore, this article will tell you in detail for how to download a magnet link with uTorrent and also how to download magnet links without uTorrent when you meet a problem with the uTorrent magnet link not working or you just don’t want to download and install any torrent client to help you download magnet links.

How to Download a Magnet Link with uTorrent

To use uTorrent as a magnet downloader, first, you may have to download the desktop application of uTorrent from its official website. If you are a mobile user, uTorrent only supports the mobile application of Android up to now. After installing, you have prepared well and can follow the instructions about how to download magnet links with uTorrent.

Step 1: Open the uTorrent application on your device and click the “Add Torrent +” button.

Step 2: Copy and paste the magnet link to the pop-up window to add magnet link to uTorrent. Then click “Add torrent”.

Step 3: Select the exact files which you want to download from the magnet link.

Step 4: Select the destination where you want to store the downloaded files on your device.

Step 5: Click “Add”. And the files will be automatically downloaded to your device.

Tip: uTorrent will show you a detailed interface of the downloading progress for you to manage.

How to Download Magnet Links without uTorrent

You might encounter this situation where the magnet links can not be seeded and downloaded by uTorrent or simply the uTorrent magnet link is not working. What’s more, you may think that it’s totally unnecessary to download a tiny file from the magnet link while installing an application. So, here we recommend a useful service called MultCloud to help you download a magnet link without uTorrent or download torrent without a client.

What is MultCloud?

As a free multiple cloud storage manager, MultCloud can help you to gather all your cloud drives together to manage them in a single interface. It offers various features to let you manage cloud files with ease. One of the distinctive functions which can help you to download magnet links without a client, keep your file secure, and save the local storage of your devices is Remote Upload.

Remote Upload can help download files from URLs, Torrents, magnet links, and other links to your cloud drive without based on your network. The background program of MultCloud will download the magnet link directly to your clouds and let you download files from your clouds through a direct download link. That is to say, this is also a great and easy way to convert magnet link to direct download link.

• Better data security: You download from magnet link to your device through your own cloud drives, nothing will be stored in the third-party tool.
• Great sharing ability: You could share the downloaded files from your clouds to your friends in MultCloud with 3 different sharing modes like Public Share, Private Share, and Source Share.
• Access files easily: You are able to access the downloaded files anywhere at any time with any kind of device as long as your device can connect to the Internet.
• One-key data transfer across clouds: MultCloud allows you to transfer, sync, or backup data between clouds without downloading and uploading, including Cloud Transfer, Cloud Sync, Team Transfer, and Cloud Backup.
• Manage files efficiently: As a free cloud file manager, MultCloud allows you to download, upload, cut, copy, rename and preview the files through 30+ major clouds without switching accounts.

How to Download a Magnet link Using MultCloud

Given that MultCloud will download files from magnet links to one of your cloud drives, you may have to prepare a cloud that has enough storage space to store the downloaded files. Here we take how to download a magnet link to Google Drive as an example to show you how to download a magnet link without uTorrent.

Step 1: Click the below button to sign up MultCloud for free.

Step 2: Click “Add Cloud” and choose the Google Drive icon. Then follow the pop-up window to allow MultCloud to access your Google Drive account.

• You can add as many cloud drives as you have for free since MultCloud supports more than 30 leading cloud drive services, including Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, MEGA, Flickr, FTP, etc.
• Your cloud accounts are completely safe because MultCloud accesses your accounts without recording the corresponding username and password by basing on the OAuth authorization system that is supported by major cloud drive servers like Google Drive and Dropbox.

Step 3: If you are on the Google Drive page of MultCloud, click “Remote Upload” in the dropdown menu. And if you are on the Remote Upload page, click “Create Task” instead.

Step 4: Copy and paste the magnet link to the blank of the pop-up window. If you open the window from the Remote Upload page, you may have to manually select Google Drive as the cloud to store the downloaded files.

Step 5: Click the purple button “Save to Cloud”. Then the downloading task will be completed even if you shut down the browser window or your device.

Tip: As a free user of MultCloud, you could create a Remote Upload task with only one link. But if you upgrade your account to a higher level, you are able to add at most 5 parallel links to perform Remote Upload tasks at the same time.

Conclusion

By looking through the perfect solutions about how to download a magnet link with uTorrent and also how to download magnet links without uTorrent by using MultCloud, it’s now up to you to choose whether to download from magnet links with uTorrent or MultCloud.

In addition, after downloading files from magnet links, you could use Cloud Transfer to backup Google Drive to Dropbox without taking up any extra time and effort. In this way, your files can be added a layer of protection.

One last word, even though sharing files through magnet links can be useful in some cases, you still have to be careful of that malware. And you’d better keep yourself safe against various cybersecurity and legal risks since using magnet links is in a legally gray area to some degree.

How to Open a Magnet Link in Any Browser

For a long time now magnet links have been a mainstay of all the major web browsers, making life a little easier for people downloading torrent files. But what exactly are magnet links? How do you set them up and open them? And how do you change the program that they link to? We reveal all here.

Note: you’ll need to have a torrent platform like Vuze, Utorrent, qBittorrent or Transmission to use magnet links.

What Is a Magnet Link?

First, we need to understand some basics. Magnet links and torrent files go hand in hand, but they aren’t exactly the same thing. In fact, if you use a magnet link, you don’t even need to download a torrent file to start downloading the content. Its crucial identifying information – the hash – is calculated on a given website rather than on the torrent client and sent directly to your Bittorrent program.

The benefits of the magnet link are that a site doesn’t need to host the original torrent file anymore and just has to provide the link. For the user, this cuts out the need to download a torrent file before downloading the content, and for the site, it saves on bandwidth because it doesn’t need to host files on its servers.

Many torrent file download sites prominently display a “magnet download” menu option which will activate the magnet links. These magnet links leave no “trackers” behind on your torrent download. It is recommended to use a reliable commercial VPN while downloading torrent/magnet links.

How to Use Magnet Links

If you can’t see a prominent magnet link on your torrent file page, there is another easy option. On most torrent download sites, magnet link info hashes are viewable on the correct torrent file page. The following is an example of one such info hash on a popular download site.

If you dig deeper, the complete magnet link is viewable on the torrent download button and marked by a “magnet” prefix. We will have more of this in the next few sections. As shown below in the screenshot for a well-known torrent proxy, the magnet link is prominently visible as soon as you click the torrent link. This is what you should try to use.

The magnet link can be copied for further use with a Torrent client (any torrent downloader software). It can also be copied into browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or any other custom browser.

Here the magnet link info hash has been copy-pasted into qBittorent, a desktop torrent client. But we will see the same examples with different browsers.

Before downloading a magnet link using a desktop client, you have to take care of this feature in the installation summary. Whether you install your torrent client on Windows, Mac, or Linux, ensure that you have enabled access to magnet links.

Magnet Links on Browsers

In this section we will learn how to download magnet links on any browser of your choice. The essential techniques are the same, but the procedure slightly differs according to the browser.

Open Magnet Links in Chrome

First, you’ll need to make sure that Chrome will allow you to create magnet links. To do this, go to the following link chrome://settings/handlers on your Chrome browser.

On this page, enable the option “Allow sites to ask to become default handlers for protocols (recommended).”

You just need to find a torrent download site that hosts magnet links (most of them do), select the file you want to download, and choose “Magnet Download,” if there is such an option. If not, just select the default download option and there’s a good chance it will be a magnet link.

If it is a “complete” magnet link you’re downloading, you’ll get a message offering to open the magnet link with your Bittorrent platform of choice. When Chrome asks if you want to open your Bittorrent client, tick the box that says “Always open these types of links in the associated app.” Click “Open” to proceed.

In the following example of downloading from Chrome, we have used a client called “Torrex“, which is available in the Microsoft Store. Such examples are particularly useful if your torrent client is not supported by Windows 10.

To download magnet links on Chrome and Edge, you can alternatively use an extension called JSTorrent.

Open Magnet Links in Edge

The procedure to download torrent clients on Edge is remarkably similar to Chrome (especially with JSTorrent extension), but you don’t need to enable any handlers. Instead, you can use the Edge browser-specific add-on “Magnet Linker” as shown below.

Once the magnet linker add-on is enabled on Edge, you’ll get a message offering to open the magnet link with your Bittorrent platform of choice.

Open Magnet Links in Firefox

To open magnet links in Firefox, you again find a torrent file you want to download, and a pop-up should appear asking you which program (usually your Bittorrent client) you want to open the file with. To reset the association and get the dialog to appear again, do the following.

In the Firefox address bar, enter about:config , then search for network.protocol-handler.expose.magnet on that page. In this preference text, click “Toggle” to make sure the “Value” is set to “false.”

Once done, you can open the magnet link in Firefox using the torrent application of your choice.

Open Magnet Links in Other Browsers

If you already have a Bittorrent client, the process for associating magnet links in other browsers is largely similar. Just find the file you want to download and click it. If it’s a magnet link, then your Torrent client should open automatically. Alternatively, you may get a prompt asking if you want to open the magnet file with your Bittorrent app, like this message in Microsoft Edge that is pictured below.

If nothing happens when you click the magnet link or you get the message that “this file does not have an app associated with it,” then you need to create the file association manually.

Go to the Windows Registry Editor ( Win + R , enter regedit into the box) and navigate to the following location:

ComputerHKEY_CLASSES_ROOTMagnetshellopencommand

In the registry pane on the right under “Data,” it should show the directory of your Bittorrent app followed by some other text. For Utorrent in its default directory, it should look like this:

"C:UsersUserAppDataRoaminguTorrentuTorrent.exe" "%1" /SHELLASSOC

If the information under Data doesn’t match with your Bittorrent client directory, right-click “(Default),” click “Modify,” and enter the correct directory for your Bittorrent client executable, making sure that it’s followed by “%1” /SHELLASSOC .

Once you’ve done this, all your browsers should associate magnet links with your Bittorrent app of choice.

Now that you’ve done that, why not find out how to watch videos and movies with your online friends? Also, torrents can be a legally murky area. Here’s all you need to know about the legality of downloading torrent files.

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Sayak Boral is a technology writer with over eleven years of experience working in different industries including semiconductors, IoT, enterprise IT, telecommunications OSS/BSS, and network security. He has been writing for MakeTechEasier on a wide range of technical topics including Windows, Android, Internet, Hardware Guides, Browsers, Software Tools, and Product Reviews.