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All-in-one platform for searching, downloading, and listening to music

All-in-one platform for searching, downloading, and listening to music

Vote: (677 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: FrostWire LLC

Version: 6.12.0

Works under: Windows

Also available for Mac Android

Vote:

Program license

(677 votes)

Free

Developer

Version

FrostWire LLC

6.12.0

Works under:

Also available for

Windows

Mac Android

Pros

  • Program allows you to easily search for relevant torrents
  • Controlling download and upload speeds is simple
  • You can stream videos and audio files after they start downloading

Cons

  • While FrostWire itself is safe, there is no guarantee that the torrents are safe

FrostWire is a combination of a BitTorrent Peer-to-Peer, or P2P, client and all-in-one media center. This program makes it simple to find and download torrents with an easy search engine design. Not only that, but this can organize all your torrents and even gives you a place to access or play them with ease.

Simple Search Engine

Finding a torrent can be difficult. Finding a safe one is even harder. If you try using a regular search engine for this, then you'll find dozens of websites that usually bring you to other websites that may or may not actually have the torrent you want. It's a lot of wasted time and there's the possibility that viruses will sneak into your computer while you're trying to find a good file.

FrostWire makes this much easier. While there is no guarantee that the torrents are safe, that should be remembered at all times, it does make it much easier to find torrents that match your description without visiting dozens of websites. Simply enter a search term and FrostWire will return with all the relevant torrents.

Most searches will bring back a lot of torrents, so you might have to go through a few to find a good one. This is still significantly faster than searching through conventional search engines.

Manage Downloads

FireWire manages your downloads and keeps them in a handy list. You can see all the files that you are currently downloading along with queued files that are waiting their turn. You can often download multiple torrents simultaneously, but some might be placed in a queue if you try to download too many.

You can also change the speed of your downloading torrents. You can decide how much bandwidth each torrent should get and what the maximum download speed should be. If the files are uploading at the same time for other people, then you can also choose the maximum upload speeds.

You can choose to pause or stop downloading whenever you want. Simply right-click the torrent and choose this, or highlight the torrent and click the associated button. You'll have no problem controlling your torrents and they will be automatically added to your hard drive once the download is complete. This means you can remove them from FrostWire and they will still be on your computer.

Stream While Downloading

FrostWire doesn't just manage all your downloads. It has a unique feature that allows you to stream video and audio files as they are downloading. Depending on the downloading progress this may or may not be in sequential order. For example, a video might skip around to different parts because these are the only segments that have been downloaded.

This is good for several reasons. The first reason is that you can watch or hear a good amount of the file if you have at least 20 to 50 percent of it downloaded. The other reason is that this lets you see if the torrent is correct. Some people intentionally mislabel torrents. If it's not right, then you can stop downloading now and instead focus your efforts on finding a good torrent.

Uploading and Seeding

P2P networks thrive on people uploading files that they are downloading. This is how you're able to download any files and it's what keeps the network alive. At the same time, this means that you are wasting resources to upload files to other people. Not only that, but the upload speeds can get quite high and you might be using most of your resources on uploading instead of downloading.

While it's considered good online etiquette to upload at least a full copy of any torrent that you downloaded, it's not a good idea to keep the upload speeds at maximum. You can change the upload speed by right-clicking the file and choosing the maximum speed you'll allow.

You must do this for each file. There is currently no way to set this across the board.

Simple Interface

FrostWire has a simple interface that anyone can understand. You can search for torrents with the search menu. Once you select a torrent it will be placed in the bottom menu where you can see its downloading progress. Right-click the file to change the download or upload speeds. You can also right-click to pause or stop downloads. This is a program that anyone can use.

Pros

  • Program allows you to easily search for relevant torrents
  • Controlling download and upload speeds is simple
  • You can stream videos and audio files after they start downloading

Cons

  • While FrostWire itself is safe, there is no guarantee that the torrents are safe