What is torrent download magnet

Techopedia Terms. Connect with us. Sign up. Term of the Day. Best of Techopedia weekly. News and Special Offers occasional. Magnet Link. Techopedia Explains Magnet Link. What Does Magnet Link Mean? The magnet link was designed to replace and upgrade torrent file specifications.

Share this Term. Tech moves fast! Stay ahead of the curve with Techopedia! Join nearly , subscribers who receive actionable tech insights from Techopedia. Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter! A magnet link is essentially a hyperlink containing the hash code for that torrent, which your torrent client can immediately use to start finding people sharing those files. Magnet links don't require a tracker since it uses DHT, which you can read more about here , nor does it require you to download a separate file before starting the download, which is convenient.

Magnet links are dead simple to use. If you head to the Pirate Bay now, you'll notice that magnet links are now the default, with the "Get Torrent File" link in parentheses next to it a link which will disappear in a month or so.

Just click on the magnet link, and your browser should automatically open up your default BitTorrent client and start downloading. It's that easy. The short answer is nothing. In fact, it could mean that downloading torrents takes one or two fewer clicks, since all you have to do is click on the link to start the download.

When magnet links first came out, not all torrent clients supported them, but now you can use magnet links with just about any semi-popular torrent client out there—including our favorites uTorrent , Transmission , and Deluge , among others, so you shouldn't notice a problem with that. The main reason torrent sites are moving toward magnet links—apart from convenience to the user—is that these links probably free torrent sites like The Pirate Bay from legal trouble.

Since The Pirate Bay won't be hosting files that link to copyrighted content—that is, the torrent files—it's more difficult to claim the site is directly enabling the downloading of copyrighted material. Whether this semantic leap actually protects torrent sites remains to be seen, but for now, you can sleep soundly knowing that the sites will stick around for awhile longer and that your torrents will take one less click to get started.

If you want to read more about magnet links, check out the Wikipedia page on the subject.