How to add a magnet link

Adding a transfer

How to add a magnet link; Adding a .torrent file instead of a magnet link.

A magnet link is a text address that starts with magnet:?xt=urn:btih: followed by a long hash. It is not a file — it is a pointer that tells a torrent client what to look for. gettor takes it from there.

Adding one

Copy the magnet link from wherever you got it.
Open your dashboard and click into the bar at the top of the page.
Paste the link and press Fetch.

The transfer appears in the list below straight away with a status of Queued, and gettor begins work on its own servers. Your connection is not used for the torrent itself — only for the finished files when you download them later.

What gettor checks before it accepts one

Two checks happen immediately, before any data moves: that your email address is verified, and that you have a free transfer slot on your plan. A third check — whether the torrent fits — cannot happen yet, because the size is not known until the metadata arrives.

Note: If the bar rejects the link outright, the text is not a valid magnet link. The most common cause is a partial copy: magnet links are long, and it is easy to miss the end.

Where the files go

When metadata is ready, a folder named after the torrent appears in Your files on the same Library page. Open it to download files. Download progress stays above the library.

Adding a .torrent file instead of a magnet link

gettor accepts a .torrent file up to 1 MB, uploaded from the same bar as a magnet link.

Some sources give you a .torrent file rather than a magnet link. The two describe the same thing; a .torrent file simply carries the metadata with it instead of asking the swarm for it, which usually means the transfer starts a little faster.

Uploading one

On the dashboard, use the upload a .torrent file link beside the magnet bar.
Choose the file.
The transfer is queued as soon as the file is read — there is no separate Fetch step.

You can also drag the file straight onto the bar. See Pasting and dragging for the shortcuts.

The 1 MB limit

A .torrent file must be 1 MB or smaller. This is not a limit on how big the content is — a 50 GB torrent usually has a .torrent file of a few dozen kilobytes. A file over 1 MB almost always means something other than a torrent was selected.

Careful: If you see “That is not a .torrent file.”, the file did not parse as a torrent. Check that it was not renamed from something else, and that the download of the .torrent itself completed.