Chrome Story

Home » Chromebook » How to Download Torrents on a Chromebook

How to Download Torrents on a Chromebook

Dinsan

Add as a preferred source on Google

Subscribe on YouTube

JSTorrent and other old Chrome packaged apps no longer work since Google discontinued Chrome Apps. The current way to download torrents on a Chromebook is through the Linux development environment.

How to Set Up a Torrent Client on Chromebook

  1. Open Settings and go to Advanced > Developers.
  2. Turn on Linux development environment and complete the setup.
  3. Open the Terminal app.
  4. Type sudo apt install transmission-cli and press Enter to install a lightweight torrent client.

Note: This command runs with administrator privileges inside your Linux environment. Type it exactly as shown.

How to Download a Torrent

  1. In Terminal, type transmission-cli followed by the magnet link or path to your .torrent file.
  2. The download will save inside your Linux files, which you can access from the Files app under Linux files.

Quick Tips

  • Only download torrents you have the legal right to, since copyright laws apply the same way on a Chromebook as any other device.
  • If the command line feels intimidating, Transmission also has a graphical version you can install with sudo apt install transmission-gtk.

With Linux enabled, your Chromebook can run real torrent clients again, no outdated Chrome app required.

Dinsan Avatar
Dinsan

Founder & Editor

Dinsan Francis is the founder of Chrome Story, which he started in 2009 — the same year Google launched Chrome. He has covered the Chrome browser and Chromebook ecosystem for over 15 years and has used Chromebooks as his primary computing device since 2010. He’s always on the bleeding edge, running the Canary build of both Chrome and ChromeOS as daily drivers.

Read Full Bio

Discover more from Chrome Story

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Comments

12 responses to “How to Download Torrents on a Chromebook”

  1. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    No unzip on ChromeOS.

    I’m guessing that’s why you replaced it with a .tar.gz.

    Reply
  2. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    also: must run ./launcher.sh explicitly with “sh” command unless you remount without noexec flag.

    launcher will prompt for sudo password if you’ve changed it.

    Reply
  3. Branni Mikal Avatar
    Branni Mikal

    The only issue now is that not all people will want to go into Developer Mode just to use it. I’d say that soon; they’ll figure a way to make it easier for us to download torrents without the need for switching our versions 🙂

    Reply
  4. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    Wouldn’t this be more inline with the idea of a Chromebook if it stored all the data in Google Drive or Dropbox?

    Reply
    1. JJV191 Avatar
      JJV191

      For what most people use torrents for this wouldn’t be a good place to store the files that your downloading..

      Reply
  5. Graeme Law Avatar
    Graeme Law

    Quick question here hoping someone can help me. Everything’s fine except when it comes to [bash ./launcher.sh].

    I get a confirmation of uTorrent is now running…

    Then I get :

    ./launcher.sh: line 16: ./utserver: No such file or directory

    Help?! 🙁

    Reply
  6. Larry Avatar
    Larry

    I’m a novice user and I would love to download this app but when I hit the download button it tells me ‘Price not available’ and I can get no further. What do I need to do?

    Reply
    1. Alex Avatar
      Alex

      Yup. Same problem here on a Toshiba Chromebook and on every PC I open my chrome webstore. 🙂 Any solution, guys?

      Reply
  7. Osvaldo Paniccia Avatar
    Osvaldo Paniccia

    “If someone still has a complaint that Chromebook is just a browser and Chrome apps are only “glorified bookmarks” (there are still plenty of such apps, yes) show them this torrent app.”

    Yes,if you pay 3$

    Reply
    1. Dinsan Avatar
      Dinsan

      The opinion that Chrome OS is just a web browser has changed a lot over the years. I see a clear difference in the language of main stream tech journalists these days.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *