Free BitTorrent client to search, download, and listen to music on multiple devices
Free BitTorrent client to search, download, and listen to music on multiple devices
Vote (541 votes)
Program license Free (GPL)
Developer FrostWire LLC
Version 6.2.1.
Works under Windows
Vote
(541 votes)
Developer
FrostWire LLC
Works under
Windows
Program license
Free (GPL)
Version
6.2.1.
Pros
- Free and simple to use
- Has a lot of databases it searches
- Advanced search features
- Fast downloading
Cons
- Multi-file downloading can screw your internet connection up
- Be very careful with mislabeled files
- Some features are very dated
Napster opened the world's eyes to the fact that you don't have to pay for music and other media years ago, and so services like Frostwire started popping up out of the woodwork and are still relevant today.
An Overview of
If ever you've wanted to download music or movie files to your PC, then you may have entertained getting a peer-to-peer program before. Unlike bit torrent clients, a P2P program allows you to search, download, watch and share all from one platform. A P2P client will typically require you to enter a torrent hash number to just download one file, but typically doesn't allow you to search. With a P2P program like Frostwire, you download and install the program and can thus begin searching for anything under the sun.
Frostwire and Limewire are pretty much the same programs, in case you've heard of the latter. It's just that Frostwire is said to be an expanded edition that uses a broader range of networks to help you find a wider assortment of media. So no matter what you're searching for, a program like Frostwire is likely to return some type of result. You can then use the advanced search feature to narrow your results down by user count, title, article, and more specific parameters.
What Is and What It Does
At around 25MB, the Frostwire P2P client is relatively lightweight and doesn't have much a footprint at all when you're using it on your PC. The layout itself is fairly attractive and streamlined, but if you're not thrilled about what you see on the original interface, you can also choose to download different and custom skins to make your program look a lot sleeker and more individualist to your tastes. Another great aspect here is that you won't have to worry about file extensions messing with your external players. Frostwire has its own media player, and if the extension is on Frostwire, the odds are good that it's actually going to be compatible with its own player.
Apart from having custom skins and its own player, it also has a range of advanced search features. You can even search from a hot transfer that's seeding and choose to search more from that particular user, ensuring that your downloads will complete a lot faster. All told, this is one of the best P2P clients in the business, and it has been for many years. Frostwire is at the top of the pile when it comes to downloading and playing media that's shared through peers around the globe.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Free and simple to use
- Has a lot of databases it searches
- Advanced search features
- Fast downloading
Cons
- Multi-file downloading can screw your internet connection up
- Be very careful with mislabeled files
- Some features are very dated
Pros
- Free BitTorrent client
- P2P plus direct file sharing
- Active open-source community
Cons
- Some bloatware
- Aggressive updating
FrostWire is a BitTorrent client, a file sharer, and a download manager all in one.
LimeWire was at one time among the most popular BitTorrent clients around, but things changed, and as development of LimeWire started on a path to defunctness, FrostWire was born. FrostWire is a freeware and open-source BitTorrent client that’s an offshoot of LimeWire. If you need a versatile P2P client or liked LimeWire but not where it headed, then FrostWire is worth a look.
From the start, the goal of FrostWire was to be a less buggy and more feature-reach version of LimeWire, and that mission has been a success for the most part. FrostWire is a stable P2P client with an active open-source community that continues to refine it and add features to it. All of those extra features are what really set FrostWire apart from so many other BitTorrent clients.
As a BitTorrent client, FrostWire does what you’d expect. It supports torrent tracking and magnet association and can even fix broken torrent files. It has search capabilities, and there are a number of search sources built-in, but you can also expand that resource with your own sources.
FrostWire is also a file-sharing program. Rather than peer-to-peer sharing, you can direct share, which is particularly useful if you want to seed a large torrent or another large file directly to a friend. You can also share directly on a local network, and this feature can work alongside the P2P features so that multiple clients running on the same network aren’t working against each other in terms of downloading and seeding.
FrostWire is a download manager as well, and you can download video and music direct from websites like YouTube. In fact, the program’s search mechanism includes YouTube, SoundCloud, and other services as well as torrent trackers. You may search for a song and find it on YouTube or SoundCloud rather than a torrent or vice versa, and one-click downloads are the norm.
Perhaps not surprisingly at this point, FrostWire is also a file manager, and you can use it to store and organize your entire collection of multimedia. There’s a built-in player, so you can watch videos and listen to music directly from the application. There are file organization tools as well, and FrostWire even supports SoundCloud playlists. There’s even built-in support for Internet radio.
FrostWire is an excellent BitTorrent client but not without its issues. It does lack the professional polish of some of the more popular pay-for and ad-supported clients. Regular bug fixes are a good thing, but there will be stretches where the program downloads a patch every day or multiple times a day. The program also attempts to install some bloatware with the default installer, but you can block that.
Pros
- Free BitTorrent client
- P2P plus direct file sharing
- Active open-source community
Cons
- Some bloatware
- Aggressive updating