Finding a torrent these days sucks. One site is a minefield of fake download buttons. Another hides the real link under a popup that spawns two more tabs. And after all that, half the results are dead, zero seeders.
torlink is a torrent finder that lives in your terminal, with zero setup and nothing to configure. One search checks a short, curated list of reputable sources at once, and whatever you pick downloads straight to your computer. The files are yours, saved to your downloads folder.
Get started
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Install Node (from nodejs.org), it's all torlink needs.
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Open your terminal.
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Start it:
npx torlnk
That's the only thing you'll type. torlink opens straight to a search bar: search for what you want, paste in a magnet link or a bare infohash, drag a .torrent file from your file manager onto the window, or just press Enter on an empty box to browse the curated library. From there it's all keypresses, nothing to memorize, and ? brings up the full list anytime.
Finding something
Type what you're looking for and press Enter. Results stream in from every source as they answer, tagged with size and how many people are sharing each one, so you can see what'll come down fast. Arrow to what you want and press d to save it, or shift+d to pick a different folder for just that download.
Your downloads
Active downloads sit up top with their progress, speed, and time left; when one finishes it drops into Recently downloaded just below, so the list stays tidy. Everything's still there when you come back, and anything interrupted picks up where it left off.
Downloads run in the background while you keep searching, so you can queue up as many as you want. They save to your downloads folder, and the Downloads pane keeps tabs on each one; press o anytime to change where that is, or grab one result with shift+d to send it somewhere else without touching the default. When something finishes it keeps seeding automatically so the next person can find it too, and the Seeding tab lets you pause or stop that anytime.
When a download comes with several videos or tracks, torlink drops a playlist.m3u into each folder holding more than one, so a course split into modules plays straight through in order. Run torlnk --no-playlist if you'd rather it didn't.
What it searches
A short, hand-picked list of trusted sources:
| Category | Sources |
|---|---|
| Games | FitGirl |
| Movies | YTS, The Pirate Bay, 1337x, BitTorrented |
| TV | EZTV, The Pirate Bay, 1337x, BitTorrented |
| Anime | Nyaa, SubsPlease |
Games are the only category that can run code, so they come from FitGirl alone, a repacker with a long, trusted track record; everything else is plain video and subtitles. If a source is down, the search carries on without it, and torlink tells you which one is offline.
Headless
torlink also runs without the TUI, for servers and seedboxes:
torlnk search "<query>" [--category games|movies|tv|anime]
print one JSON document of merged search results
torlnk seed <path> share files you already have
torlnk watch <dir> download anything dropped into a folder
torlnk serve take magnets over HTTP
torlnk files stream finished downloads over HTTP
torlnk attach keep the TUI alive across ssh sessions
Add --daemon to keep seed, watch, serve, or files running after you log out; torlnk --help has the full list of modes and flags.
Sharing something of your own
Everything else starts with a torrent someone else made. seed goes the other way:
torlnk seed ./album
It turns the folder into a torrent, saves album.torrent next to it, prints the magnet, and starts sharing right away. Send anyone the magnet and they pull the files from you.
serve takes a .torrent as well as a magnet, so you can hand it one you already have:
POST /add {"magnet":"magnet:?xt=..."}
POST /add {"torrent":"<base64>"}
Either can carry a seedTime for that one torrent, in the same grammar as --seed-time ("30d", "2h"; 0 means never stop). It wins over the daemon-wide flag, so a box that normally drops seeds after a couple of hours can keep one release alive for a month. Change it later, or on something already downloading, through the control endpoint:
POST /control {"id":"<info hash>","action":"seed-time","seedTime":"30d"}
GET /downloads reports the limit and when it falls due (seedUntil) on every torrent that has one.
Contributing
To run or work on torlink locally:
- Clone the repository and open the folder.
- Install dependencies:
npm install
- Run the development version:
Or build it and run the bundled version:
npm run dev
npm run build npx torlnk
Before opening a PR, skim CONTRIBUTING.md; it lays out the bar with examples from real merged PRs.
Privacy
Your files stay on your disk, and nothing routes through a central server; torlink only talks to the torrent network directly. Once a download finishes it keeps seeding by default, sharing it back so the next person can find it just as easily. The network only works because people pass things along, and even a few minutes makes a real difference. If you'd rather not, opt out anytime: open the Seeding tab, press p to pause or stop any item, and press it again to pick it back up. Always your call.
