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Hack Attack: Remote control your torrents with uTorrent's WebUI
You're a BitTorrent freak, so why should you let a little thing like being away from your home computer stop you from getting your fix? Using the popular, free uTorrent client, you can control your BT downloads from anywhere using a full-featured web interface.
With uTorrent's WebUI, you can add, remove, and manage the downloads you've got running at home no matter where you are. Hit the jump and I'll show you how to get it all set up.
NOTE: uTorrent is Windows-only, but you can access and control uTorrent via the WebUI using virtually any browser on any platform (except for IE6, that is, which "is not supported and never will be").
Set up WebUI on your home computer
First, you'll need to grab a copy of uTorrent if you don't already have it. It's a standalone executable, so just put it wherever you like, give it a run, and let's get started.
Next you've got to grab the WebUI files (the first link in the post). Here's a direct link that should work for now, but I can't guarantee it'll always be the latest, so you might want to check the first link to make sure.
The file you've downloaded should be called something like webui_v0.310_beta_2.rar. The .rar extension is an archive, so use your favorite unzipping program (like Lifehacker favorite 7-Zip) to get to the goods inside.
Inside, you should see a zip file named webui.zip. You need to copy this file to your uTorrent application data directory, so hit Windows-R to bring up your Windows run box and paste in %AppData%\uTorrent, then hit Enter. Now just drag the webui.zip file into the Explorer window that just popped up.
Simple so far, right? Now you need to open up uTorrent and go to Options -> Preferences, then expand the Advanced tab and click on Web UI. Tick the box labeled Enable Web Interface, and enter in a username and password (it can be whatever you want).
As you can see from the screenshot, you can also set up a different port for the WebUI to listen for connections, but since the default uses the already-forwarded BitTorrent port, it'll probably be easiest to just stick with the defaults. If none of what I just said makes any sense to you, don't worry about it - just forge ahead.
Now just hit Apply and you should be set up. However, before you close the uTorrent Preferences, go to Connection and take note of the Listening port (see screenshot below). You'll need this in a bit.
Take the WebUI for a test drive
Now that you've got the uTorrent WebUI all set up on your home computer, test it out on the same computer by directing your browser to http://localhost:port/gui/ where you replace 'port' with the port number you copied down above. If all goes well, you'll be prompted for a username/password. Enter in the credentials you set up above and voila - the familiar uTorrent interface should load into your browser. For a larger example, click the screenshot above.
Play around with the interface to get an idea of what you can do. The WebUI doesn't offer every feature of your desktop version, but it lets you tackle most of the same features, most notably the ability to start new downloads by either uploading a .torrent file or by entering the address of a torrent URL. You can also start, stop, and remove torrents, tweak bandwith settings for your torrents, or tweak your uTorrent settings. If you've spent much time playing with uTorrent on your desktop, the WebUI is nearly identical, and surprisingly responsive.
Access uTorrent from anywhere
Of course, the whole point of the WebUI is to allow you to access the WebUI interface from any computer connected to the internet. To get connected from another computer, all you need to know is the proper URL and port. If you're accessing the WebUI from another computer, you can't use the localhost address we used above, so you'll need to connect using your IP address. Since your IP address can change on you, and since remembering a string of numbers can be difficult, I'd recommend that you assign a domain name to your home computer. That will allow you to get to your WebUI from any computer by entering an address like http://mywebui.homeip.net:portnumber/gui. Handy, huh?
If you'd rather not set up a domain name, you can quickly grab your host computer's IP address external IP address from a site like WhatIsMyIP and just hope it doesn't change. Just swap the IP address for localhost in your URL. Just remember that in any case, you need to have uTorrent running on your home computer in order to access it via the WebUI.
But wait, there's more! You can also install and set up the uTorrent WebUI Firefox extension, which provides a live update of your uTorrent download/upload speeds in your Firefox statusbar. Clicking the uTorrent status bar will open the WebUI in Firefox's sidebar. If you need help setting up the extension, TorrentFreak's guide should help.
Finally, iGoogle/Google Personalized Homepage lovers might want to try running the uTorrent Google Gadget to keep tabs on their downloads.
And that's it. Get downloading, folks! — Adam Pash
Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker whose tubes are full of BitTorrent. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
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