Actually downloading torrents onto an un-jailbroken iPad is impossible due to Apple’s anti-piracy policies that keep torrent apps out of the AppStore. However, we can use remote web apps to achieve effectively the same result. Today I’ll show you how.
uTorrent
First off, we need uTorrent. uTorrent has a remote web interface into which you can paste torrent links and magnet hashes into; it works fine on mobile Safari, so this will be key here. Obviously, you need a computer running somewhere which will be doing the downloading and storing files.
I’m going to assume you’ve already got uTorrent installed, updated and set up how you like for the sake of brevity. To set up the remote interface, go into uTorrent preferences and click on the remote tab. Assuming you’re running the latest version, there should be a uTorrentRemote option; enter a computer name and secure password.
To access your remote interface from the iPad, just sign in to remote.utorrent.com – it couldn’t be simpler, really. There’s also a local web server UI version that you can set up, but this is a little more technically involved and you’ll need to remember your internal IP address instead of just remote.utorrent.com every time (as well as messing around with ports etc; just use the web remote!)
Once you’re set up, test it out on your iPad. You should see something like this if everything has worked.
Great, add a bookmark to your Bookmark Bar for easy access later – now leave that tab alone and open up a new one, heading over to…
Movies.io
Honestly, any website that hosts torrent links would work, but I’ve chosen movies.io because the beautiful and simplistic interface looks just amazing on iPad, and it’s just a glorious way to browse and find movies. We can also copy the torrent links straight out without jumping through any hoops, and there’s no kind of annoying Flash banners or scammy DOWNLOAD buttons that ruin the experience on other sites.
The site needs no explanation as to how to find movies. Search, or view the top 50. Or just sit and stare at the beautiful design; whatever.
When you’ve found something you like, tap and hold on the download link, and select Copy.
Now, switch back to uTorrent remote and in the bottom left you’ll see a small + sign. Tap that, and select Add torrent URL. Paste in the URL you just copied, and presto, your torrent will begin downloading.
Note: after adding the torrent, the list became unresponsive for me. this might be due to a beta version of iOS, but a quick refresh worked, and it was definitely added.
Now you can browse for torrents, download and control everything from the comfort of your iPad. As a final step, you might want to set up a media server that will automatically detect any new downloads and let you stream them directly: I recommend Plex, but I’ll do a full rundown of that in a future post. Appreciated this tutorial? Please share using the buttons below, leave a comment, and don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed.
