As many of you may already know by now, the macOS upgrade to Catalina, means that the operating system no longer supports 32-bit apps. This leads to a very interesting situation with uTorrent macOS Catalina - the only version of uTorrent Catalina you can find is the browser one, with no standalone app.
The news that uTorrent announced they won’t be delivering a 64-bit version was not perceived as good by some of uTorrent’s most vocal users and voices were quick to state that this move is a wrong one from uTorrent. However, it is now clear that no matter how badly some wished to get a uTorrent macOS 10.15 version, the only way to keep using the torrent client is in a browser.
Now, we know that the next upgrade is on the horizon — in June 2021, Apple unveiled a preview of macOS 12 called Monterey. It will bring different changes to Mac computers, but one thing will remain the same: people will need to find a uTorrent alternative for this update.
An excellent downloader for Mac will make you feel like it was time to move on from uTorrent anyway with the wide range of features it delivers.
Downloading the torrents you like, organising the downloaded data, tagging and managing downloads are all part of the amazing functionality offered by Folx and with other features like magnet link downloads, Folx already looks like the new and improved version of uTorrent. And just when you thought it doesn’t get any better than this, there’s also Folx PRO to talk about.
We’ve already seen what Folx is capable of, however, if the more skeptical users still need more proof that this is actually a better uTorrent alternative for Mac, keep on reading to be amazed. First of all, you will no longer spend precious time checking several torrent websites for the content you want. Thanks to the amazing search function offered by Folx PRO, you will get this done in a couple of seconds by simply inputting your keywords.
With Folx PRO, you can also schedule the downloads at night, when you’re sleeping or when you know you’re not going to be around. The control you have extends even more as you can tell the app what to do when the download is finished - exit Folx, shut down or enter sleep mode. What’s more Folx PRO can automatically sync the media files with Music (former iTunes) so that you don’t have to waste any more time to get them synced later.
If you’re using certain websites to download your content and have a hard time remembering all the passwords, Folx PRO can help with that as well. It will remember the login credentials for any FTP or HTTP website so that you won’t have to waste time logging in manually before downloading from your favorite resources.
Pros
Cons
Supported OS: macOS
Price: starts from $19.95
Conclusion: Folx is a great replacement for uTorrent 64 bit Mac because this torrenting software was built to be compatible with the Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey upgrade. That means even if you update your Mac to the newest versions of macOS, you won’t lose your ability to keep your downloads and continue with this great BitTorrent client if you are using Folx.
When you are looking for a uTorrent alternative, you should consider what features you need from your BitTorrent client. We tested many options to find the ones that we liked best.
Security is important, so open-source torrent downloaders is a major plus, and also the interface options — web, graphical or command-line — is another key element to look for. Torrent downloads can hog a lot of CPU, so this is another factor to keep in mind-having control over download speed and scheduling can be a gamechanger.
We looked for downloaders with features like local peer discovery, UDP tracker support, web seeding, share ratio configuration, built-in torrent browsers, and more. While some apps are not feature-heavy, you can add plugins or extensions to customize what features you need.
These are the uTorrent alternatives that meet enough criteria mentioned above to earn a spot in our list of best BitTorrent clients to try as replacements.
| Folx PRO | Folx PRO | uTorrent Web | Vuze | Deluge | Transmission | qBittorrent | uTorrent Desktop | BitTorrent Desktop | BitTorrent Web | Tribler | BitLord | FrostWire | Free Download Manager |
| Prioritizing | Prioritizing | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Speed control | Speed control | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Deep tuning | Deep tuning | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Magnet links | Magnet links | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Torrent search | Torrent search | limited | limited | | | | | | limited | limited | | | |
| Torrent files creation | Torrent files creation | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Smart tagging | Smart tagging | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Apple Music integration | Apple Music integration | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Regular downloads | Regular downloads | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Native interface | Native interface | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| macOS 10.15+ | macOS 10.15+ | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| $19.95 | $19.95 | free | $47.88/year | free | free | free | $19.95/year | free | free | free | free | free | free |
Deluge is a free cross-platform uTorrent alternative with Mac OS 10.15 Catalina support. There are three main user interfaces: GTK for the desktop, web interface and console. Deluge functionality can be profoundly improved by a wide choice of plugins.
This torrents downloader is initially a minimal client, but you can subsequently add more prolific features that you may need at the moment. One more great thing about Deluge is that it is open-source, so you can make sure it's secure and comes without any malicious code.
Pros
Cons
Supported OS: macOS, Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems
Price: Free
Conclusion: Though Deluge has a few unique things of its own and can be vastly customized thanks to its plugin interface for implementing additional extensions, demanding users may seek for another feature-crammed, but at the same time less resources-consuming torrent downloader for Mac Catalina.
Transmission is rated among the best uTorrent alternatives for its full support of Mac OS X Catalina. Since its source code is available for anyone to review, one can see that it doesn't bundle any toolbars, scammy advertisements or payware.
The app possesses a clean user interface and it takes only a few clicks to set standard features, while advanced options stay out of sight. Though it's easy to navigate to basic operations, accessing certain options like viewing file lists is definitely effort-taking.
Pros
Cons
Supported OS: macOS, Windows, Linux
Price: Free
Conclusion: Transmission may seem to have a rich features list, however it's still unable to preload magnet metadata and lacks tracker exchange. The app also does not feature an internal search engine. No proxy server support, together with the lack of super-seeding algorithm, often make the users look for a torrent client for Mac Catalina with more extended functionality.
qBittorrent, being listed among top Mac torrent clients, is a free app with a plethora of features. The app is open-source and junk-free. qBittorrent possesses three types of interface: graphical, web and command line.
This torrent client covers not only basic features, but also an abundance of advanced options like pre-fetching magnet metadata or sequential downloading which lets the users download files successively and stream the media. The great option qBittorrent provides is internal torrent search through the major torrent trackers, which however requires installing Python.
Among other prolific features which experienced torrent users will certainly appreciate are IP filtering which blocks specified IP addresses, automatic torrent adding, web seeding, configuring share ratio limits and tracker exchange.
Pros
Cons
Supported OS: macOS, Windows, Linux operating systems
Price: Free
Conclusion: Despite of its support for Catalina and wide range of great features (like embedded tracker, used to create torrents, adding RSS feeds for automatic downloading and super-seeding), qBittorrent still cannot be named the best uTorrent for Mac alternative, since it has an overloaded outdated user interface that won’t be immediately familiar to uTorrent users.
Besides, various issues have been reported multiple times including files corruption, downloads freezing and considerable RAM consumption.
Vuze is a decent uTorrent Mac OS Catalina equivalent for a power user mainly because of the app's two flagship features - in-built torrent search and remote Vuze management which enables monitoring upload and download progress from any computer or a mobile device.
Vuze seems literally overloaded with advanced options like built-in video player which supports different video formats, as well as subtitles and switching between several audio streams.
Vuze also provides easy subscription for the new torrents related to your preferences. The app fully supports Catalina and has both graphical and web interfaces.
The basic version of Vuze covers only primary options while many advanced ones are available through installation of plugins which can be categorized in multiple groups - automation, remote access, networks, etc. Some of Vuze useful plugins include local peer discovery, automatic subtitles download, upload speed auto-handling, automatic torrents categorization and others.
There's also a paid-for version called Vuze Plus which allows removing ads and provides built-in antivirus protection. Vuze Plus also features DVD burning and sequential downloading.
Pros
Cons
Supported OS: macOS, Windows, Linux operating systems.
Price: Free
Conclusion: Many users find the Vuze interface far from reasonably structured or obvious. Besides, though vastly customizable via various plugins, Vuze nevertheless lacks tracker exchange functionality. All this unfortunately stops the expert torrent users from naming Vuze as the ideal uTorrent Mac Catalina alternative.
Tribler is an open-source BitTorrent client with macOS Catalina support. Tribler is a decentralized anonymous peer-to-peer client operating independently of external torrent trackers and not using any of them to discover content.
Tribler uses its own file-sharing paradigm which significantly improves download efficiency. Social-based cooperative downloading means that the peers from the same group can speed up the downloading by donating bandwidth, for example.
Tribler automatically searches other computers to exchange information and downloads parts of the file from different users. However, this cannot ensure the optimal source for content downloading.
Tribler has graphical, web and command-line interfaces. The app is simple and doesn't provide a diversity of features. It covers mainly essential options like tasks prioritization, magnet links support, broad-catching and web seeding. Tribler functionality can be improved with various extensions like integrated search and videos playback while download is still in progress. There's also a filter which can ban adult content from showing.
Pros
Cons
Supported OS: macOS, Windows, Ubuntu Linux
Price: Free
Conclusion: Though having such obvious advantages as anonymity provided by peer-to-peer routing, built-in search and no adware, Tribler still cannot be advised as an optimal choice of a torrent client Mac Catalina for an experienced torrent user since it lacks Ipv6 and UDP tracker transfer protocol support, super-seeding and local peer discovery.
If you need more sophisticated options, Tribler won't be able to provide them to you. Moreover, the necessity to break Mac security protocols in order to install this app on your computer, makes Tribler not reliable enough for the ultimate torrent experience.
Most of you may be wondering what is the logic behind uTorrent not working in Catalina. And you won’t be wrong to ask yourselves this question since uTorrent is still one of the best torrent apps to date. However, at a closer look, we see that uTorrent is the go-to torrent client when it comes to Windows users.
On Mac, the situation is a bit different and there are a lot of close contenders. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why uTorrent decided not to invest any more resources and man hours into building a 64-bit uTorrent app.
When we also take into consideration that the Mac client did not receive updates for almost an year and the most recent BitTorrent Speed release was designed for Windows users only, the picture is getting clearer.
So, with macOS Catalina terminating support for 32-bit apps, we are going to see the end of uTorrent on Mac devices as we know it. Of course, users that want to continue using uTorrent will be able to do so in the Web version of the client, however, those that prefer standalone apps will surely use the awesome alternative that was already presented above.
While many people may be initially upset about the uTorrent and macOS Catalina (macOS 10.15+) incompatibility, it’s really an opportunity to find a better BitTorrent client. Of course, if you are a devotee to uTorrent and unwilling to try an alternative, you can use the web version.
If you start using uTorrent Web and become frustrated with how many resources this “lighter version” uses up, then it may be worth your while to check out some of the other options we’ve reviewed.
We understand that finding an alternative BitTorrent client can feel like a big change if you’ve gotten used to using uTorrent, but try to go in with an open mind — you may be pleasantly surprised! With tools like a built-in torrent browser and scheduled download features, uTorrent alternatives like Folx have ushered in a new era of convenience and quality in the torrent downloading world.
For those who want to customize their torrent downloader with the features they want, options like Deluge and Tribler let you choose what plugins and extensions you install to build up the tool for your needs.
For people missing their favorite BitTorrent client, unfortunately, there will be no uTorrent macOS Big Sur compatibility coming anytime soon. The good news is, there are other options, and our top choice, Folx, works with the latest macOS Monterey, so you can upgrade your Mac and keep downloading without any hiccups!
Hopefully our review sets you on the right track, so you can get back to torrenting!
If you are a veteran Mac user and have already updated your Mac to macOS Catalina (version 10.15), released to the public on October 7, 2019, you should know for sure that Catalina is the first version of macOS to support only 64-bit apps.
Many developers, including BitTorrent, decided to discontinue support for their 32-bit desktop apps and not to upgrade them to the 64-bit version. Thus two BitTorrent 32-bit Mac leading apps, uTorrent and BitTorrent, stopped working after the upgrade to Catalina. However, the users are offered to use the web replacement of uTorrent Mac, called uTorrent Web.
Unfortunately, uTorrent desktop client is not available on macOS Catalina and Big Sur. And we are sure the uTorrent Monterey option won’t be in the next version of macOS either. Instead of Classic uTorrent, you can use uTorrent Web for Mac. That means, you can use uTorrent in your browser. It is convenient, but the web-based version lacks some advanced features available in the desktop one.
Since uTorrent is available only as a web-based client, you’ll need to look for an alternative. Our recommendation is Folx which is a classic uTorrent 64 bit Mac alternative with graphical user interface and full set of traditional features every decent torrent downloader for Mac should possess – high download speed, intensive built-in torrent search and unobtrusiveness. Besides, Folx is free and contains no ads or malware.
Sure enough there's a big choice of torrent apps and it's not a trivial task to find the best torrent client Mac Catalina. On the Internet, you can find lists of top uTorrent equivalents in 2021. But what we should first pay attention to is total macOS 10.15 support.
Folx is our number one recommendation since it is fully-integrated with macOS Catalina and provides smart consuming of system resources, being easy-to-use and intuitively-designed for an average user. At the same time, a more experienced torrent downloader requires extensive control over the downloading process, which is fully provided by a galore of Folx advanced options.
Folx is literally feature-crammed, while the simplicity of other torrent clients becomes their weakness. The power of Folx lies in the in-depth control of the overall process, starting from using its internal customizable torrent search engine. Folx also possesses plenty of unique features, which a basic torrent client lacks without doubt, like automatic sync of the downloaded music and videos to Music playlists on your Mac according to the tags you’ve previously assigned to your downloads.
Thus, myriad of useful features combined with easy navigation, makes Folx the best uTorrent alternative in 2021.