Download BitTorrent Files through Your Browser without a Client Installed

Let's say you're sitting in an Internet cafe or public library computer, and you want to download a file using BitTorrent. Most likely, a BitTorrent client like µTorrent or Azureus hasn't been installed so you might think you're out of luck.

There are actually two things you can do at this point. If you want to schedule a download to your home computer remotely, you can use µTorrent's WebUI feature to control µTorrent over the Internet. You can manage all aspects of downloading a BitTorrent file using WebUI.

Alternatively, if you want to download a file to a public computer where there are administrative restrictions on installing additional software, you can use BitLet. It's a completely browser-based BitTorrent client and probably the simplest way yet to download torrents.

All you need to do is point to a torrent file's URL and hit "Download torrent" to get started. For instance, let's say we want to download Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture in PDF format.

The URL to the torrent can be found on Legaltorrents. Just paste it into the URL field, hit Download, and select the directory where you want to save the ebook. Then the download will start automatically. You can even resume downloads.

The only troublesome thing about BitLet is that you need to have Java installed and enabled in your browser for it to work.