Torrent Client Guide

How to bind your VPN and port forward to your torrent client

VPN Binding

Torrenting exposes your IP address to the swarm. When downloading copyrighted material, copyright holders can monitor the swarm and send infringement notices to your ISP. Whether any action is taken depends on your ISP and your country’s laws. This is why using a VPN is highly recommended. VPN killswitches aren’t always reliable. The best way to avoid exposing your IP address is by binding the VPN network interface to your torrent client. This ensures that downloads/uploads occur only while the VPN tunnel is active, reducing the chance of leaks to virtually zero.

Requirements

A torrent client that supports network interface binding. Recommended:

• qBittorrent - Windows, macOS, Linux
• Flud - Android
• iTorrent - IOS

Alternatives: PC, Android.

This guide focuses on qBittorrent. Method is similar for other clients.

Recommended VPNs

FMHY VPN Section

Method (All OSes)

1. Within qBittorrent, go to Options → Advanced tab.
2. Note any changes in the Network Interface list when you connect/disconnect your VPN (you may need to restart qBittorrent to refresh the list).
3. Select the interface that appears/disappears when toggling the VPN - this is the VPN tunnel interface.
4. Click Apply.
5. Restart qBittorrent.

OS-Specific Instructions

Windows

1. Start the VPN and connect to a location.
2. Within qBittorrent, go to Options → Advanced tab.
3. Change Network Interface to the one labeled with your VPN name (e.g., Mullvad). Click Apply.
4. Right-click the qBittorrent icon in the system tray. Click Exit. Reopen qBittorrent.

macOS

1. Start the VPN and connect to a location.
2. Open the Terminal (Applications/Utilities).
3. Run the following command:

   ifconfig | grep -A 2 utun
4. Identify the utun interface with an IP that starts with inet 10. (e.g., utun3).
5. Within qBittorrent, go to Options → Advanced tab.
6. Set Network Interface to the utun interface found in step 4. Click Apply.
7. Right-click the qBittorrent Dock icon, click Quit. Reopen qBittorrent.

Linux

1. Start the VPN and connect to a location.
2. Within qBittorrent, go to Options → Advanced tab.
3. Set the Network Interface to one of the following (depending on your VPN and protocol):

• Mullvad (OpenVPN via app): tun0
• Mullvad (WireGuard via kernel): wg-mullvad
• Mullvad (WireGuard via userspace): tun0
• WireGuard (standalone): mlvd-xx
• OpenVPN (standalone): tun0

4. Click Apply.
5. Right-click the qBittorrent icon in the tray. Click Exit. Reopen qBittorrent.

How to Test

Download any legal torrent such as Ubuntu and load it into qBittorrent.

• If binding is correct, the download will only start when the VPN is active.
• If disconnected from the VPN, nothing should download - confirming the binding is working.

Port Forwarding

Port forwarding helps with torrenting by allowing other peers on the internet to directly connect to your torrent client. This increases the number of peers you can communicate with, which usually leads to faster download and upload speeds, better seeding efficiency, and more stable connections. Without port forwarding, your client is often limited to making only outgoing connections.

1. Within qBittorrent, go to Options → Connection tab.
2. Click the Random button to set a port.
3. Note your device’s private IP address. You can find tutorials for each OS online.
4. Open your modem’s web panel.
5. Go to the Port Forwarding (aka Port Mapping) tab.
6. Create two rules: one for UDP and one for TCP. For each rule, enter the private IP address, the private and public port (same as step 2).

Credits

Thank you to Daiqo for the original version.