In Operation
Here’s an image of Motrix in action.
We’ve created 3 tasks which are downloading ISO files including a daily build of Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat), the next release of Ubuntu with Long Term Support.
Motrix’s supports a maximum of 10 concurrently downloading tasks.
The interface is remarkably clean, and very simple and intuitive. At the top right reside five icons, which from left to right, let you create a new task, delete a selected task, refresh the task list, resume all tasks, and pause all tasks.
In the image below, we’re creating a new task.
The software supports both BitTorrent and Magnet. We can drag a torrent file into the window or select the file in the usual way.
As the image also shows, a single task can support up to 64 threads.
To show more of the functionality, we’ve tick the advanced options box. This reveals options such as using a mock User-Agent, proxy support and more. The proxy protocol supports HTTP and HTTPS, but not socks5. There’s also support for simple user password authentication.
What else does the software offer?
There’s support for UPnP & NAT-PMP Port Mapping, notifications of completed downloads, and the tracker list is updated every day automatically (this can be disabled).
There’s a useful resident system tray which offer another way to access things like basic and advanced preferences. These include a choice of theme, internationalization support, startup options, define the default download path, transmission upload and download limits, and much more.
There are also extensions available including YAAW for Chrome, an Aria2 Web Frontend, and Motrix Chrome Extension which lets you download all the files via Motrix replacing Chrome’s native download manager.
Summary
Motrix is a very slick and easy to use download manager. It gets our strong recommendation.
What don’t we like about Motrix. Unfortunately, it’s an Electron-based app so we weren’t expecting memory footprint to be low, as Electron-based apps are notorious for being memory hogs. However, we’re pleasantly surprised here. ps_mem reports memory usage is about 288MB. That’s lightweight by Electron standards.
Website: motrix.app
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Dr_rOot
License: MIT License
Motrix is written in JavaScript. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation and Summary