uTorrent Freeleech Tips Using ‘Labels’ and ‘Scheduler’

October 11, 2008 by sharky

You’ve probably seen this before - your private tracker has announced a "freeleech" coming up in the near future, giving you a great head’s up notice of when it’s going down. If you want to use the opportunity to buffer the account ratio or finally be able to download what you’ve always wanted, µTorrent comes loaded with a couple of handy features that are tailor-made for home seeding. With ‘Labels’ you’ll be able to categorize a select group of torrents, download them beforehand, and start them all at once - at the click of a button. In the event that you’re not at your home PC when the freeleech begins, or have no access to a computer (no WebUI), the ’scheduler’ feature will launch the torrents at a predetermined time.

Using ‘Labels’

The Labels feature is great for organizing groups of torrents, especially for ones that you want to download at a later time. With just one click you’ll be able to start a group (or groups) of torrents simultaneously (as for the example - as soon as a freeleech begins).

Before the freeleech begins, the first thing you’ll need to do is download the desired torrents ahead of time, and load them into µTorrent - but do NOT start them. You can do this hours, even days beforehand - it doesn’t matter. To accomplish this, simply remove the checkmark for "Start torrent" when initially loading the *.torrent file.

To create a new label for these torrents, highlight the newly added ’stopped’ torrents, right-click and select "Label > New Label…" as shown below.

Enter a name for the new label, for example "FREELEECH", and click OK.

You’ll now notice there’s a new category (label) for these torrents, as listed in the left menu. In the example, we’ve named it FREELEECH.

As soon as your private tracker goes into freeleech mode, simply right-click on the FREELEECH label (not the individual torrents) and select "Start". All torrents will now begin to download simultaneously.

Other Implementations

Perhaps you were already familiar with µTorrent’s Label feature - here’s a few tips on how to optimize it. What makes this so remarkable is that you can control the settings for torrents in a collective group, rather than fumbling through a huge global list of torrents, or having to modify the settings for torrents individually. For example, if you right-click on your label name (FREELEECH) and select "Properties", you’ll be able to set upload and download speeds for the entire group of torrents in the label, as opposed to doing it for each torrent. You’re not giving up individual functionality - you’ll still be able to modify settings for each specific torrent.

Partial Downloading — Now that you have a group of torrents neatly organized and waiting for your tracker’s freeleech, you can control other torrent options, such as setting up "partial seeding" for torrents that haven’t been downloaded yet. In your label, highlight a particular torrent and then go into the "Files" tab at the bottom, and change priorities (i.e. "Don’t Download"). NOTE: You could have done this anyways without the use of a label, but this keeps everything neat and tidy.

Categorize Your Private Trackers

While this isn’t a ‘freeleech’ tip, Labels are also great for grouping torrents together that come from various trackers. Why would you want to do this? If you’re anything like me and have a bunch of different private trackers, it’s near impossible to sort through where they’ve come from. Typically you’ll either need to rename the torrent title (in µTorrent) or click the "Trackers" tab at the bottom. An easier solution is to create labels for individual trackers. Personally, I like to keep at least one torrent seeding from each of my favourite trackers, either for "seeder bonus" or simply just to have an active torrent on the account.

µTorrent ‘Scheduler’

The Scheduler feature is less than perfect, for we’re unable to set an actual predetermined date to the list, nor are we able to set individual torrents to a particular schedule. However, assuming you know well in advance of an impending freeleech, you can still use it to set it up a week ahead of time. To do this, go into "Preferences > Scheduler". In the example below, we set it up so µTorrent will start the torrents (full speed) on Wednesday at midnight (00:00) and end on Friday at 2 PM (14:00), after which the torrents (times marked in pink) will turn into ’seeding only’ torrents.

Unfortunately, this is global for all torrents, so anything else in µTorrent will also be affected. One workaround for this is to set up another instance of µTorrent that is specific only to the freeleech, and schedule it that way.

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