WebTorrent Updated

An unofficial, updated fork of WebTorrent Desktop for personal use on Apple Silicon Macs.

This project modernizes the original desktop client and is maintained independently. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the WebTorrent project, and it is not an official WebTorrent release.

Install and run

The supported development target is an Apple Silicon Mac. Use the exact Node.js and npm versions pinned by the repository:

brew install node@24
git clone https://github.com/1337Core/webtorrent-desktop.git
cd webtorrent-desktop
export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/node@24/bin:$PATH"
npm ci --ignore-scripts
npm run artifacts
npm run dev

npm run artifacts installs and verifies the pinned Electron runtime and native WebRTC binary without enabling dependency lifecycle scripts.

Test and package

npm test
npm run e2e
npm run package:check

The packaged application is written to out/. It is an ad-hoc-signed local build; there is no public installer, notarization, or automatic updater.

The soak and resource suite runs separately, because a full run takes the better part of an hour:

npm run soak

It drives two hundred torrent lifecycle cycles, a thirty-minute sustained transfer-and-seek run over TCP and native WebRTC, and twenty-five supervised engine restarts, checking memory, descriptor, socket, and shutdown budgets throughout. Like every other suite, it uses generated local fixtures and reaches no public swarm.

The migration decisions and acceptance gates are documented in plan.md.

License

MIT. Based on the original work of WebTorrent contributors.