BiglyBT has most of the features of Vuze, its predecessor. However, it lacks Vuze's premium and proprietary features and features the developers considered bloat, including DVD burning, gaming promotions, the video-sharing content network, and the installer's advertisements.[3][4] Some removed features such as the embedded media player, RSS scanner, and iTunes integration are available via downloadable plugins.[5]
BiglyBT's features include swarm merging, using different torrents to download the same file;[6] limiting download/upload speeds by tag, peer-set (e.g. country), network (public or I2P), and individual peer;[7] detecting and integrating with VPNs;[5][7] support for the I2P network;[8] remote control[7] with any Android app that supports Transmission's RPC protocol; and "robust settings".[9] Many of these features are included via bundled plugins.[10]
Development of Vuze ground to a halt in early 2017, with no new releases or commits being made since April, featured content from the content network becoming inaccessible, and users reporting outdated antivirus definitions.[11] The two main developers, parg and TuxPaper, left the project and focused their efforts on an ad-free fork called BiglyBT with goals of shedding commercial interests.[12] They proceeded to remove Vuze's premium and proprietary features and license the entire project under the GNU General Public License.[13]
In December 2017, after pushing an update for review, the Android version of BiglyBT was rejected from Google Play for mentioning "other brands: Bittorrent" in the app listing's description, surprising the developers. The app was restored to Google Play after all mentions of "BitTorrent" were replaced with "torrent".[14]
Version 2.5—released 22 September 2020—added support for version 2 of the BitTorrent protocol,[15] making it the first BitTorrent client to do so. The updated protocol features improved checksums, including per-file hashes that allow improved swarm merging. libtorrent, a BitTorrent library used by popular clients such as qBittorrent and μTorrent Web but not BiglyBT, implemented the functionality a few weeks prior (with version 2.0, released 7 September 2020[16]), but clients that use the library had yet to incorporate the functionality as of BiglyBT's update.[6][17]
Reception
In April 2020, TorrentFreak named BiglyBT the tenth popular BitTorrent client with 0.3% of the market share.[18]
Reviewers noted the higher amount of computer resource consumption due to using Java and appreciated the amount of features, praising the swarm merging feature and amount of options.[5][7] Whitson Gordon of PCMag described BiglyBT as "Features Galore, If You Want Them".[19]
^ abErnesto Van der Sar (11 October 2020), "BiglyBT is the First Torrent Client to Support the BitTorrent V2 Spec", TorrentFreak, BiglyBT is the first torrent client to add full support for the BitTorrent v2 specification, including hybrid torrents. The client is far ahead of the curve as the first torrent site has yet to adopt the new specification.
^Tyagi, Anubhav (7 January 2024), "12 Best Free Torrent Clients For macOS in 2024", Techworm, retrieved 19 June 2024, Taking the anonymous download baton forward, BiglyBT has I2P support is available, installed by default as a plugin. Naturally, the download will be slower than the default settings owing to peer relay.
^Bigly Software, "Feature List", BiglyBT, retrieved 1 August 2024
^parg (20 June 2024), Plugins, GitHub, retrieved 1 August 2024
^Van der Sar, Ernesto (5 April 2020), "uTorrent is the Most Used BitTorrent Client By Far", TorrentFreak, The list is further completed by qBitTorrent, Deluge, Free Download Manager (FDM), and BiglyBT. The latter is operated by former developers of Vuze, which was the second most-used torrent client ten years ago, but is no longer actively developed.
