A simple terminal torrent client built on librqbit and ratatui.

kist keeps things minimal: add a torrent, watch it download, and get out of your way. It runs entirely in the terminal with an adaptive layout that works in small windows too.

• Add torrents from magnet links, .torrent files, or URLs
• Search apibay and download results without leaving the terminal
• DHT support for magnet links
• Session persistence, so your torrent list survives restarts
• Detail pane with overview, files, peers, trackers, and sources tabs
• Attach an arbitrary HTTP source to any torrent as a web seed (BEP 19)
• Pause, resume, and remove torrents
• Filter by name and sort by any column
• Mark several torrents and pause, resume, or remove them together
• Command palette (:) that finds any command by what it does
• Adaptive layout that hides low-priority columns in narrow terminals

Static Linux binaries for x86_64 and aarch64, and an x86_64 Windows binary, are available on the releases page, along with BLAKE3 checksums and build provenance attestations.

cargo install kist

git clone https://github.com/QaidVoid/kist
cd kist
cargo install --path .

kist                          # start the UI
kist <magnet|file|url>        # add a torrent on startup
kist --download-dir <DIR>     # override the download directory for this run
kist --config <PATH>          # use an alternate config file

Press ? inside kist to see this list at any time.

esc cancels prompts, closes the detail pane, and clears marks before it quits.

Press space to mark a torrent, and p, r, or d then apply to everything marked instead of just the row under the cursor. The header shows how many are marked so a bulk action never happens by surprise, and esc clears the marks. With nothing marked these keys behave exactly as they always have, acting on the selected torrent alone.

Removing marked torrents asks first and names the count. Deleting the files from disk stays on its own D key rather than the default confirmation.

Press : to search every command by name or by what it does, including the ones with no keybinding. Typing mirror finds the web seed command, sort speed sorts by speed directly rather than cycling. Each entry shows its key, so the palette teaches the keys rather than replacing them.

kist reads a TOML config file from the OS config directory (~/.config/kist/config.toml on Linux). A default file is written on first run. All fields are optional; missing fields fall back to their defaults.

# Where downloaded torrents are written (defaults to the OS download folder).
download_directory = "/home/you/Downloads"

# Inclusive port range for incoming peer connections. The first free port in
# the range is used; if all of them are taken, the OS picks one instead.
listen_ports = [6881, 6889]

# Global speed caps as human sizes (e.g. "2M", "512K"); omit for unlimited.
# These can also be changed live with the `L` key.
download_limit = "2M"
upload_limit = "512K"

# Enable the DHT (needed for magnet links).
enable_dht = true

# Persist the torrent list across restarts.
enable_session_persistence = true

# UI refresh interval in milliseconds.
refresh_interval_ms = 250

# Allow attaching HTTP web seeds to torrents.
enable_web_seeds = true

# Concurrent HTTP requests allowed per web seed.
web_seed_concurrency = 4

Session state is stored under the OS data directory (~/.local/share/kist/session on Linux), and attached web seeds alongside it in webseeds.json.

Press w on a torrent to attach an HTTP or HTTPS URL as a web seed, and the sources tab of the detail pane lists what is attached, how much each has served, and why one failed. This works on torrents you have already added, so you can point a stalled download at a mirror of the same content.

kist follows BEP 19 for the URL layout. A single-file torrent uses the URL as given, or appends the torrent name when the URL ends in /. A multi-file torrent fetches each file from <url>/<name>/<path>. Data arriving over HTTP is hash-checked exactly like data from the swarm, so a bad mirror costs you a refetch and nothing more.

Because librqbit has no web seed support of its own, kist runs each seed as a loopback BitTorrent peer that answers piece requests with ranged HTTP GETs. So a web seed needs the incoming peer listener to be up, and a seed shows up in the peers tab labelled web seed.

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.