WebTorrent Desktop and proxies: there is no proxy setting

WebTorrent Desktop has no proxy setting. Its preferences page, in the app's source, has five sections, "Folders", "Playback", "Default torrent app", "General" and "Trackers", and none of them mentions a proxy. We also found nothing showing that it follows your operating system's proxy, so treat all of its traffic as leaving from your own address.

If you were hoping to put it behind a proxy, the plain answer is to use a different client. If you want to stream an open film while it downloads, you do not need a proxy for that.

What WebTorrent Desktop is good at

WebTorrent Desktop plays video while it is still downloading, and it can connect to peers running in web browsers over WebRTC as well as to ordinary BitTorrent clients. That makes it pleasant for exactly the kind of content that is meant to be shared: Creative Commons and public-domain films on the Internet Archive, or the open movies the Blender project releases. Those are lawful to download and to seed, from your own connection, with no proxy involved.

It is also not moving much. The latest release is v0.24.0, from 29 August 2020. The repository still receives dependency updates, but no new version has shipped since then.

Why "no setting" means "no proxy"

When an app has no proxy option, there are two ways it could still use one: by following the system's proxy settings, or by being forced through one by another tool. For WebTorrent Desktop:

• System proxy: we could not confirm that any of its traffic honours it. Without that, the safe assumption is that it does not.
• Peers: a system proxy is usually an HTTP proxy, and in the torrent clients that document it, an HTTP proxy does not carry peer connections. WebRTC connections normally run over UDP, which an HTTP proxy cannot carry at all.
• Our side: we have not verified a UDP relay on our SOCKS5 gateways either, so we ask you to treat ProxyPanda's SOCKS5 as TCP only. HTTP vs SOCKS5 has the background.

So there is no setup to describe here, and we would rather not invent one.

If you need a separate address for torrents

Then you need a client that documents what its proxy covers. Our guides walk through the ones that do:

• qBittorrent, where peers are proxied once you tick two boxes that start off;
• Deluge, which proxies peers as soon as you choose a proxy type;
• BiglyBT, whose own wiki explains every leak it knows of.

Whichever you pick, the same honest limits apply. A proxy does not encrypt anything. A torrent moves data both ways, downloading and seeding, and how each direction counts on your plan is written under metering. And it is for lawful use: unauthorised sharing is not allowed on ProxyPanda, and our acceptable use policy puts staying within the law on you. Peer-to-peer traffic for lawful content is fine on our residential proxies and on dedicated ISP or datacenter IPs with no traffic cap.

If your real worry is privacy in public swarms because of copyright, the projects that discuss it point to a VPN rather than a proxy. Proxy vs VPN sets out what each one covers.

How to see for yourself that it goes direct

You do not have to take our word for it, and checking costs nothing:

1. If you have a ProxyPanda service, note its traffic figure in the dashboard (where to find it).
2. Play a short Creative Commons film in WebTorrent Desktop until it has downloaded a fair part of it.
3. A few minutes later, since dashboard figures update regularly rather than live, look again.

We expect it not to have moved for WebTorrent's sake, since nothing in the app points at a proxy. We have not run this particular check ourselves, so if your figure does move, tell us.

What we could not confirm

• Whether WebTorrent Desktop follows the operating system's proxy for any of its connections.
• Whether a tool that forces an application's connections through a proxy would work with it. We have not tested one.

Quick answers

Does WebTorrent Desktop support a proxy? No. Its preferences have no proxy section.

Does it use my system proxy? We could not confirm that it does. Assume its traffic is direct.

Is WebTorrent Desktop still maintained? Its last release, v0.24.0, came out in August 2020.

Do I need a proxy to stream open films with it? No. Creative Commons and public-domain films are fine to stream from your own connection.

Next step

For a lawful torrent job that does need a separate address, start with which torrent clients work with SOCKS5, and ask in Discord if you are unsure which fits.