🌗
Light & dark
Light, dark, or follow the system — with a matching app icon.
NATIVE BITTORRENT FOR MAC
A torrent client
that feels like
a Mac app.
Swarm runs the proven libtorrent engine inside a real Mac app. Live charts, streaming, RSS, and proxy privacy — and no ads, ever.
0 peers
0.0 MB/s ↓
0 pieces
FREE · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon
Play with the swarm.
This is running in your browser. Click around. Pick a color. The real app works the same, only faster.
Your app, your color.
The accent you picked up top? In the real app it drives everything — selection, charts, even the Dock icon.
More than a
download box.
📈
Live throughput
Download and upload, charted live — for the whole app and each torrent. Most clients just show a number.
📱
Control it from your phone
Switch on web control and run Swarm from any browser — add magnets, pause, resume, remove, and tap a torrent for its files, peers, and trackers. On your home network, or anywhere over Tailscale with a real HTTPS padlock. Password‑required; nothing exposed to the internet.
Any browserLAN + Tailscale🔒 HTTPSTap for detail
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Privacy by proxy
Route peers, trackers, and DNS through a SOCKS5 proxy or VPN — with a kill‑switch that stops transfers if it drops, and a one‑tap test. Force encryption too.
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One‑click magnets
Default handler — click a magnet anywhere, it just adds.
🎛️
Total control
Global & per‑torrent speed caps, queue limits, file priorities, seed‑ratio targets, and move a download's data anywhere — mid‑flight.
↓ 5 MB/s↑ 1 MB/s🔒 EncryptedSOCKS5Ratio 2.0Sequential
▶
Stream while downloading
Sequential mode + a Play button that opens media as it fills.
🏷️
Tag anything
Label torrents and filter your library by your own categories.
⏱️
On a schedule
Throttle speeds during set hours; stop seeding at a ratio, or quit when done.
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RSS auto‑download
Subscribe to a feed with a filter; new items grab themselves.
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Watch folder
Drop a .torrent in a folder — it imports automatically.
🔨
Create & share
Make a .torrent from any file or folder — trackers, comment, private flag.
☑️
Choose your files
Pick exactly which files download, with QuickLook thumbnails.
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Shortcuts & automation
Add magnets, pause, or check status from the Shortcuts app and Siri — and run a Shortcut automatically when a download finishes.
“Add a magnet to Swarm”Pause allOn‑finish → Shortcut
🐢
Turtle mode
One‑click global throttle from the menu bar (⇧⌘T) when you need your bandwidth back.
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Auto‑extract
Finishes a download and unpacks the .zip/.tar for you — ready to use.
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Usage & caps
See your data usage by day, and auto‑pause at a monthly limit.
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Cards or table
Switch to a dense, sortable table — plus smart filters for stalled, seedless, or large torrents.
How Swarm stacks up.
Side‑by‑side with Folx, qBittorrent, and Transmission — an honest scorecard, gaps and all.
✓ Full support
– Partial / limited
✗ Not supported
* Swarm’s “Built-in torrent search” is limited by design — it bundles no content‑search scrapers, which keeps it a clean, general‑purpose BitTorrent client.
Head‑to‑head: Swarm vs Transmission· vs qBittorrent· vs Folx
Questions.
Is Swarm free?
Yes — free, with no ads. Donations are appreciated but never required.
Is it safe to install?
Yes. Swarm is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens with no Gatekeeper warnings. It runs sandboxed with a hardened runtime.
Does it run on Apple Silicon?
Yes — Swarm is built for Apple Silicon (M1 or later) on macOS 14 Sonoma or later. It doesn't run on older Intel Macs.
Is Swarm a good Transmission or qBittorrent alternative?
Yes. It's a genuinely native Mac app with live throughput charts, one-click streaming, RSS auto-download, scheduling, and SOCKS5 proxy privacy — where the others fall short on the Mac. See the full comparison.
Does Swarm include a torrent search engine?
No — by design. Swarm is a general-purpose BitTorrent client and bundles no content-search scrapers, which keeps it clean and focused.
How do I control Swarm from my phone — even away from home?
Swarm has a built‑in web remote you open in any browser. Pair it with Tailscale (a free, encrypted mesh VPN — no port‑forwarding, nothing exposed to the internet) to reach it anywhere:
- Install Tailscale on your Mac and your phone, and sign both into the same account.
- In Swarm, open Settings ▸ Remote, turn on Enable web control, and set a password.
- On your home Wi‑Fi, open the
http://…:8092address it shows from your phone, and log in. - Away from home, use the Tailscale address in that same panel (
https://your‑mac.…ts.net) — it works over 5G. For a browser padlock, run the one‑timetailscale servecommand Swarm shows there.
Can I use a VPN and still control Swarm from my phone?
Yes — use Swarm's built‑in SOCKS5 proxy instead of a system‑wide VPN. A full VPN routes everything and fights Tailscale over the network; the proxy hides only Swarm's traffic, so Tailscale (and your phone remote) keep working:
- In your VPN's app or account, find/generate SOCKS5 proxy details — a host (e.g.
proxy‑nl.privateinternetaccess.com), port1080, and a username/password. PIA, Mullvad and others provide one. - In Swarm: Settings ▸ Network ▸ Proxy → Connect through: SOCKS5, then enter the host, port, username and password.
- Turn on the kill switch so transfers stop (and local discovery turns off) if the proxy ever drops — no leaks. DHT stays on, routed through the proxy.
- Click Test Proxy — it checks both paths and shows your exit IP (it should be the VPN's, not yours). TCP ✓ · UDP ✓ means everything works; UDP ✗ means the proxy drops UDP, so DHT and most magnet links won't work through it — some VPN proxies relay only TCP (it varies by provider and server). In that case use your VPN app instead (its split‑tunnel can cover just Swarm, keeping Tailscale happy), or stick to .torrent files.
- Turn off your VPN's system app. Swarm's traffic still goes through the VPN, while everything else — including Tailscale — runs normally.
Join the swarm.
Free, forever. Signed & notarized by Apple — no scary warnings.
Download for macOS
or install with Homebrew
Swarm is free. Tips keep it alive →
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