Sometimes, when I try to torrent using qBittorrent or Transmission, the search for metadata appears to take forever. What could be causing this issue?
A magnet link is basically a torrent of a torrent, so the answer to your question is going to be the same as “why won’t this torrent download quickly / at all?”.
It could be:
- No seeders
- Firewall rules blocking DHT
- No port forwarding
If magnets, then there’s less info in the link itself (compared to a .torrent) and that needs to be located. If availability is shit, that will be hard/impossible.
- Dead torrent
- Your Internet blocks torrent/DHT traffic.
Go to the connection settings and copy the “Port used for incoming connections”. Paste it into a service like: https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/
If your port isn’t “open”, that’s your issue. You need to configure port-forwarding in your router or VPN client.
Sometimes I paste a list of open common trackers into the details and it’ll fnd some peers that way. This is for public torrents only, ofc.
