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Use Fine Grained File Priorities #16108
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Originally created by @ZeroNanuk on GitHub (Sep 30, 2024).
Suggestion
I would like to request a feature that was present in utorrent when you download a torrent that is a batch file like a season of a tv show or anime you can prioritize the episodes to download in order (1->22). It was a feature called "Use Fine Grained File Priorities"
As of now in a batch file the Download Priority options are only Normal, High and Maximum. This will only let you priroritize the first and second episode in a season, which means if you go to sleep and the download is slow you only get the first two episodes when you wake up. In utorrent it's 1-15 if I'm not mistaken. So you can potentially get at least half if not the first 15 episodes when you wake up.
Use case
For downloading batch file torrents in order (tv show seasons, movie trilogies, anime season, etc.) in order of episode number.
Extra info/examples/attachments
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Sep 30, 2024):
Isn't simply using the sequential option better than this?
@qBittUser commented on GitHub (Sep 30, 2024):
Downloading random pieces of each file and allowing to prioritize by file name or any other order might be quicker to get torrent completed and would be better for swarm health than current sequential.
Some *.torrent files have pieces of files optimized and not by folder or filename order, so unfortunately current sequential download option isn't good enough.
If the current
Download in sequential orderin Torrent Options doesn't guarantee to download files by name order or if it's actually overriding or conflicting withDownload first and last pieceor individual file priorities, then it should be namedDownload pieces in sequential order, unless it is actually always guaranteed toignore custom individual file priorities and download files alphabetically.So better wording, tooltips or more options to control what to ignore, honor or prioritize is necessary to avoid misunderstanding.
Some related issues and feature requests:
@ZeroNanuk commented on GitHub (Oct 1, 2024):
Its would if it worked for me.
I named the request "Use Fine Grained File Priorities" which is the option in utorrent that allows to download the files in the order you prioritize, because I've yet to see a feature that looks at the file names and do it automatically by episode number.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Oct 1, 2024):
It totally works. Just configure the
Torrent Queueingproperly (or disable it completely) and stop abusing theForce Startbutton.@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 14, 2025):
No... Sequential is only able to assign Normal, High and Maximum. That is not really useful at all if you have more than 3 files, even if the files happen to sort properly.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 14, 2025):
What? It does not assign anything. In fact, it doesn't even care about files, it just downloads pieces sequentially, as represented by the progress bar.
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 14, 2025):
It literally changes the priorities on the files in the UI.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 14, 2025):
No it's not. Maybe you've confused it with some other client.
@xavier2k6 commented on GitHub (May 25, 2025):
ANNOUNCEMENT!
For anybody coming across this "Feature Request" & would like/love to see a potential implementation in the future!
Here are some options available to you:
Please select/click the 👍 &/or ❤
reactionsin the original/opening post of this ticket.Please feel free (If you have the "skillset") to create a "Pull Request" implementing what's being requested in this ticket.
(new/existing contributors/developers are always welcome)
DO:
DO NOT:
(These will be disregarded/hidden as "spam/abuse/off-topic" etc. as they don't provide anything constructive.)
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (May 25, 2025):
I'm referring to uTorrent. You typically right click several files and click "Prioritize by File Order" and the Priority column changes to numbers, assuming the "Fine Grained Priorities" option it turned on in Options.
Perhaps you never activated the options for this to work.
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (May 25, 2025):
https://1drv.ms/f/c/e7918d36eb43623f/Elpsdxuwb39NjLf5vAYOJuUBewJFLqNxqj8z7XfU5P8Q4Q?e=fLGJp8
Here's some screenshots of uTorrent to prove the fine grained options are there, and they are not based even on filename or file order. You select one or multiple files, and you can literally change a certain set of files to totally different orders, and not just the "high, medium, low" that qbittorrent allows.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (May 25, 2025):
Why? Just in case, this is a qBittorrent repo, so I'm talking about it. I don't know and don't care what uTorrent does.
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (May 25, 2025):
Because the OP is literally asking for "I would like to request a feature that was present in utorrent when you download a torrent that is a batch file."
UTORRENT
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (May 25, 2025):
So what? I was talking about qBittorrent option here
You answered me
Which is simply not true for qBittorrent.
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (May 25, 2025):
I was speaking in the context of the entire request. And I clarified I meant uTorrent. Why are you trying to be difficult?
I am trying to show you what the OP actually is asking for. Obviously, the OP isn't asking for what qBitTorrent currently does, or it wouldn't be a feature request.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (May 25, 2025):
I know what the OP is asking for. I said that existing qBittorrent sequential download option is just better than any priority shenanegans.
I.e. what uTorrent does is garbage in my opinion. That's it.
@KieranDevvs commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
This is just objectively false.
Sequential downloading and priority are NOT the same thing. Priority should prioritise individual files within the torrent. Sequential downloading should NOT mean the entire torrent is sequentially downloaded, it can apply to individual files or all files.
Notice how in this Tixati example I can both priorities all files by a custom ordering sequence, and only sequentially download items 2 and 6. Forcing sequential download on the entire torrent is garbage because prioritising the pieces with the lowest availability has a better chance of keeping the torrent OR file alive and it can be more efficient to download, so it should be used when you don't need to sequentially download certain files.
I would prefer to use qBittorrent as its OSS, but lacking this capability is what is keeping me using Tixati. I have thumbed this issue up to show support for the feature.
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
@KieranDevvs I don't think you understand.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
I never said it's the same. I said that sequential priority is useless imo.
Exactly. So if someone wants such functionality, they should go and implement it.
@KieranDevvs commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
You clearly said the following:
They aren't mutual, how can two things that are mutually exclusive be better than one or the another, its just not a valid opinion.
Feature requests are a way to gauge community interest and document needs. If we limit the conversation only to those currently available to program, we lose out on perspectives that improve the software for everyone. I’m happy to help refine the requirements so that the task is 'ready for dev' for whoever (not just you or I) takes it on.
@KieranDevvs commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
Happy to discuss more to further this feature and increase clarity, what is it that you think I don't understand?
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
@KieranDevvs If you have 3 files on a single torrent, you can currently prioritize one file as max, another as high, and another as normal. That makes those three files download in the order you want. OK, "Prioritize by File Order" is fine for that.
But what if you have 12 files on that torrent? You can use "Prioritize by File Order" to set the top 4 items as max, the middle 4 items as High, and the last 4 to Normal. There's no way to make the first file download first, the second to download third, the fourth to download fourth, the fifth to download fifth....the 12th file to download only after the 11th.
"Fine Grained Download Priorities" from uTorrent are the solution for that, by increasing the number of priorities from 3 (Max, High, Normal) to as many as the number of files. You can also individually assign a priority of "5" to a single file instead of being restricted to the three current priorities.
12 possible file priorities, is better than 3.
@KieranDevvs commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
I think we both agree unless I'm mistaken? I am advocating for 2 things to be present in qBittorrent:
A way to priorities any number of files within a given torrent. As for how this should work in practice, I am completely familiar with assigning integers (whole numbers) to individual files or selecting multiple files and having the torrent client assign ordered integers based on the file order.
Sequential file downloading. Currently to my knowledge, qBittorrent only has support for sequentially downloading the whole torrent and not individual files within a torrent. Its good to have the client download pieces using an optimised algorithm when you don't need sequential downloads (for benefits like keeping availability as high as possible), but if you do need sequential downloading, its a waste to force the entire torrent which may have a large amount of files, to download sequentially.
Here's a real world scenario. Lets say you have a torrent consisting of 8 episodes of some media. You want to watch the first episode as soon as the data becomes available, but you don't care about the rest. You prioritise all the files in a priority of 1 to 8 (matching with the relevant episode number, first episode first, last episode last). You then sequentially download episode 1, but leave episodes 2-8 on the default download mechanism to optimise the overall download.
Tixati actually has the ability to auto configure downloads based on file extensions which is really handy as you don't even need to manually do anything once its set up. Both priority and sequential configurations can be automatically applied to multi file torrents. I'm not suggesting that we include these levels of configuration into this feature, but it would be a stepping stone to getting there in the future.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
Pick $100 or $1000 mutually exclusive and think again.
Yes, and existing sequential download mode covers that. Although files in a torrent are not guaranteed to be in alphabetic order, there are a lot of ways to mess with ordering.
I think users should at least try to investigate technical difficulties associated with the feature they want. To not spend devs time on irrelevant stuff.
Like libtorrent actually having only 7 priorities internally. It clamps for min-max values and some of them have special hardcoded meaning, so 7 is a brick wall you can't overcome on qBittorrent's side.
Despite 7 being more than current 3, I don't think it would improve the situation dramatically. So you really will want to rewrite libtorrent's code here, but good luck with that. Does that feature worth a major library rewrite with introduction of possible bugs and backward compatibility issues? I think not.
@KieranDevvs commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
Sorry I mean the inverse, they aren't mutually exclusive. Mutually exclusive would mean they cant be used in combination and do the same thing, which they are not.
My explanation of the two features clearly shows they do different things and can be combined to have a range of functionality. One cannot be BETTER than the other because they DONT do the same thing.
Sequential downloading = Downloading file pieces in sequential order.
Priority = Downloading files in an user specific order.
"Downloading file pieces in sequential order" cannot be better than "Downloading files in an user specific order" because they aren't talking about the same thing one is talking about files, the other file pieces...
Its like saying car wheels are better than car doors... Do you see how that doesn't make sense and is an invalid opinon? Most people want both on their car for it to function as expected.
We know what you think, you've made your opinions very clear already. The problem is... No one here agrees with you.
No one made you or anyone else DO anything, if you feel like your own time or someone else's time has been wasted, that is unfortunately your problem as you chose to participate. You're not the main character in a story, you're also not the only developer here. Please keep your ego to yourself and keep comments related to the feature request. If you have no intention of assisting, that is fine and we respect that, but please don't act like just because you aren't interested or you think that this is too hard to implement, that means no one else is willing to do so.
Thanks.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
Ok wait, you are not talking about downloading files in sequential order automatically? You want just more priority levels to assign them manually?
I thought we are talking about the
bt.sequential_filesfeature from uT.bt.sequential_downloadhere is analogous to what qBittorrent does andbt.sequential_filesis another option which assigns priorities automatically for files in alphabetic order. I thought you ask for the latter to be implemented in qBittorrent.@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
@KieranDevvs @HanabishiRecca This is definitely the disconnect. We were all talking past one another!
"Use Fine Grained File Priorities" gives you a large number of priorities, and is an option that's off by default, though I don't know why. It's also used by "Order by File Order," since manually setting 20 different files' priorities would be slow. This function is in other torrent clients and would be very cool to have in qBitTorrent!
The bt.sequential_files is not what I'm referring to, to be clear, nor is bt.sequential_download since simply alphabetical does not offer the appropriate level of control.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
Actually looks like I remember it wrong. Apparently uTorrent's
bt.sequential_download+bt.sequential_filesonly do what qBittorrent already does with its sequential mode?Yeah, looks like that's the option I was actually thinking of.
Although somehow I remebered it being more automatic.
This one?
Totally forgot about it tbh, haven't used uTorrent (and Windows at all) for a very long time.
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
Use Fine Grained File Priorities. It's a UI thing, if you right click on a file, you select from many priorities instead of just the three.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
Well, libtorrent has 7 priority levels internally (not counting
dont_download). Should be relatively easy to expose them.I.e. fill the gap
github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent@aec2fcd58b/src/base/bittorrent/downloadpriority.h (L33-L38)But more than that is not technically possible at the moment.
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
@HanabishiRecca Thanks. I've added a LibTorrent feature request here: https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/issues/8120
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
I'm making a PoC code under existing conditions.
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
@HanabishiRecca Thanks so much, that looks perfect!
@cbordeman commented on GitHub (Jan 15, 2026):
@HanabishiRecca Don't forget to update the "Priority by Shown File Order" to assign 0-7. Thanks.
@HanabishiRecca commented on GitHub (Jan 17, 2026):
@dbny89 commented on GitHub (Feb 4, 2026):
Absolutely need fine-grained priorities. Not only do they force the download order you want, but they allow you to rank files within torrents of hundreds of files, which is just impossible right now. I say this having just migrated from uTorrent yesterday -- with 3,900 torrents, it was crashing hourly. But this feature is one of the ones that kept me from migrating for years. "Normal" priority was always 8, so if I liked something a little, it'd get a 9, and if I loved something, it'd get a 15. But if I disliked something, I could rank it a 7 or maybe if I intensely disliked it a 1 (obviously to do your part and seed a torrent fully you can't just skip the file). Ranking below neutral is completely impossible in qbittorent. We need uTorrent-style priorities. (The other post-migration thorn is having 99.9% torrents because utorrent apparently didn't write out 100% of the data in a hundred torrents or so -- "part" files still in the folders. Maybe due to a bunch of read-only files and folders. And bt2qbt is the program used to migrate. Did a good job.)