qBittorrent Search Plugins

Unofficial search plugins · qbittorrent/search-plugins Wiki

Community list of search engine plugins for qBittorrent

https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/Unofficial-search-plugins

qBittorrent is a free, open-source BitTorrent client for macOS, Windows and Linux. It has a built-in search engine: type a query once, and it searches several torrent sites at the same time and lists the results in 1 table. Each site is covered by a plugin, a small Python file.

The project ships a handful of official plugins. This wiki page lists the rest: plugins written and maintained by the community.

What the list is for

• More sources. Each plugin adds 1 site to the search. Public sites need nothing, private trackers need your account.
• Niche content. Many plugins cover a single niche: anime, audiobooks, games, or sites in 1 language (French, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian and others).
• Legal sources too. Academic Torrents shares research datasets and papers, and Linux Tracker lists Linux distributions.
• Aggregators. Plugins for Jackett (official) and Prowlarr (unofficial) pass the search to an indexer manager, which then queries 100s of sites. 1 plugin, many sources.

The status column matters. ✔ means someone tested the plugin with a given qBittorrent and Python version. ✖ or ❗ means it's broken, and the wiki warns that a broken plugin slows down or breaks the other plugins too. Many entries haven't been updated in years, and the sites behind them change or disappear.

For business people

What it does: turns qBittorrent into a search tool across many sources, without visiting each site and its ads.

The risks:

• Security. Each plugin is Python code that runs on your machine with your permissions. The wiki says it plainly: unofficial plugins aren't considered safe, use them at your own risk, and read the code before you install it.
• Legal. A plugin only finds torrents. What you download is your responsibility. Most of the listed public sites index copyrighted films, series and games. In Germany, BitTorrent uploads while it downloads, and rights holders send formal warning letters (Abmahnungen) with fees to people who share copyrighted files.
• Maintenance. No one owns the list. When a plugin breaks, you report it to its author, or fix it and update the wiki yourself.

For technical people

Install

1. Enable search: View > Search Engine. qBittorrent needs a Python 3 install on the machine.
2. Open the Search tab and click Search plugins... at the bottom right.
3. Click Install a new one, then give it the plugin's .py URL from the wiki, or a local file.
4. Use Check for updates in the same window to update the plugins that support it.

How a plugin works

A plugin is 1 file, engine_name.py, with 1 class of the same name. qBittorrent's nova2.py calls each enabled plugin in parallel, and each one prints its results in a fixed format.

# VERSION: 1.00
# AUTHORS: YOUR_NAME (YOUR_MAIL)

from helpers import retrieve_url
from novaprinter import prettyPrinter

class engine_name:
    url = 'https://www.engine-url.org'
    name = 'Full engine name'
    supported_categories = {'all': '0', 'movies': '6', 'software': '3'}

    def search(self, query: str, category: str = 'all') -> None:
        html = retrieve_url(f'{self.url}/search?q={query}&cat={self.supported_categories[category]}')
        # parse html, then for each result:
        prettyPrinter({
            'link': '...', 'name': '...', 'size': '...',
            'seeds': 0, 'leech': 0, 'engine_url': self.url, 'desc_link': '...',
        })

• Rules: Python standard library only, and support for the minimum Python version qBittorrent lists. url, name and supported_categories must be class attributes, or qBittorrent refuses the plugin.
• Categories: all, anime, books, games, movies, music, pictures, software and tv.
• Helpers: retrieve_url() and download_file() in helpers.py handle HTTP, including a proxy if you set one in qBittorrent.
• Audit before install: look for import lines outside the standard library, calls to os, subprocess or exec, and any URL other than the site it claims to search.
• Favicons: the wiki asks authors not to fetch icons through Google's favicon service, because it tells Google which sites you use.

Value

The plugin model is the interesting part: a whole search feature built from 1-file Python scrapers that anyone can write in an afternoon. It's the same pattern I use for my own scrapers, and a good example of how far the standard library gets you.

For actual use, I'd keep it to the legal sources, like Linux images and research datasets, and read every plugin before I install it.

Further Reading

qBittorrent

Free and open-source BitTorrent client

https://www.qbittorrent.org

How to write a search plugin

The official guide, with the full class structure and output format

https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/How-to-write-a-search-plugin