Adding Tasks

Everything you download starts in the New Task dialog. This page covers all the ways to feed it — from a single link to a batch, a torrent, or a copied cURL command — and the options hidden under Advanced.

Opening the dialog#

Any of these work:

• The + button at the top of the window.
• ⌘N (Mac) / Ctrl+N (Windows and Linux) — or ⌘⇧N / Ctrl+Shift+N to jump straight to the Torrent tab.
• The tray icon menu: New Task or New Torrent Task.

The dialog has two tabs: Links for regular downloads and Torrent for BitTorrent.

The Links tab#

Paste one or more URLs into the box — one per line. Motrix accepts http://, https://, and ftp:// links, and counts what you pasted as you go: “3 URLs · 2 valid, 1 invalid” means one line needs fixing. Each line becomes its own download task, and if some of a batch can’t be added, Motrix reports both counts — “2 added · 1 failed” — instead of pretending everything worked.

Motrix reads what you paste and reacts:

• A magnet link — you’ll see “Magnet link detected” and the dialog switches to the Torrent tab by itself.
• A cURL command — copied from your browser’s developer tools via “Copy as cURL” — shows “cURL command parsed”: Motrix extracts the URL and fills in the matching headers, cookie, referer, and filename for you. This is the easiest way to download something that needs you to be logged in.

The Torrent tab#

Drag a .torrent file onto the drop zone (or click it to browse). For magnet links, Motrix first fetches the torrent’s metadata, then shows the same file view.

Once the torrent is loaded you can choose exactly what to download:

• Tick or untick individual files, or use Select all / Clear selection.
• The quick filters — Video, Audio, Image, Document — select whole categories in one click.

You can still change the file selection after the download has started — see BitTorrent downloads.

Choosing where files go#

The Save to field shows the target folder — your default download folder unless you change it. Click browse to pick another one; recently used and custom paths are one click away. You can change the default under Settings → General.

Advanced options#

Click Advanced to unfold per-task options. For link downloads:

Option	What it does
Filename	Override the saved filename (leave on Auto to keep the original)
Connections	How many connections to open for this file — more can be faster, up to the server’s limits
User-Agent	Present a different browser identity for this task
Referer	Some sites only serve files when the request “comes from” a specific page — paste that page’s URL here
Cookie / Authorization	Credentials for downloads that need a login (auto-filled when you paste a cURL command)
Proxy	Route just this task through a proxy — see Proxy and DNS

For torrents, Advanced offers DL Limit, UL Limit, and Seed Ratio (or Unlimited) for this task only. App-wide limits live in Speed limits.

Start it#

Click Download. You’ll see a “Task added” confirmation, and the task appears in the Downloads list. If something is missing — no save folder, no valid URL, no file selected — the dialog tells you exactly what to fix.