Interface Overview
This page shows you around Motrix so you know where everything lives. You don’t need to memorize any of it — come back whenever you wonder “where was that again?”.
The window at a glance
- Sidebar (left) — switches between the four main pages: Dashboard, Downloads, Trackers, and Plugins. At the bottom you’ll find Notifications (the bell) and Settings.
- Top bar — the + button creates a new task from anywhere; next to it sits the sidebar toggle.
- Closing the window doesn’t quit Motrix — it keeps downloading in the background. Use the tray icon to bring it back.
Dashboard
The Dashboard is your home screen: a grid of tiles showing what Motrix is doing right now.
The tiles are: Engine, Speed Limit, Download Speed, Upload Speed, Active Tasks, Transfer (today and all-time totals), Activity (a calendar heatmap of completed downloads), Tasks, and NAT.
Make it yours: click Configure to add, remove, drag, or resize tiles on the 4 × 3 canvas. The Presets menu offers ready-made layouts — Balanced, Task Focus, Speed Focus, and Compact — and an Undo last preset if you change your mind.
Tip
The Engine tile has a Diagnose button. If downloads ever refuse to start, that’s the first place to go — see Troubleshooting.
Downloads
The Downloads page is the task list. Things you’ll use every day:
- Status tabs — All, Active, Completed, Error — plus a search box with a type filter (HTTP, magnet, BitTorrent, FTP).
- The stats bar at the bottom shows live download/upload speed, task counts, an engine badge (Engine ready / Engine starting / Engine offline), and a NAT badge you can toggle inline.
- Select several tasks at once: click and drag an empty area to rubber-band-select, or use Shift-click / ⌘-click (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux).
Click a task to open its detail panel, which slides in from the right with six tabs: Overview, Files, Pieces, Peers, Trackers, and Activity. What each tab does is covered in Managing tasks.
Trackers and Plugins
- Trackers manages the tracker lists Motrix injects into BitTorrent tasks — details in Trackers.
- Plugins is where you install and configure plugins — details in Using plugins.
Notifications
The bell in the sidebar collects completed and failed downloads. Click an entry to jump to that task; Mark all read and Clear keep the list tidy. Motrix also sends regular system notifications — you can turn those off in Settings → General.
Settings
Settings is a grid of eight cards; each opens a focused dialog:
| Card | What’s inside |
|---|---|
| General | Startup, default save folder, notifications, quit confirmation |
| Appearance | Theme, language, tray icon behavior |
| Downloads | Concurrency, bandwidth limits, network reliability |
| BitTorrent | DHT, listen ports, trackers, peer geo |
| Integration | Browser extensions, CLI, system integrations |
| Network | Proxy, DNS, and NAT/UPnP |
| Advanced | RPC, SQLite persistence |
| About | Version, updates, source code and manual |
Some settings need a restart; Motrix asks before applying those.
The tray icon
Motrix lives in your system tray (menu bar on Mac). Right-click it for quick actions: New Task, New Torrent Task, Open Torrent File, Show Motrix, Manual, Check for Updates, Preferences, and Quit.
In Settings → Appearance → Run as you can choose how Motrix presents itself:
- Standard application — normal window plus tray icon.
- Tray application — tray only, hidden from the dock/taskbar.
- Hide tray application — no tray icon.
On a Mac, you can also enable Show real-time speed in tray to see the current speed right in the menu bar.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Action | Mac | Windows / Linux |
|---|---|---|
| New task | ⌘N | Ctrl+N |
| New BitTorrent task | ⌘⇧N | Ctrl+Shift+N |
| Open torrent file | ⌘O | Ctrl+O |
| Go to task list | ⌘L | Ctrl+L |
| Pause all | ⌘⇧P | Ctrl+Shift+P |
| Resume all | ⌘⇧R | Ctrl+Shift+R |
| Show Motrix | ⌘M | Ctrl+M |
| Preferences / Settings | ⌘, | Ctrl+, |
| Quit | ⌘Q | Ctrl+Q |