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).
Speed and ETA cells distinguish three cases: a real zero speed is shown numerically (for example, 0 B/s); an applicable metric whose value is unknown shows a muted –; a metric that does not apply is blank. Paused, completed, queued, and other inactive tasks clear these cells. Seeding keeps upload speed, while media merging clears transfer metrics. Zero speeds participate in numeric sorting.
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 sidebar bell opens the notification center. Click a download notification to jump to its task.
In the desktop app, open Settings → General → Notifications. For Download completed and Download failed, choose independently:
| Option | Where notifications appear |
|---|---|
| Off | Neither channel |
| System notifications | Your operating system, whether Motrix is focused or in the background |
| In-app notifications | Motrix’s notification center, with foreground alerts for completed and failed downloads |
| Both | Both channels |
Several downloads finishing together share one foreground success toast. System delivery still depends on your operating system’s notification permissions.
Unread badge can show a Count, a Dot, or be Hidden. App error alerts stay on.
Turning off an in-app download category hides its entries and excludes them from the unread badge. Turning off an in-app category also silences its download alerts. Hidden entries are not deleted; they can reappear if you turn the category back on while they are still retained in recent history. Mark all read and Clear affect only the entries currently shown. These desktop preferences do not change Server/Web notifications.
Settings
Settings is a grid of eight cards; each opens a focused dialog:
| Card | What’s inside |
|---|---|
| General | Startup and quitting, window behavior, notifications |
| Appearance | Theme, visual effects, language, units, tray appearance |
| Downloads | Save folders, clipboard links, User-Agent, performance, speed limits, retries, files |
| BitTorrent | Magnet links, seeding, trackers, incoming connections, peer locations |
| Integration | Browser extensions, default app, CLI, media tools |
| Network | Proxy, DNS, port mapping, network diagnostics |
| Advanced | RPC, progress and recovery |
| About | Version, updates, source code and manual |
Click Save to apply form changes or Cancel to discard them. Follow any restart prompt after saving. Buttons such as Update now or actions that change system associations run separately from saving the form. Server/Web shows the settings available on its host; desktop startup, notification, and NAT controls are not offered there.
Language and layout
Under Settings → Appearance → Language and display, choose Follow system or one of the 25 bundled languages and click Save. The language list displays each language by its own name. Arabic and Persian switch the interface to a right-to-left layout. See the language list.
Information units and decimal formatting follow the selected language. The byte-unit setting still controls decimal or binary scaling. Appearance also offers a flat Cloud White sidebar color.
Progress and recovery
Under Settings → Advanced → Progress and recovery, Save recovery data keeps the data needed to resume downloads after restarting. Leave Recovery data file empty to use the default location. Progress save interval (s) controls how often progress is saved; shorter intervals reduce progress lost after a crash.
Completed recovery records offers All records, Latest records… (enter how many to keep), or Do not retain. This controls completed recovery records, not the Downloads list. Changing it does not delete downloaded files or clear the download list.
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.
Window behavior is in Settings → General → Startup and quitting:
- Mac: Show app in offers Dock and menu bar, Menu bar only, or Dock only.
- Windows and Linux: When opening Motrix offers Open Main Window or Start in System Tray. Tray support on Linux depends on the desktop environment.
On Linux, configure login startup through your desktop environment; see Start Motrix at Login on Linux. Windows and macOS keep their in-app login-startup controls.
Save memory when the window is closed keeps downloads running but clears unsaved input; reopening the window takes a little longer. Tray appearance and the Mac menu bar speed display remain in Settings → Appearance.
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 |