Frequently Asked Questions

Work in progress.

How do I talk to you?

Click the support link on the upper right corner of your screen.. It will open a popup window. Write anything inside and send. You can also send e-mail to info@put.io. It’s the same thing.

How do I make put.io fetch a torrent for me?

Just copy a torrent link, paste it inside the “Add new files” dialog and follow instructions.

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I’m adding torrent links from a private tracker, but they don’t start. What gives?

The authentication information is not included in the link. You need to download the torrent to your own computer and upload it to put.io. (The upload link is here in the new interface http://cl.ly/esdw and here in the old interface http://cl.ly/KNrw)

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Can I choose individual files from a torrent before it gets fetched

Unfortunately not. This is a design decision we made in the beginning and turns out it was the right choice for saving bandwidth. We prefer to get the whole torrent as fast as we can, in case other people request the same thing.

What does the padlock icon on the transfer mean?

It just means that the private flag of the torrent is on. (i.e. most likely it’s from a private tracker) Nothing else.

How much do you seed?

Here’s our current seeding policy: We stop seeding when the upload ratio is 1.00 for public trackers or when the torrent is inactive for 72 hours. (Whichever comes first.). For private trackers the seeding time and ratio changes with plans. You can see the current numbers on https://put.io/plans

I would not recommend using put.io as a seedbox just yet, because it might produce hit and runs. Sometimes we count 2.0 but the tracker counts less. We don’t know why.

Can I download from video sites?

Yes you can. But please don’t go nuts. We don’t want to be banned. Here is the full list of supported video sites. But we don’t do playlists or whole channels.

Why are downloads from put.io to my computer slow?

Well the biggest factor is your location. Our servers are in Netherlands. Sometimes our respective ISP’s don’t choose the optimum route between each other and that makes downloads slow. The quality is ever changing, and all we can do is try to route around slow connections. This is why we have created alternate routes all over the world. Not the best solution, but it helps. Please take the speed test here: https://put.io/user/speedtest and determine the fastest route for you.

Broken downloads, corrupt zip files

If you’re not streaming videos, you should download files with a download manager. Browsers cannot handle large downloads safely. They can not resume after a few minutes of interruption, so they falsely report the download as finished.

A download manager will be able to resume broken downloads. They also download using multiple connections which helps utilize all of your available bandwidth.

Why are single connections slow?

Sometimes the distance produces latency, but most of the time ISP’s cap single connections, as part of their ongoing peering battles or so that their users don’t eat up all of their bandwidth watching Youtube. Here’s a good article about what’s been going on behind the curtains: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/why-youtube-buffers-the-secret-deals-that-make-and-break-online-video/ and here’s another one: http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-internet-middleman/

Okay, but which download manager?

At this point please don’t use IDM. It is a fine download manager, but it has a problem with https downloads. It can’t spawn multiple connections and resume broken downloads when downloading via https. If you remove the s at the end of https it will work correctly. We couldn’t find the cause of this. It can’t download https content from Dropbox too, so it’s not us.

A good download manager that just works everywhere is DownThemAll, a Firefox extension. You can get it from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/

It’s worth it even if you don’t use Firefox, you can think of the combo itself as a download manager.

Mac users seem to like EasyGet and EasyGet Lite (free), on the Mac Appstore, and Progressive Downloader here. Linux users like aria2. And to PC users we’ve been recommending the Free download manager or FDM

There is also the fact that if you take a long time to dowload something, your ISP might change your IP in the middle of the download. In that case, your download link becomes invalid, because the token in the link is derived from your IP address.

If that happens even your download manager will not be able to resume, what you need to do is refresh the page at put.io and get a new download link, then update the link on your download manager.

Here’s a good resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_download_managers

I want to convert a whole folder to MP4. Must I chose every file individually. How can you be so stupid?

We unfortunately don’t have the resources to handle that kind of transcoding. We have 10 servers which are already transcoding day and night. We can’t yet afford to add more and we’d like to keep on demand transcoding available for everyone.

Do you have FTP access?

Why, yes we have. Just connect to ftp://ftp.put.io with your put.io credentials.

How do I connect this to my TV?

Here are some possibilities:

Connected computer to TV

You could connect a PC, or a Mac Mini with a bluetooth trackpad (way better than a mouse on the couch) and a keyboard (used occasionally) This is the most luxurious/expensive setup. But if you’re junkies like us no one’s judging you. If you have a computer connected to your TV, you can use Boxee, XBMC, PLEX or just watch stuff via the browser. (Currently only way to get subtitle support)

Boxee

You could connect a Boxee Box and add our Boxee app to it. (Needs good speeds to stream)

Amazon Fire TV

You can follow the instructions from Orçun’s post to install Steven Schoen’s Android app on Amazon Fire TV.

Roku

You could connect a Roku, and add ours or Darrell Turners private channel to it (Roku streams better, because it buffers more)

Here are the instructions to install:

  1. Click here to add our private channel
  2. Do a system update if the channel is not yet visible on your Roku
  3. Launch the app, go to https://put.io/roku and enter the code
or
  1. Click here to add Darrel Turner’s puke.io channel
  2. Do a system update if the channel is not yet visible on your Roku
  3. Launch the app, go to http://puke.io and enter the code

AppleTV

You could connect an AppleTV and send videos to it via AirPlay from your iPhone or iPad (I don’t know if it’s sustainable, but we’re hearing of people living like this.)

Smart TV + Plex Media Server

If you have a computer in the house, and a smart tv, you can install Plex media server to the computer, add our app and then stream to the smart TV, (or PS3 we hear)

  1. Download the code from Github: https://github.com/putdotio/Put.io.bundle/archive/master.zip
  2. Then extract the zip file and rename the folder to “Put.io.bundle”.
  3. Move extracted folder the Plex Media Server’s plugins folder
    • Mac: /Users/***Username***/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins (your ~/Library might be hidden. If it is, run this command in a Terminal window: “chflags nohidden /users/[username]/library”
    • Linux: /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins
    • Windows: C:\Users\***Your User Name***\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plug-ins.
  4. Reload the Plex Media Server. You’ll be able to see the put.io plugin in the web based “Media Manager” http://cl.ly/RCXw
  5. Click on it and then click on the orange cog icon: http://cl.ly/RCrs
  6. Get the access token by visiting: http://put.io/v2/oauth2/authenticate?client_id=28&response_type=oob&redirect_uri=na and enter it to the dialog: http://cl.ly/RC6y

Then you will be able to acces your put.io data with any PLEX client.

Something weird is happening. Buttons don’t listen to me…

Does it happen in other browsers too? If not, it’s probably a JavaScript issue. Like everybody else we use Google’s CDN for jQuery. This happens when your local copy of jQuery gets corrupted. Clearing the cache will fix it.

Chrome: Menu -> Tools -> Clear Browsing Data -> and then http://cl.ly/LoiW

Firefox: Tools > Clear Recent History > and then http://cl.ly/OI2V

Safari: From the top menu go to Safari > Reset Safari > A popup windows opens: http://cl.ly/NxbO

I want to change my username or e-mail.

Sorry. Too many account hijackings have occured. We have disabled username and e-mail changes.

What happens when I upgrade or downgrade before my due date?

It’s a bit tricky, but our payment provider does it like this. The unused portion of your current plan will be refunded to you. And if the cycle doesn’t change only the remainder will be charged. If you are changing the duration you will start a new billing cycle, so there won’t be a remainder.

Except if you are a long time customer, your subscription will be carried to the new provider. That means we will refund the unused portion.

How can I change my payment method?

This has become a little complicated over time. It’s best to contact us, so we’ll sort it out for you. (Click the link that says “help” at the top right page of put.io)

I hate you. How can I cancel?

If you paid one-off, you can just let your account expire. You don’t have to do anything. If you have a subscription, you can stop it by clicking the “Stop my subscription” link. If you need to delete your account permanently, click on “Destroy my account completely”, both from this page: https://put.io/payment/billing. Also don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.

How come you guys zipped my file and wont let me unzip it?

Writing torrents with thousands of files in them into our filesystem is hurting our performance. Every file, no matter how small, takes a few seconds to write, so such torrents take hours to complete even after the download is finished. That’s why we zip them before writing them, and that’s why we refuse to unzip them.