This ongoing series will help you get the most out of μTorrent, from the basics to tips and tricks.

Have you ever wished that your favorite Torrents could be delivered to you magically, without having to search for them? μTorrent can easily gather the media from your favorite feeds, like a podcast, for example, and download them without any human involvement. This, of course, is possible thanks to a helpful little protocol called RSS.

The process of adding an RSS feed to μTorrent is about as simple as can be — click the RSS icon in the toolbar and paste in the feed you want, choosing a custom alias. Deleting it is simple too — you can right click to disable any feed at any time, or to re-enable it later. So, for example, if you wanted to stay updated with the direct-to-fan offerings of artists through BitTorrent Bundles, you can click the icon and enter “https://bundles.bittorrent.com/feed.rss.”

Boom, Bundles direct to you.

However, sometimes the RSS feed itself needs a little bit more massaging to work correctly. If for some reason you aren’t getting fed right, here are some ways to troubleshoot it:

• For private feeds that require user authentication, enter the RSS feed as “https://username:password@sometorrentsite.com/rss.php” This way, μTorrent can access the feed with proper clearance.
• For feeds that require certain cookies to gain access to the RSS log. Access the cookie to that website, in accordance with your browser’s directions, and grab the UID and pass for it. Then, enter into μTorrent with the format “https://sometorrentsite.com/rss.php:COOKIE:uid=1234;pass=asdjh12378912y3lkj”

Once everything is geared up to run, you can download everything from all feeds by right-clicking and selecting “Automatically download items published in feed” from the Edit Feed options. You can also select favorites to download automatically, or filter episodes based on file format. Just make sure that when you select filters, you enter the name of the podcast feed in correctly. You can also use the “Episode Number” feature to download media of a certain number, or only new episodes. If your feed is not downloading properly, don’t forget to use the wildcards “*” and “?” to prevent breakage.

Happy consumption!

Photo: Flickr/Rob McDonald