This is TorBox's largest update to date. Introducing v4.0, where the major features include, Usenet, Web Downloads (Debrid), a rewritten storage API, and a more stable and reliable service. Along with major features, our infrastructure has changed significantly, and we are pretty much at endgame setup, so things are just scaling up from here.

Website

• Adds a Add NZB button to the dashboard. This allows you to add an NZB link or file that will then download the files from the Usenet. The files received from usenet will then be available to download.

  • We will talk more about usenet downloads in the service section.

  • This button, although visible, will not be usable to non-Pro members. It will instead ask you to upgrade to Pro if you hover over it.

• Adds an Add Web Link to the dashboard. This allows you to add any link and it will be downloaded to your account. This is commonly used as a debrid for things such as 1Fichier, RapidGator, YouTube, Google Drive and more. The file will transfer to your account and will be available to download, just like a torrent.

  • We will talk more about web downloads in the service section.

  • This button, although visible will not be usable to free users. It will instead ask you to upgrade to a paid plan if you hover over it.

• Web Downloads are shown on the dashboard.

  • They are shown below the torrents for now. We need to combine them all into the same list, it is some internal frontend issue, we will add sorting and filtering as well soon.

  • You are not able to pause web downloads from the dashboard. Once a download has been started, there is no stopping it, unless you delete it.

• Usenet downloads are shown on the dashboard.

  • Just like web downloads, they are shown below torrents due to internal layouts of the dashboard. This will be addressed soon.

  • You are able to pause and resume usenet downloads, although why would you want to?

• Usenet and Web Downloads have the same look and feel as the torrents. They also are just as reactive. Download speeds will count towards the graph on the dashboard as well.

• Everything basically works the exact same as the torrents. Just click on the download button and you will be brought to the familiar download page to choose the files, and how you want to download the files.

• Fixed Dial on the left side, which shows the quota free users have left. This has been redone to show fancy colors depending on how many you have left.

• Changed how the avatar/user section is laid out.

  • There is no longer a server name, or server IP as internally, users aren't assigned to a server anymore. We will talk about that more in the service section.

  • The space has no been replaced with some cool stats.

    • You can now see how much data you have downloaded (in torrents, usenet downloads and web downloads, not from TorBox itself).

    • You can now see how much data you have uploaded (data your torrents have seeded).

    • The above data is now used to calculate an overall ratio. There is no risk for having a low ratio or anything, but it is just a cool stat to see. If your ratio is under 1, a sad face will show. If your ratio is over 1, but under 5, a cool face will show. If ratio over 5, there will be a golden crown to show how much of a king (or queen) you are. Basically this is for bragging rights.

    • We will eventually show more dialed in data, such as data for today, data for the week, or data for the month.

    • Please note: this data started with the update. If you were or are a previous TorBox user, you are still starting fresh, we just don't have data from previous to this update.

• Updated Pricing page to reflect changes in free plan and changes to the upper plans.

• On smaller screens, to avoid overflows, "Add Torrent" is simply "Torrent". We might change how this looks on smaller screens in the future, as we aren't exactly happy with this change.

Service

• Added the new Usenet feature. This allows you to access the Usenet without paying for any extra subscritpions. We handle everything from searching (soon), providers, storage and integration into Stremio and the rest of TorBox.

  • Files are cached just like torrents, so if it is a popular usenet download, it will likely be cached. If it isn't it will download just like normal.

  • Currently we use Eweka and Newsdemon as providers. We are going to add blocks soon, and if needed, more providers if users run into issues.

  • We use special 20gbit servers to download these usenet files. They are downloaded to enterprise NVME drives and then extracted like normal to the drives. They are then cached to our mass storage servers.

  • Usenet is only available to Pro users. If you want to use Usenet, make sure to upgrade to our Pro plan for only $10/mo! We don't offer this to free or paid plans as it costs quite a bit for us to offer Usenet.

  • Searching is coming soon. We already search for the Stremio addon, we just need to make it available on the website.

    • We use multiple indexers, and have been collecting some for awhile. This will allow you to use the best quality, and least likely to fail files. We won't say which ones specifically we use, but just know they are elite and the best indexers you can get access to.

    • To address indexer bans: we don't have to worry about getting banned. Files are locked down, and inaccessible to the public (meaning you have to add the files through the site or Stremio to use them). We cache results, so the API's aren't being hit over and over again. Only Pro users are able to use this feature, even using our API, and since it is only a smaller subset of our users, the usage won't be as high as if we offered it to all paid users.

  • We use a custom self-hosted instance of SABNzbd and we actively sponsor them as well through their PayPal. Thanks to the team for such an awesome and extendable usenet downloader.

• Added the new Web Download (debrid) feature. This allows you to download pretty much any file on the internet without the extra subscription. Just like with Usenet, we handle everything, giving you the most seamless experience possible.

  • Just like Usenet and Torrents, web downloads (debrid downloads, we refer to them as web downloads) are cached and are instantly available for anyone who downloads them afterwards.

  • Please note: we don't have a hoster list or a site list yet, that will come soon.

  • Usage is pretty much unlimited, but of course, there it all falls under fair use, and will count as an active download until complete, so depending on your plan, you can only download so many at a time. This is the same for all types of downloads. We are adding addons soon that will improve these limits for a small price.

  • We use the same 20gbit servers to download the web downloads, so you can be sure that speeds will be quick to download.

  • Web Downloads are only available to paid plans. Any paid plan has access to web downloads. We don't offer this to free users due to abuse.

  • We use a custom/modified self-hosted Pyload instance and its API to download your web downloads. Thanks to the team for an awesome service. We have donated to the team through their PayPal as thanks for an awesome service.

  • All web downloads are downloaded through a residential proxy meaning that any file is downloadable, and the server won't get banned from websites or file hosters.

• Free user's limitations have been increased. This was done to increase conversion, as the free plan was not meant to be a real plan, rather a trial. We understand that this might be upsetting. In the future, when TorBox becomes financially stable, we can think about bringing these limits back up.

  • Max size per torrent has been reduced to 50gb, down from 100gb per torrent.

  • Torrent transfer speed has been reduced to 250mbps (31.25MB/s on the dashboard), down from 1gbps (125MB/s on the dashboard).

  • 6 hour seeding has been reduced to 6 hours, down from 24 hours.

• In return, all paid plans have been boosted.

  • Essential and Standard now gets

    • Unlimited web downloads (access to web downloads).

    • Increase to 200gb max torrent size per torrent, from 100gb max torrent size. Many users were complaining it was too small, so we have listened and increased the max size.

  • Pro gets

    • Unlimited web downloads (access to debrid).

    • Unlimited usenet downloads (access to usenet).

• We now have switched from our previous server provider, which was Leaseweb. They were mostly good to work with, but the amount we were spending on bandwidth was just way too much, so we have switched. We are very happy with our new providers and are very happy with their services. You can view more about our infrastructure at https://hetrix.torbox.app.

Storage

• The storage API has been rewritten in Rust! Previously it had been written in Python, but this was not fast enough and we noticed a difference of over 50% speed difference with Python (afterwards) in a production highly concurrent environment. Obviously this is not good, so we went ahead and rewrote the entire thing in Rust. In a server to server environment (different data centers, both 10gbit), we noticed speeds hitting over 3gbps over Rust (Actix), whereas using Python (FastAPI), we were maxing out around 1gbps. Of course this is in a perfect environment. Even so, in real-world tests we regularly hit 1.5gbps or higher (concurrently, other users were downloading at the same time).

  • Apart from the transfer speeds, this also increased zipped download speeds, which is intensely I/O heavy, we have noticed an increase in over 35% speeds, thanks to Rust being highly focused on concurrent threads.

• Please note: while downloads are fast, that's only if you can access them. In a few cases, so far around 20% of downloads fail due to the file not existing. This is due to file information not being propagated to all servers in fast enough time, meaning you might access the file over a server that doesn't know the file exists yet. This usually only happens to brand new transfers that just got marked as "Download Ready" or "Cached". We are working on a solution to this complex issue.

Stremio Addon

• The Stremio addon now has the ability to watch Usenet content if you are on the Pro plan. These will show up as streams, labeled with the type "Usenet".

• Torrents now show a type of "Torrents. Usenet downloads now show a type of "Usenet" so you can distinguish them.

• If you are a free user using the addon. There will be a small advertisement at the top of the streams asking you to subscribe. It's small and sort of out of the way, and even offers a discount!

• Usenet media files are shown in the "Your Media" section in the Discover tab.

• Please note: while movies and short seasons, and popular content has many different options for streams, some edge cases or very large series will not have many streams. We are working on a solution for that. It will be fixed soon.

WebDAV

• Fixes minor bugs with WebDAV not being able to show all of your files.

• Shows web downloads and Usenet downloads in WebDAV allowing you to access them just like torrents.

Search API

• The search API now has the (/usenet) endpoint which allows you to search for NZB's on the usenet using our indexers. You can read more about that here https://search-api.torbox.app/usenet. API DOCS.

  • Like written before. No NZB files are accessible. You can see the link, but they are null-routed outside of our network, thanks to Tailscale. For example, here is a link to an NZB: http://100.126.180.44:4010/getnzb/user/4443484788790234930. Good luck accessing that. Yes, we use NZBHydra. Thanks to their team for the awesome search, we sponsor them as thanks as well. Keep doing awesome stuff.

API

• The API Docs page looks a little different. We have added 2 other TorBox API's to the collection, and this allows you to view them all. You can view the new API docs at https://api-docs.torbox.app. Any old links will not work.

• Added endpoints for Usenet. These endpoints mostly mirror how the torrent endpoints work. You can read more about those here.

• Added endpoints for Web Downloads. Like Usenet, these mostly mirror the torrent endpoints, except for a few parameter changes. You can read more about those here.

• The Stats endpoint (/api/stats) now includes a lot more data such as total_downloads, total_bytes_downloaded, active_torrents, and more interesting data. This data is updated once every hour.

• Please note: RSS Feeds refreshing has been disabled for now. They will not automatically update. There are a few things wrong with them internally, as they have not been developed as not many users use them, so they have fallen behind in updates. We will spend some time making sure they are awesome again in the following updates.

That pretty much wraps up v4.0. There are quite a few bugs for us to fix, so I guess we will get started on that! Enjoy the new update and let us know if you have any issues! Thank you all for sticking with us through the low points, because it's now only up from here on out!