There are two types of people in this world, those who pay a monthly or annual fee for enjoying content with a license, and those who do not. Without entering into the motives of both, it seems to be clear that the torrent files are still alive, as showed the start of the eighth season of Game of Thrones.

One of the alternatives to the torrent is the magnet files, a somewhat unknown format whose existence is not bad to know. Let’s see what these types of files are, and what advantages they offer compared to the classic torrents.

Magnetic links, or how to save steps in downloading a file

When we use a torrent file, we are accessing a small file that contains the information of those larger files that will be downloaded. Thus, the torrent file indicates to the torrent client the identification name, in other words, the torrent provides a roadmap to the client to download the said file. The download, therefore, is not entirely direct, since it is necessary for the torrent client to first analyze the information given by our torrent file.

The main difference of the magnet file is that this file already contains the necessary information to download the file

In the case of magnet links, the process is streamlined, we open the link and the download begins. This is because the magnet files do not refer to the location of the file, but already contain the necessary information for download. Therefore, it is not necessary to click on the link to start it.

The structure of a magnet link, which we talked about a few years ago, is composed of the following elements.

magnet: identifier of the link in question.
xt = urn: network identifier. For example, for a torrent link we would have xt = urn: btih: and for one magnet, xt = urn: ed2k:
Next we would have the complete hash of the file, the unique value that defines it.
& dn = for the file name, if indicated.
Thus, the magnetic files allow greater comfort to be more direct, as well as a great facility when sharing files since only one link is necessary.

To use a magnet link you will need a BitTorrent or eDonkey client, although you can rest assured since the vast majority of the most well-known clients support them.