carl — privacy-first BitTorrent
open source · macOS · Linux · Windows
Torrents that stay your business.
carl is a lightweight BitTorrent client with Nostr-based discovery and first-class Tor anonymity. The polish of a modern desktop app — built for people who actually care about privacy.
paste into any AI Install carl from github.com/vincenzopalazzo/carl
No accounts. No telemetry. Your identity is a local Nostr key you control.
carl — transfers
!Image 1: carl Transfers screen
clearnet
#### Direct & fast
Connect straight to peers when privacy isn’t the priority. Trackers and DHT fully enabled.
proxied
#### Through a SOCKS5 tunnel
Route every connection over a proxy. DNS resolves remotely with socks5h:// — no leaks.
tor
#### Anonymous by default
Download over Tor and seed as a .onion hidden service. Your IP never appears.
Discover over Nostr
Find torrents on a network nobody can seize.
carl searches a decentralized relay network for torrent events (NIP-35) — no central indexer to censor, take down, or log your queries. Publish your own with a keystroke.
- Every event is Schnorr-signed — trust what you download.
- See exactly which relays each result came from.
- Add your own relays over wss:// — one per line.
discover · nostr search
Debian 12.5 — Full DVD set
signed
btih:a1d9f3c2…4e9a2d6f
relay.damus.io relay…onion nostr.band
Anonymous by design
Seed without ever revealing where you are.
Turn on Tor and carl seeds as a hidden service: peers reach you over a .onion address while your IP stays invisible. The moment a proxy or Tor is set, DHT and UDP trackers switch off — by design, not as an afterthought.
- A live leak-check confirms nothing is escaping the tunnel.
- Announce your onion over Nostr — no tracker required.
- Routing state is on every row — never buried in a menu.
seeding · tor hidden service
Seeding as a hidden service
Peers reach you over this address.
online
g7k3xqp4nfz2vw9d6r8slmc1ojtb5h…v3sba.onion
published to **4 relays** no IP leaked
transfers · piece progress
tor archlinux-2026.06.01.iso 64%
Built for the details
Everything technical, surfaced — nothing buried.
Peers, pieces, magnet links, SOCKS proxies and onion addresses, treated as first-class, copyable elements.
#### Piece-level progress
A segmented progress bar per transfer and a full have/missing heatmap in the detail view.
#### Copyable everywhere
Info-hashes, magnet links and .onion addresses are one click from your clipboard.
#### Three discovery sources
Trackers, DHT and Nostr peer-announce, clearly distinguished — you always know where peers came from.
#### Live leak-check
A constant indicator of whether traffic is genuinely confined to your proxy or Tor circuit.
#### Onion seeding
Share a file as a hidden service in two clicks, with the generated address front and center.
#### Relay status at a glance
See every configured relay as a dot — connected, unreachable, clearnet or Tor.
Privacy you can see on every row.
Free software. No accounts, no telemetry, no compromises.