Add peers in qBittorrent WebUI: the dialog, address format and 5.2.4 fix

In the built-in qBittorrent WebUI, select a torrent, open its Peers tab, right-click inside the peer list and choose Add peers…. Enter one peer address per line, including its port, then click OK.

This adds connection candidates to an existing torrent—not new magnet links or trackers. Use it when you know a peer sharing the same lawful torrent, such as another machine distributing your own dataset.

Add a peer step by step

1. Sign in to the WebUI of the qBittorrent instance you want to use.
2. Select one torrent in the transfer list.
3. Expand the torrent’s properties panel if it is collapsed, then open Peers.
4. Right-click inside the peer-list area and choose Add peers…. You do not need to select an existing peer; the action works from the list area itself.
5. Paste the peer’s IP address and BitTorrent port. For several peers, put each address on a separate line.
6. Click OK, then watch the Peers tab for a connection.

The built-in WebUI’s peer-menu implementation attaches this action to the peer-list area and uses the currently selected torrent. These steps describe the built-in interface; alternative WebUIs may place the control elsewhere.

Address format: include the port

Use IPv4:port or [IPv6]:port, for example:

192.0.2.10:51413
[2001:db8::10]:51413

These are documentation addresses showing the syntax, not working peers. Replace them with a known peer’s actual address and listening port. The port belongs to the remote peer’s BitTorrent client, not your WebUI login page.

Keep the square brackets around an IPv6 address. Do not paste a magnet URI, tracker URL or bare IP address into this field. Despite the dialog’s “one IP per line” label, its format prompt explicitly requires the port.

If you meant to add downloads rather than connection candidates, use the separate guide to adding multiple magnet links in WebUI.

If clicking OK does nothing

A dialog that stays open without an error is different from an accepted address that never connects.

qBittorrent 5.2.4, released September 28, 2026, explicitly fixed the WebUI’s ability to manually add peers. If you are running an older affected version, update the qBittorrent instance serving the WebUI—not just a desktop client on another machine. The fix is recorded in the official news and 5.2.4 release notes.

The original bug discussion traced an unresponsive Add Peers dialog to a translated JavaScript string and suggested switching to English temporarily. That is a workaround for the reported locale-related bug, not a remedy for network connection failures.

If the dialog closes but no peer appears

Accepting an address does not prove a connection succeeded. The Peers tab is not a permanent receipt listing every address you submitted.

Check that:

• The remote client is running and sharing the same torrent, not merely a file with the same name.
• Its address and listening port are current and reachable from the machine running qBittorrent.
• Your torrent is started and not waiting in the queue or checking files.

Libtorrent’s manual connection documentation explains that an unresponsive peer, or one that is not part of the torrent, will be disconnected. Adding an address cannot make an offline peer available or guarantee faster downloading.

API alternative

For scripts or an interface without the menu, the documented endpoint is POST /api/v2/torrents/addPeers. Supply these form fields:

• hashes: the existing torrent’s hash, or multiple hashes separated by |.
• peers: peer addresses separated by |, rather than the dialog’s line breaks.

Authenticate first with POST /api/v2/auth/login, supplying username and password as form fields, then send the returned SID cookie with the add-peers request. Set a Referer or Origin header to match the domain and port in the request’s Host header. The official WebUI API documentation specifies cookie authentication, POST for state-changing methods and a 400 response when none of the supplied peers is valid. An HTTP success response still does not establish that the remote peers connected.