How do I reset qBittorrent settings to default?

Question

How can I reset qBittorrent settings to default? I couldn't find any Reset button in the settings. Can anyone suggest a better way to do that?

Solution

qBittorrent stores its settings in ~/.config/qBittorrent, where ~ is your home directory. To clear the settings, you can remove or, better, rename that directory. You should expect that this will cause qBittorrent to forget all your current torrents, though the actual files in them will remain intact. I recommend making sure qBittorrent is not runnning before proceeding.

Since occasionally qBittorrent can remain running in the background after it seems like you've closed it, you can run this command to see if it is running, if you think it might be. It will output a process ID if it is, or nothing if it is not:

pgrep qbittorrent

To rename ~/.config/qBittorrent from the command line, run:

mv ~/.config/qBittorrent{,.old}

Or, if you prefer:

cd ~/.config
mv qBittorrent qBittorrent.old

There are other ways, of course, but either of those work. Whichever you use, it renames the qBittorrent directory with a .old suffix. You don't need to replace ~ with anything when you type it on the command line. The shell expands it automatically to the name of your home directory.

If you really want to remove the directory, which I suggest against doing, then you can do that this way:

cd ~/.config
rm -r qBittorrent

If you prefer to rename or remove it using Nautilus (or another graphical file browser), then open up a file browser window in your home directory. Press Ctrl+H to show hidden files and directories, so you can see the .config directory. Go into it and find the qBittorrent directory; then rename or delete it. (Pressing Ctrl+H again will re-hide files and directories whose names start with ..)

Next time you start qBittorrent, a new ~/.config/qBittorrent directory will be created with fresh (default) settings.

Comments

[muru]

One reason to ensure qBittorent isn't running when you do this: some apps write out their current configuration when exiting (qBittorent may not be one of those, but better to be sure). Learned this the annoying way when editing Terminator configuration.