FrostWire 7.1.4 (build 337) is out. If you skipped 7.1.0 through 7.1.3, this is the one post that covers the whole series: what you will notice, what changed under the hood, and the numbers behind it.
Between April and November we shipped five desktop releases: 7.1.0, 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 7.1.3 and now 7.1.4. Together they carry 409 fixes and 68 new features, a new BitTorrent engine, and IceBridge, a peer-to-peer network that lets FrostWire users search each other directly, with no website in between.
If you only read one section
- Search that no website can switch off. FrostWire now also asks other FrostWire users, over IceBridge, and shows their answers next to the web results as Distributed results. You can browse what a peer is sharing and download straight from them.
- Far fewer freezes. About 160 of the 409 fixes remove a freeze or stutter, mostly on older and slower computers. Startup is lighter and steadier.
- Fewer crashes. About 30 fixes target crashes and errors. In 7.1.4, FrostWire opens again on Macs running macOS 27, where it could crash at the splash screen.
- Safer. The installers bundle OpenJDK 27.0.1.0.3, which fixes the severe vulnerabilities in Oracle’s October 2026 Java security advisory. You don’t need to install or update Java yourself. 26 fixes harden FrostWire against hostile input and network traffic.
- A new BitTorrent engine. jlibtorrent 2.0.15.3 (from 2.0.12.7) fixes a data corruption bug, native memory leaks and DNS leaks.
For everyday users
Searching
- Distributed results appear beside the usual ones. Seeding is publishing: only torrents you are actively sharing are ever served as results, and a setup page explains this. Answering catalog requests is on by default and you can turn it off.
- Search results you already started downloading show a download arrow.
- Bitsearch joins the search engines. Idope, which stopped working, is gone. TPB results now show up on slower connections, and archive.org gets 15 seconds to answer instead of 5.
- Pasting a SoundCloud link, previewing a track and downloading it work in more cases, and a SoundCloud download that can’t start now shows an error instead of waiting forever.
- Magnet links open correctly even when the name or trackers come before the hash.
Downloads and transfers
- A transfer you paused stays paused after a restart. A removed transfer doesn’t come back.
- Removing an unfinished transfer deletes its partial files.
- Torrents that use only the new BitTorrent v2 format download only the files you picked and survive a restart.
- Transfer Detail > Pieces: click a piece to set its priority (Don’t Download, Low, Normal, High). Want to preview a video before the rest arrives? Set its first pieces to High.
- Create Torrent was rebuilt: drop a file or folder on the dialog, set private torrents, a comment, tracker tiers and more. Large folders no longer freeze it.
- YouTube video downloads fetch the matching audio and merge it. On macOS they start instantly instead of after about 9 seconds.
- IP Filter: block lists in P2P, DAT, CIDR and Hosts formats now really block. A bug had been adding ranges as allowed.
Windows
- Text is sharp again at display scaling above 100%.
- No more multi-second freezes waiting on the graphics driver.
- FrostWire.exe is signed by FrostWire LLC.
- Starting FrostWire on slow PCs no longer hangs the window.
macOS and Linux
- FrostWire starts on Macs missing the Lucida Grande font and on macOS 27 (7.1.4).
- “Show in Finder” can no longer be tricked by a crafted file name.
- A Linux search box no longer freezes for seconds waiting on the clipboard.
For advanced users
IceBridge. A peer-to-peer proxy network over UDP. Messages are signed, nodes relay for each other across several hops, and every message names the protocol it carries, so services beyond search can join later. Each install has an Ed25519 identity, backed up as a 24-word BIP39 phrase (Options > Identity). Nodes find each other through the BitTorrent DHT. Tools > IceBridge Console shows traffic live. Traffic is signed but not yet encrypted; end-to-end encryption is planned next.
Karma. When a download from a Distributed result finishes, your node endorses the sharer. Endorsements are signed, chained, rate limited and anchored to a Bitcoin block six deep that two block explorers agree on. Since 7.1.3, a peer’s karma counts the endorsements it receives, weighted by how much your node trusts the endorser, and an endorsement counts only for a torrent that peer shared itself. Karma is young, so treat it as a hint.
Identity hardening. Handshakes can’t be replayed, peers you only heard about from another peer are not trusted until verified, and every identity carries a small proof of work, so faking identities in bulk costs real computation.
Engine. jlibtorrent 2.0.15.3 carries the libtorrent fixes from 2.0.13 to the unreleased 2.0.16 and OpenSSL 4.1.0. Fixed: a memory-mapped storage corruption bug, short reads on Windows, stuck trackers after pause, wrong seeding times, web seeds for single-file torrents. Every decoded torrent, magnet, resume file and DHT message used to leak a native copy (100,000 parses of a 13.5 KB torrent leaked 1.7 GB; now flat). JNI calls moved data byte by byte; moving 1 MB into libtorrent went from 6 ms to 0.4 ms. Torrents with emoji in file names download with correct names.
MCP server. AI agents can search, download and manage IceBridge. Streams, session setup, error replies and restarts were fixed so stricter agents work.
Fuzzing. 42 fuzz harnesses (from 0) feed malformed input to the parsers for MP3, MP4, torrents and search results. They found crashes and runaway memory use, all fixed.
Memory. FrostWire now uses up to a quarter of your RAM (minimum 512 MB, maximum 4 GB) instead of a fixed 512 MB.
How we found the freezes
Since 7.1.0, FrostWire sends anonymous reports when its window stops responding for a few seconds or hits an error. They hold no personal data: where in the code the time went, Java and OS versions, memory use. Each report became a GitHub ticket and a fix with a test that fails without it. Since 7.1.3 the reports also say which version is running and whether a run hit an error, using a random number made at launch and never stored. There is no installation or user ID. 7.1.4 adds how long FrostWire had been running, whether startup warm-up had finished and how busy the computer was, so a slow machine isn’t mistaken for a FrostWire bug.
7.1.3 sent 219 reports over its first weekend, grouped into 38 distinct problems. All were triaged and 7.1.4 fixes 36 of them. One macOS 27 font problem alone caused 165 of those reports.
By the numbers
| Since 7.0.4 | Count |
|---|---|
| Fixes in the changelog | 409 |
| …of which UI freezes and stutters | about 160 |
| …of which crashes and errors | about 30 |
| …of which security hardening | 26 |
| New features | 68 |
| GitHub tickets closed | 242 (113 UI freezes, 29 crashes, 22 found by fuzzing) |
| Commits | 2,842 |
| Test classes (desktop, shared and Android) | 44 to 652 |
| Fuzz-testing harnesses | 0 to 42 |
Freeze and crash counts are grouped from the changelog’s wording, so treat them as close, not exact.
| Release | Date | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| 7.1.0 build 332 | Oct 10 | IceBridge, distributed search, new engine |
| 7.1.1 build 333 | Oct 15 | Crash and Linux freeze fixes, SoundCloud HLS, richer freeze reports |
| 7.1.2 build 334 | Oct 25 | Java security update, Windows sharpness and graphics freezes |
| 7.1.3 build 336 | Nov 7 | Karma overhaul, Pieces priorities, MCP, many freeze fixes |
| 7.1.4 build 337 | Nov 10 | macOS 27 fix, startup on slow PCs, 36 fixes |
Written 100% with AI
Every line of code in the 7.1 series was written by AI coding agents, directed and reviewed by the FrostWire team. Most commits name the model that wrote them, and in the last weeks most of the work, including all of 7.1.4, was done with Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5.
Get FrostWire 7.1.4
Download it now for Windows, macOS and Linux from frostwire.com/download. The in-app update is rolling out gradually, so you may not see it right away. The full list of changes is in the changelog, the code is on GitHub, and the 7.1.4 release notes are here.
FrostWire stays free, with no ads and no bundled software. If it is useful to you, chip in: donations buy the compute that finds and fixes these problems.
Keep seeding: on IceBridge, what you seed is what other people find.
