When you’re using a piece of software like this, file associations can be very important. This is because of the purpose of them – they help to save you time when you want to start a file going. In this article, we’re going to be discussing how FrostWire handles them and the different options that the tool gives you so that you can decide how you want files to open. To start with, we’re going to explain what we actually mean when we say this phrase that you can fully understand what we’re talking about.
File associations are where the operating system you’re using will associate certain file extensions with certain pieces of software. For example, by default all .txt files will open with Notepad if this hasn’t been changed. This is done to speed up the opening of tools, you don’t have to manually open pieces of software and then open the respective file in it, you can simply double click the file and let Windows handle the rest for you. This is perhaps one of the best features available to speed things up. Now let’s explain the different options for it in this software package.
“.torrent” files – If you want this tool to automatically open .torrent files for you then this option should be enabled. You can find it by opening the program up and then going into Tools –> Options and then Advanced –> File Associations. This extensions is the default format for torrent files, you’ll see this a lot when you browse the internet for them.
“magnet:” links – These are a new popular replacement for torrent files. They work in the same way but are much easier for torrent sites to store, we’ll talk about them in more detail in a separate article but if you want this program to associate itself with magnet links (another way of downloading files through the network) then enabling this option would be a good idea.
What should FrostWire do with the selected associations on startup? – If you’ve told the tool to use associations and these are kept by the operating system then you’ll have no problems with opening files. However, if another tool changes these to suit their own then you won’t be able to use this method and will need to reset the associations to make sure the operating system knows which to use. This program gives you three different options to choose from when it finds one missing.
- Always take the selected – If you select this option, when the tool finds that one of them is missing it will force the settings you selected above. If you told it associate with magnet links for example, it would make sure that when it opens that this is stored by the operating system and changes appropriately.
- Ask me what to do – If the software package comes across one of them being missing, by choosing this option it will then ask you what you want it to do so that you can decide for yourself. This is perhaps the best option to go with if you want to decide at the time.
- Ignore all – When a missing association is found, the client will ignore it if you select this option. This means that if another program changes the settings to make itself automatically open torrent files then this client will not be able to do the same and you won’t even be prompted about it with this option selected.
In conclusion, file associations are very important to how your computer runs this P2P and torrent client. If you want to be able to download data quickly then selecting these settings is the best way of doing it, it’s very easy to do so too. If you haven’t installed it yet we highly recommend that you go ahead and do so, that way you can enjoy the many benefits that this has to offer to you completely free of charge.
Tags: file associations, frostwire, settings