Suggestion

Feature Request

Feature description

Add a configuration option to disable automatic saving of runtime configuration changes back to qBittorrent.conf on shutdown.

Problem

qBittorrent always persists its in-memory configuration to disk when the application stops or restarts.

In managed or declarative environments (e.g., configuration management with Ansible, Salt, Puppet, or templated files), the configuration file is treated as the single source of truth and is regenerated automatically.

Because qBittorrent rewrites the file on shutdown:

• templated or managed changes can be overwritten
• service restarts require stop → modify → start sequencing
• idempotent configuration management becomes difficult
• configuration drift occurs between desired state and runtime-saved state

Current behaviour

On exit, qBittorrent writes its current state to qBittorrent.conf unconditionally.

Proposed behaviour

Add an option to disable writing configuration changes to disk.

Possible implementations:

• GUI checkbox: Do not save settings on exit
• advanced option: Session\SaveOnExit=false
• CLI flag: --read-only-config

When enabled:

• configuration is read at startup only
• no writes are performed on exit
• runtime changes remain in memory only

Alternatives considered

Current workaround:

1. stop service
2. replace config file
3. start service

When googling this issue others have also has issue with this behavior.

Checklist

• Feature not present in latest stable release
• Issue tracker searched for duplicates
• Wiki reviewed