JDownloader is a download management tool that has many features, such as allowing users to download multiple files from websites, setting bandwidth limitations, automatically extracting archives, and much more. This blog post will be a basic rundown of the software's functionality, and not an in-depth guide. Let's get started.
Downloading JDownloader
JDownloader has a few different download options for various operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, MacOS, and a few other options. Pick the one that corresponds with your operating system.
Since I'm using Linux Mint, I decided to check if it was available as a Flatpak. Luckily for me, it was! I installed it with the following command:
flatpak install org.jdownloader.JDownloader
Starting Up JDownloader
This is what the program looks like once it starts up:
It can look confusing and overwhelming with all the text and buttons, but I'll guide you through some of the options. We are currently in the downloads tab, which will show us all of our current downloads. To access the settings page, click on settings in the top left corner, then select the settings option:
We can make various changes to our settings, such as the maximum number of current downloads, the default directory for our downloads, the option to remove finished downloads, and so on.
Take a moment to look around at the settings. You might have also noticed that opening our settings has created a settings tab. You can exit out of that when you're finished.
What Can You Download?
By providing JDownloader with a link, it will pull whatever files are on that page. Remember how I mentioned earlier that you could download multiple files from a webpage? Here is a good example of what JDownloader can do. Take a look at the screenshot below:
I was looking for this audiobook online, and I came across a website with multiple audio files; 11 to be exact. There wasn't a download option, and normally you would need to use your browser's inspect tool to find the files that way, or with the help of a browser plugin. At that point in time I hadn't used JDownloader (I was procrastinating to test it out), and I figured that it was the perfect opportunity to do so. Anyway, let's download some mp3 files.
Adding Links
On the bottom left corner, click on Add New Links.
You'll get a popup window that looks like this:
As you can see, I added the link of the webpage I want to analyze. You can also change the download destination. From here, you would click the continue button.
Link Grabber Tab
After adding your link, you can click on the LinkGrabber tab. Mine looked like this after adding my link:
JDownloader pulled a lot of files from the webpage. It looks confusing, but thankfully, we can sort through the different files. To the right, I selected the Audio File category, which selected the mp3 files that were available. You can see that these files are highlighted in blue.
Downloading The Files
In the bottom right corner, we have the Start all Downloads button, but you don't want to click that just yet. This will download all the files that were found (I found out the hard way). Instead, you want to select the arrow next to it. From there, you want to select Download Selected, and then click on start Downloads. This will only download the files that you have selected.
It's that simple! You can also download YouTube videos. I also did some testing by stopping and starting my internet connection, and JDownloader seems to continue to pick up where it left off.
Closing Thoughts
You might never have considered using a download manager, but they can be very useful tools. What do you think of JDownloader? Give it a try and see what you can download with it.
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