NeoDownloader
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Getting started

This page takes you from installing NeoDownloader to your first downloaded files. It takes a few minutes, and most of them are the download itself.

Install NeoDownloader

NeoDownloader 6 runs on Windows; versions for macOS and Linux are not out yet. Download it from the version 6 page. It comes in two forms:

  • The installer sets NeoDownloader up for your Windows account and adds shortcuts to the desktop and the Start menu.
  • The portable version is a zip. Unpack it anywhere you can write to - a folder on your disk, a USB drive - and run NeoDownloader.exe. Everything it keeps and everything it downloads stays inside that folder, so moving the folder moves all of it.

The first time you run a new release, Windows may show Windows protected your PC. Click More info, then Run anyway.

If you use NeoDownloader 5, keep it: version 6 is a separate program with its own folders, and the two run side by side. Projects and settings from version 5 are not carried over.

Both forms, moving to a new version and removing NeoDownloader are covered in Install, update and remove.

Make your first project

Everything you download belongs to a project: the address you gave, the folder the files go to, and what has been downloaded so far. There are two ways to start one:

  • Click New project and paste the address of the page you want to download from - a gallery, a profile, a video, a page of search results.
  • Or drag the link from your browser straight into the NeoDownloader window. Drop the link here appears; let go, and a new project starts from that address.

A wizard takes it from there:

  1. What do you want to download? Paste the address and click Next. While NeoDownloader looks at the address, the button says Checking… - this can take several seconds. If you dropped a link, this step is done for you.
  2. Pick the plugin for this download. Each plugin says whether it can handle the address, and the best one is already selected, so usually you just click Next. When only one plugin can handle it and you have no project for that address yet, the wizard skips this step.
  3. Questions from the plugin. Some addresses need an answer first. Crawler, for example, asks Where do the files come from? on a site it does not know by name.
  4. Name and folder. Check the Name and the Destination folder, leave Start downloading right away ticked and click Create project.

Watch it download

The new project appears in the list, and its card says Running. The line beside it counts files as they arrive - 12 of 80, the size so far, the speed. A plus sign after the total means the plugin is still finding files, so the total can grow.

Click the card to open the project. It has three tabs:

  • Files - what has been downloaded, as tiles. Double-click one to open it.
  • Journal - what happened, line by line, including anything that went wrong.
  • Properties - the address, the folder and the settings of the project.

Each tab has a page of its own: Files, Journal and Change a project.

To stop, click Stop on the card. Nothing that was downloaded is lost, and when the plugin can pick up the unfinished run, the card offers Continue where it stopped.

By default, two projects download at the same time. Start a third, and it waits its turn with In queue on its card. More about runs and the queue is in Downloading.

In the free version, a project stops when it reaches 100 pictures, 10 videos or 10 other files, and NeoDownloader tells you which limit it was - see Is NeoDownloader free?

Find your files

Open the project, go to Properties and click Open the folder. Or go there yourself:

  • installed NeoDownloader - your Downloads folder, then NeoDownloader, then a folder named after the project;
  • portable version - the downloads folder beside NeoDownloader.exe, then a folder named after the project.

The last step of the wizard lets you give a different folder for any project. Whatever the folder, NeoDownloader writes only inside it and never above it.

Run it again later

Worth knowing before anything else: running a project again downloads only what is new.

Sites change: a gallery gets new photos, a profile gets new posts. Click the download button on the card - Start from the beginning - and NeoDownloader goes through the source again and takes only the files it does not have yet. What it has already downloaded is not fetched a second time.

Files you delete in NeoDownloader are not downloaded again by that project. Deleting them is how you tell it you do not want them.

Next steps