Plugins

NeoDownloader downloads through plugins. Every project is run by one plugin, picked when the project is made. Four plugins come with NeoDownloader; this page says what each of them takes, how one is picked for an address, and what the Plugins page in the settings shows.

The four plugins

• Direct links downloads addresses that point straight at a file. Web pages are not for it: it leaves them to the other plugins. In a project's Plugin settings it has, among others, Minimum size and Maximum size, in bytes, and Group by site, which puts files into a folder named after the site they came from.
• Video Downloader takes video and sound from the video sites it knows - a single video, a playlist or a whole channel - with a choice of quality. It does not look for video on sites it does not know. More in Video Downloader.
• Gallery Downloader takes galleries and albums from the sites it knows by name, and arranges the files the way the site arranges them. It does not take direct links to files. More in Gallery Downloader.
• Crawler walks the pages of a site and takes the files it finds on them. A few sites it knows by name; any other page it reads the way you tell it - as a single page, a gallery, a forum thread, or a whole site or a part of it. More in Crawler.

An address can also be a pattern that stands for many - photo[1-50].jpg, {red,green,blue} - and NeoDownloader expands it before the run, whichever plugin the project uses. See Address patterns.

How a plugin is picked

When you give the wizard an address, NeoDownloader asks every plugin whether it can handle it, and the cards on Pick the plugin for this download show their answers. Often more than one plugin can, and the wizard selects one in this order:

1. Crawler, on a site it knows by name.
2. Direct links, Video Downloader or Gallery Downloader. Of two that handle the address, the one that needs no sign-in comes first.
3. Crawler, on any other page. Its card then says Works on any page, but knows nothing particular about this site.

A plugin that needs you to sign in can still be the selected one. The wizard then stops on this step instead of skipping it, so that you read Login needed before anything happens.

The selection is a suggestion: click another card to pick that plugin instead. The step itself is described in New project.

A project keeps the plugin it was made with: in Properties the plugin cannot be changed. The next time you make a project for the same site, As last time picks the plugin you picked.

Try another plugin

When a run brings nothing, or not what you wanted, read the project's Journal first. It often says why - for example, that a page may need a browser to be read.

If the plugin could not take what you wanted, make a new project from the same address and pick another plugin whose card said Handled.

Files already in the folder

Direct links, Gallery Downloader and Crawler have If a file with that name already exists under Downloading in the project's Plugin settings. It decides what a run does when the project's folder already holds a file with the name it is about to write - one this project downloaded before, or one simply lying there, left by an earlier project or by this one made again:

• Do not download - the default. The file on disk is taken as it is, and the journal says Already on disk, taken as they are: … with the number of such files.
• Download if it changed - the file is downloaded again when the site gives a different size or date for it; when the site says neither, the file counts as unchanged.
• Keep both - the file is downloaded and saved beside the old one under another name.

If the name is taken by another file of this project, the new file is saved under another name whatever the setting. A file taken from the disk counts as this project's and shows up among its files.

The Plugins page

Settings… → Extensions → Plugins lists the installed plugins and whether each of them can run. It is the place to look when something does not work; nothing on it can be changed.

Each plugin has a card with its name, its version and a badge: Ready, or Not ready when the plugin cannot run right now. A plugin that is not ready runs no projects, and in the wizard its card says Unavailable. Under its name, the card says why:

Line	What it means
Missing: …	Something the plugin needs is not there; the line names it.
Built for another version of the core	The plugin was made for another version of NeoDownloader. The core is the part of NeoDownloader that runs the plugins.

Check again reads the plugins anew and checks again what each of them needs, without restarting NeoDownloader.

A plugin that could not be loaded at all is shown below the cards in red, as Failed to load, with its folder and the reason. It takes no part in the wizard.

If a plugin that came with NeoDownloader is Not ready or Failed to load, write to us and include what the Plugins page says about it.

Third-party licences

Some plugins are built on code by other authors. Third-party licences under a plugin's card lists that code: each package with its version and licence, or not declared where the package names none. Click a package to read its licence, when the package came with the text. This plugin carries no third-party packages means there is none.

Updates

Plugins come with NeoDownloader and are updated together with it; there is no separate update for a plugin. See Update NeoDownloader.