gallery-dl is a command-line image and media downloader written in Rust. It supports a large extractor registry (hundreds of site modules), configurable download behavior, archive-based duplicate skipping, and optional post-processing.

Highlights

Works with many websites through a pluggable extractor registry
Concurrent downloads with retry/backoff, rate limits, and resume support
Duplicate protection with a SQLite download archive
Flexible output modes: direct download, URL/JSON dump, simulated runs
Post-processing options: metadata sidecars, ZIP/CBZ, exec hooks, ugoira conversion
Config files in JSON, YAML, or TOML

Installation

From source

cargo build --release

Binary path:

Unix/macOS: target/release/gallery-dl
Windows: target\release\gallery-dl.exe

Install via Cargo

cargo install --path .

Or install directly from GitHub:

cargo install --git https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl-rs --locked

Quick Start

Download from one URL:

gallery-dl "https://example.com/post/123"

Download to a directory with a custom filename template:

gallery-dl -D downloads -f "{num}.{ext}" "https://example.com/post/123"

Dry-run (extract only, no file writes):

gallery-dl --simulate "https://example.com/post/123"

Read URLs from a file:

gallery-dl -i urls.txt

Read URLs and comment/remove successful entries:

gallery-dl -I urls.txt
gallery-dl -x urls.txt

Discover supported modules and extractors:

gallery-dl --list-modules
gallery-dl --list-extractors
gallery-dl --list-extractors reddit pixiv

Common Workflows

Only print resolved media URLs:

gallery-dl -g "https://example.com/post/123"

Output lightweight JSON records:

gallery-dl -j "https://example.com/post/123"

Save metadata sidecars:

gallery-dl --write-infojson --write-metadata --write-tags "https://example.com/post/123"

Enable archive-based duplicate skipping:

gallery-dl --download-archive-skip-duplicates "https://example.com/post/123"

Or choose an explicit archive path:

gallery-dl --download-archive ./archive.db "https://example.com/post/123"

Configuration

Create a starter config:

gallery-dl --config-create

Check loaded/default config locations:

gallery-dl --config-status

Open your main config file with the system default app:

gallery-dl --config-open

Default config search paths:

Linux: ~/.config/gallery-dl/config.json, ~/.gallery-dl.conf, /etc/gallery-dl.conf
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/gallery-dl/config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\gallery-dl\config.json

Example config.json:

{
  "extractor": {
    "timeout": 30,
    "user_agent": "gallery-dl-rs/1.0"
  },
  "downloader": {
    "directory": "downloads",
    "parallel": 4,
    "retry": 3
  },
  "output": {
    "log": "gallery-dl.log"
  }
}

Override config values from CLI:

gallery-dl -o downloader.parallel=8 -o extractor.timeout=45 "https://example.com/post/123"

Authentication

Use Netscape cookies file:

gallery-dl -C cookies.txt "https://example.com/protected"

Extract cookies from a browser profile (currently firefox, chrome, chromium):

gallery-dl --cookies-from-browser firefox "https://example.com/protected"

Use username/password or .netrc:

gallery-dl -u USER -p PASS "https://example.com/protected"
gallery-dl --netrc "https://example.com/protected"

Filtering and Selection

Filter by size and type:

gallery-dl --filesize-min 200kb --filesize-max 20mb --filter-type "image/jpeg,image/png,image/webp" URL

Select ranges and message-level filters:

gallery-dl --range "1-20" --filter "kind == 'url'" URL
gallery-dl --file-range "1-5" --file-filter "extension == 'jpg'" URL

Post-Processing

Create ZIP/CBZ archives:

gallery-dl --zip downloads.zip URL
gallery-dl --cbz URL

Run a command for each downloaded file:

gallery-dl --exec echo "{}" URL

Ugoira handling:

gallery-dl --ugoira webm URL
gallery-dl --ugoira mp4 URL

Disable post-processors entirely:

gallery-dl --no-postprocessors URL

Logging and Debugging

Increase verbosity: -v, -vv
Quiet mode: -q, -qq
Log HTTP traffic: --print-traffic
Write logs to file: --write-log gallery-dl.log
Capture failures: --error-file failed.txt, --write-unsupported unsupported.txt

Development

Run tests:

cargo test --all-targets --all-features

Run locally:

cargo run -- --help

Notes

Use this tool responsibly and follow the terms of service/copyright rules of the sites you download from.
Some sites require authentication cookies or account-specific access.

License

GPL-2.0. See LICENSE.