depot-dl

Python Steam depot downloader built for single-session, many-manifest workflows. Unlike the official DepotDownloader, depot-dl logs in once and reuses the same authenticated session across every manifest request — no more getting rate-limited by Steam's login throttle when fetching historical builds.

Why depot-dl?

The official DepotDownloader is a great tool, but each invocation performs a fresh Steam login. If you need to fetch dozens or hundreds of historical manifests, you'll hit RateLimitExceeded after a few dozen requests and get locked out for hours.

depot-dl's core design: one login, one session, N manifests. You can fetch hundreds of historical builds in a single run without tripping Steam's rate limiter, because only one login handshake ever happens.

Installation

pip install depot-dl

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/bitalizer/depot-dl
cd depot-dl
pip install -e .

Quick start

Download a single manifest

depot-dl download --app 440 --depot 441 \
    --manifest 3087768970110163342 --user YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN

Download many manifests in one session

# manifests.txt — one manifest ID per line
echo 3087768970110163342 > manifests.txt
echo 1619985635172051553 >> manifests.txt

depot-dl download --app 440 --depot 441 \
    --manifest-file manifests.txt \
    --user YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN

Only download specific files

depot-dl download --app 440 --depot 441 \
    --manifest-file manifests.txt \
    --file "*.cfg" \
    --user YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN

Or use a filelist file (same format as DepotDownloader):

# filelist.txt
regex:.*\.cfg$
*.json

depot-dl download --app 440 --depot 441 \
    --manifest-file manifests.txt \
    --filelist filelist.txt \
    --user YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN

Flat output with name templates

depot-dl download --app 440 --depot 441 \
    --manifest-file manifests.txt \
    --file "game.exe" \
    --name-template "{file}_{date}_{manifest}" \
    --user YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN

Template variables: {file}, {manifest}, {app}, {depot}, {date}

List files in a manifest

depot-dl list --app 440 --depot 441 --manifest 3087768970110163342 --user YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN

Get manifest info

depot-dl info --app 440 --depot 441 --manifest 3087768970110163342 --user YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN

Filelist format

depot-dl supports the same filelist format as DepotDownloader:

# comment lines start with #
game/steam.inf
regex:.*\.cfg$
*.swf

• Plain paths match exactly
• regex: prefix enables regex matching
• Anything with glob characters (*, ?, [) is treated as a glob
• Case-insensitive matching by default

Authentication

Email/2FA code is required once per run. The session is then reused for all manifests in that run.

depot-dl login --user YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN     # interactive login
depot-dl whoami                            # show cached user
depot-dl logout                            # clear cached credentials

Anonymous mode is supported for free-to-play apps:

depot-dl download --app <id> --depot <id> --manifest <id> --anonymous

Concurrency

Chunk downloads are parallelized per file via --max-chunks (default 8). Manifests are processed sequentially within a single session.

Library usage

from depot_dl import DepotClient, DownloadRequest, FileFilter

client = DepotClient()
client.login(username="YOUR_STEAM_LOGIN")

request = DownloadRequest(
    app_id=440,
    depot_id=441,
    manifest_id=3087768970110163342,
    output_dir="./downloads",
    file_filter=FileFilter.from_patterns(["*.cfg"]),
)

for progress in client.download(request):
    print(f"{progress.file}: {progress.percent:.1f}%")

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Credits

Built on top of ValvePython/steam for Steam protocol handling. Inspired by the SteamRE/DepotDownloader project.