DeviantArt Downloader

Download the full gallery of any DeviantArt profile.

Works are fetched through two routes, so the API quota is spent only on what the API alone can serve:

Each route saves to its own subfolder inside the gallery folder. --api-only restores the old behaviour of routing everything through the official API.

• Downloads the original file when the author allows it, or the highest publicly available resolution image.
• Downloads mature content unblurred when you log in with your account (--login, see below). Without login, --unblur/DA_UNBLUR=true strips the blur where possible: works uploaded since ~mid-2021 have their URL token pinned to the blurred version, so for those the blurred preview is downloaded instead.
• Parallel downloads with retries and API rate-limit handling. The website route needs no OAuth call at all, so a re-sync of an all-ages gallery costs zero API requests.
• Detects duplicates across runs (even if the artwork's title has changed), so it is safe to re-run to sync new works.
• Run it with no arguments to re-sync every user already present in the output folder with their latest works.
• Re-syncs are incremental: the gallery listing stops as soon as it reaches a page of already-downloaded works (--full forces a complete walk).
• Files you delete manually stay deleted: the download record (_downloaded.json) is authoritative, so deleted works are not downloaded again unless you pass --redownload-missing.
• Saves the full metadata of every work to _metadata.json.

Installation

pip install deviantart-gallery-downloader

Credentials

1. Create a DeviantArt account.
2. Register an application (confidential type) at https://www.deviantart.com/developers/register.
3. Copy the client_id and client_secret from https://www.deviantart.com/developers/apps.

Export them as environment variables or put them in a .env file in the directory you run the command from:

DA_CLIENT_ID=your_client_id
DA_CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret
# Optional: simultaneous website downloads (default: 4, recommended not to exceed 8)
DA_WEB_WORKERS=4
# Optional: simultaneous API downloads (default: 2); kept low so parallel API
# requests don't trip the rate limit
DA_API_WORKERS=2
# Optional: pause in seconds after each API download, per thread (default: 0.5);
# the website route costs no quota and is never delayed
DA_DELAY=0.5
# Optional: strip the blur filter the API applies to mature-content previews
# (default: false, images are kept as the API serves them)
DA_UNBLUR=false
# Optional: output folder, absolute or relative ("~" is expanded)
DA_OUTPUT=~/Pictures/deviantart
# Optional: route every work through the API instead of the website listing
DA_API_ONLY=false

Usage

deviantart-downloader https://www.deviantart.com/username
deviantart-downloader username

# Passing the credentials as arguments:
deviantart-downloader username --client-id XXX --client-secret YYY

# Useful options:
deviantart-downloader username --info         # show profile info + galleries, download nothing
deviantart-downloader username -g "Sketches"  # only the named gallery folder (case-insensitive)
deviantart-downloader username -o my_folder   # output folder (default: DA_OUTPUT or downloads)
deviantart-downloader username -w 8           # simultaneous website downloads
deviantart-downloader username --api-workers 3  # simultaneous API downloads (default: 2)
deviantart-downloader username --delay 1.0    # pause after each API download, per thread
deviantart-downloader username --redownload-missing  # restore manually deleted files
deviantart-downloader username --unblur       # strip the blur on mature-content previews
deviantart-downloader username --full         # walk the entire gallery listing
deviantart-downloader username --api-only     # route everything through the API

Pass -i/--info to print a profile summary — bio, location, birthday, "deviant for X years", links, statistics and every gallery folder with its item count — and exit without downloading anything. DeviantArt does not expose pronouns through its endpoints, so those are not shown.

Pass -g/--gallery "NAME" to download only one gallery folder instead of the whole gallery (the name is matched case-insensitively; if it doesn't exist the tool lists the folders that do). Files land in the same <output>/<username>/ folder as a full sync, so works are never downloaded twice across runs.

Files are saved to <output>/<username>/web/ or <output>/<username>/api/, depending on the route each work took. The download record and the metadata live in <output>/<username>/, shared by both routes: a work is never downloaded twice, whichever route lists it.

Galleries downloaded by earlier versions keep their existing flat layout; those files are recognised and left where they are, and only new works land in the route subfolders.

When re-syncing a user, the gallery listing (newest first) stops at the first page whose works were all downloaded before, so frequent re-runs stay cheap even on huge galleries. Pass --full occasionally to walk the whole listing and pick up older works that became visible later (for example mature content after --login); --redownload-missing implies it.

Sync every downloaded user

With no profile argument, the tool scans the output folder for the users you already downloaded (their subdirectories) and fetches whatever they published since:

deviantart-downloader                # sync everyone under DA_OUTPUT (or ./downloads)
deviantart-downloader -o my_folder   # sync everyone under my_folder

Only subdirectories created by a previous run are considered (they are recognised by the _downloaded.json / _metadata.json files inside), so unrelated folders in the output directory are ignored. Users whose gallery comes back empty (deactivated accounts) are skipped with a notice instead of aborting the run.

Unblurred mature content (--login)

Mature works are the reason the API route exists: the website lists them to logged-out visitors as a blurred placeholder whose URL token is pinned to that blurred transformation, so scraping cannot recover them. Without a logged-in user, the API serves mature works as an anonymous visitor would see them: blurred, and with the image URL cryptographically pinned to the blurred version for works uploaded since ~mid-2021 (--unblur cannot help there). To get the real images, log in with your DeviantArt account:

1. In your account settings, enable mature content.
2. In https://www.deviantart.com/developers/apps, edit your application and add http://127.0.0.1:8721/callback to the OAuth2 Redirect URI Whitelist.
3. Run:

deviantart-downloader --login            # one-time browser authorization
deviantart-downloader username           # subsequent runs use the saved session

The browser opens once to authorize the app; the session is stored in ~/.config/deviantart-downloader/token.json and renewed automatically. If it ever expires (about 3 months without use), run --login again. While a session is saved, mature works are downloaded unblurred and --unblur is unnecessary.

Development

git clone https://github.com/Nibblex/DeviantartDownloader
cd DeviantartDownloader
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .[dev]
pytest   # runs the test suite with a coverage report

The package is layered bottom-up, each module depending only on the ones above it:

The test suite mirrors that layout (tests/test_<module>.py), with the fakes and factories in tests/conftest.py.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later — see LICENSE.

Releases up to and including 1.6.1 were published under the MIT license and stay available under those terms; 1.7.0 onwards are GPLv3+.