docsend-dl

Save any public Dropbox DocSend deck as a PDF — one command, full quality.

Quickstart

pip install docsend-dl && playwright install chromium
docsend-dl https://docsend.com/view/XXXXXX

That's it. You'll get a PDF named after the deck in your current directory.

Demo

$ docsend-dl https://dbx.docsend.com/view/n43v89r
Found deck: "docsend-n43v89r" (21 slides)
Got 21/21 image URLs
  Downloading slides ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 21/21 0:00:00
╭──────────────────────── Done in 32.2s ─────────────────────────╮
│ Slides saved: 21/21                                            │
│ PDF size: 9.5 MB                                               │
│ Output: /home/user/docsend-n43v89r.pdf                         │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Features

• PDF by default — slides are assembled into a single PDF at full resolution with no re-encoding
• PNG export — pass --images to save individual slide images instead
• Smart output paths — pass a .pdf filename, a directory, or let it default to {deck title}.pdf
• Fast — downloads all slides in parallel with automatic retries
• Works with both docsend.com and dbx.docsend.com URLs
• Headless — runs in the background by default; use --no-headless to watch the browser

Installation

You need the package itself plus a Chromium browser for Playwright:

pip install docsend-dl
playwright install chromium

Or if you use uv:

uv tool install docsend-dl
uv run playwright install chromium

Usage

CLI

# Download as PDF (default)
docsend-dl https://docsend.com/view/XXXXXX

# Save PDF to a specific path
docsend-dl https://docsend.com/view/XXXXXX --output "My Deck.pdf"

# Save PDF into a directory (uses deck title as filename)
docsend-dl https://docsend.com/view/XXXXXX --output ./downloads

# Download as individual PNG images instead
docsend-dl https://docsend.com/view/XXXXXX --images

# Show the browser window during download
docsend-dl https://dbx.docsend.com/view/XXXXXX --no-headless

Python API

import asyncio
from docsend_dl import download_deck

# Download as PDF (default)
result = asyncio.run(download_deck(
    url="https://docsend.com/view/XXXXXX",
))
print(f"Saved PDF to {result.output_path} ({result.total_bytes} bytes)")

# Download as individual images
result = asyncio.run(download_deck(
    url="https://docsend.com/view/XXXXXX",
    output="My Deck",
    images_only=True,
))
print(f"Saved {result.successes}/{result.slide_count} slides")

For finer control you can call the extraction and download steps separately:

import asyncio
from pathlib import Path
from docsend_dl import extract_slide_urls, download_slides

async def main():
    deck_info = await extract_slide_urls(url="https://docsend.com/view/XXXXXX")
    result = await download_slides(
        urls=deck_info.image_urls,
        output_dir=Path("slides"),
    )
    print(f"Downloaded {result.successes} slides")

asyncio.run(main())

How It Works

1. Opens the DocSend page in a headless Chromium browser (via Playwright)
2. Extracts each slide's image URL from the page data
3. Downloads all slide images in parallel (via httpx)
4. Assembles the images into a single PDF (via img2pdf) or saves them as PNGs

Limitations

• Only works with public decks — email-gated and passcode-protected decks are not supported
• Requires Chromium to be installed via playwright install chromium

Contributing

# Clone and install dev dependencies
git clone https://github.com/captivus/docsend-dl.git
cd docsend-dl
uv sync

# Run unit tests (fast, no network needed)
uv run pytest -m "not integration"

# Run integration tests (downloads real decks, verifies checksums)
uv run pytest tests/test_integration.py

# Run everything
uv run pytest

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.

License

MIT