HyperDM

A fast, open-source download manager for Linux — a clean-room alternative to IDM. It splits every download across multiple connections, catches downloads straight out of your browser, and grabs video from YouTube and ~35 other sites at whatever quality you pick.

• Multi-connection downloads — each file is split into segments fetched in parallel, with work-stealing rebalancing so a single slow connection can't hold the whole download back.
• Pause, resume, retry — progress is kept in a .hdm sidecar file, so a paused (or crashed, or rebooted) download resumes from exactly where it stopped.
• Browser integration — a Manifest V3 extension for Chrome/Brave/Edge and Firefox. Clicking a download in the browser hands it to HyperDM; the popup also lists media it detected on the current page.
• Video sites — YouTube, Vimeo, X/Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Twitch, Dailymotion, SoundCloud, Bilibili, Odysee, Rumble and more, via yt-dlp.
• Pick your quality — the extension and the desktop dialog both ask yt-dlp what the page actually offers and let you choose: 4K down to 360p, or audio-only.
• HLS/DASH capture — .m3u8 and .mpd streams are remuxed to a real file with ffmpeg.
• Queue and scheduler — concurrency limits, sequential mode, a global speed cap, and an "only download between 00:00 and 07:00" window.
• Clipboard monitor — copy a URL, get an offer to download it.
• Native GUI — PySide6/Qt, dark and light themes, live speed graph, system tray, desktop notifications.
• Automatic filing — finished files are sorted into Video/, Music/, Documents/, Programs/, Compressed/ by type.

License: LGPL-3.0-or-later.

Requirements

Linux	any modern distro (X11 or Wayland)
Python	3.11 or newer
ffmpeg	needed for HLS/DASH and for merging high-quality video+audio
yt-dlp	installed automatically into HyperDM's virtualenv

ffmpeg is a system package — install it with your package manager:

sudo apt install ffmpeg      # Debian / Ubuntu
sudo pacman -S ffmpeg        # Arch
sudo dnf install ffmpeg      # Fedora

Everything else (PySide6, httpx, yt-dlp) is pulled into a local .venv by the scripts below — nothing is installed system-wide.

Install

git clone <this-repo> HyperDM
cd HyperDM
./install.sh

This creates .venv, installs the app and yt-dlp, adds a hyperdm launcher to ~/.local/bin, installs a desktop entry and icon, registers the browser native-messaging host, and stages the browser extensions in dist-extension/.

Then launch it from your application menu, or:

hyperdm

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH.

From PyPI

No clone needed:

pip install "hyperdm[gui,video]"

This installs the same launchers as install.sh — hyperdm for the GUI and hyperdm-cli for the headless downloader. The browser native-messaging host still needs registering; run hyperdm-install-host once, or use the source install above which does it for you.

Or run it without installing

./run.sh

First run builds the virtualenv; after that it starts immediately. No launcher, no desktop entry, no host registration.

Uninstall

./uninstall.sh

Browser extension

The extension talks to the app over native messaging, so HyperDM must be installed (./install.sh) for it to work — run.sh alone doesn't register the messaging host.

Chrome / Brave / Edge

1. Go to chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode.
2. Load unpacked → select dist-extension/chrome.
3. Copy the extension ID shown on the card, then authorise it:

   ./install.sh --chrome-id <ID>
   

Firefox

1. Go to about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox.
2. Load Temporary Add-on → select dist-extension/firefox/manifest.json.

(If dist-extension/ is missing, run ./packaging/build-extension.sh.)

Using it

• Any download you start in the browser is handed to HyperDM instead.
• On a video page, the popup shows the video with a quality dropdown — populated with the formats that page actually has — and a Download button. A floating button on the page itself does the same thing.
• Other media on the page (direct .mp4, .mp3, HLS streams) is listed in the popup, each with its own grab button.
• The popup's status pill tells you whether the app is running.

Extension settings (right-click the icon → Options) cover the default video quality, whether to intercept every file type or only media, whether to include audio and HLS/DASH streams in detection, an ad-network filter, a minimum file size, and a per-site disable list.

Configuration

Settings live in the GUI under Settings, and are stored at ~/.config/hyperdm/config.json:

Setting	Default
Download folder	~/Downloads	where finished files land
Max concurrent downloads	4	or switch to strict sequential mode
Connections per download	8	segments fetched in parallel
Speed limit	unlimited	global cap in bytes/sec
Organise by category	on	sort into Video/, Music/, …
Confirm browser downloads	on	show a prefilled dialog instead of queueing silently
Video site quality	Best available	default for yt-dlp downloads
Video site cookies	off	lift cookies from Firefox/Chrome/Brave/… for age-restricted or login-walled videos
Theme	dark	dark or light
Proxy	none
Schedule	off	e.g. only download 00:00–07:00

Other paths: database at ~/.local/share/hyperdm/hyperdm.db, IPC socket at $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/hyperdm/ipc.sock (mode 0600, user-only).

Age-restricted or members-only videos usually fail with "Sign in to confirm…". Set Video site cookies to the browser you're logged into and try again.

Command line

A minimal downloader is available without the GUI:

hyperdm-cli <url> -o out.iso -n 16

-o, --output	destination path
-n, --connections	parallel connections (default 8)
--referrer	send a Referer header

Packaging

• Arch / AUR — packaging/pkgbuild/PKGBUILD
• AppImage — packaging/appimage/build-appimage.sh
• Wheel — python -m build (extras: [gui], [video], [dev])

Development

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen .venv/bin/python -m pytest -q   # Python tests
node --test extension/tests/*.js                          # extension tests

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen lets the GUI tests run without a display.

Layout

hyperdm/core/         segmented engine, chunk manager, queue, scheduler,
                      SQLite DAO, HLS/DASH + yt-dlp downloaders
hyperdm/gui/          PySide6 window, dialogs, tray, theming
hyperdm/native_host/  native-messaging host + Unix-socket IPC to the app
extension/            Manifest V3 extension (Chrome + Firefox)
packaging/            desktop entry, icon, PKGBUILD, AppImage, extension build
tests/                pytest suite

One thing to know if you touch site detection: the "is this a video page?" logic exists twice — hyperdm/core/ytdlp_downloader.py::is_video_page_url and extension/common.js::isVideoPage. They must stay in sync; if they diverge, a download silently goes to the wrong engine and produces a broken file. Both files carry a comment pointing at the other, and both are covered by tests.

Troubleshooting

"App not running" in the extension. Start HyperDM. If it is running, the native-messaging host may not be registered for your browser — re-run ./install.sh (and --chrome-id <ID> for Chrome).

A video downloads without sound, or fails at "merging". ffmpeg is missing. High-quality streams are stored as separate video and audio tracks and need it to combine them.

A YouTube download fails with an extractor error. yt-dlp goes stale when sites change. Update it:

.venv/bin/pip install -U yt-dlp

Downloads are slower than expected. Some servers cap per-connection speed (more connections help) and others cap per-IP (they won't). Try raising Connections per download; if nothing changes, the server is the limit.