Frequently Asked Questions

Is this tool right for me?

Gallery-dl is not for everybody or every situation.

It is a command-line tool that requires you to install Python, read and understand mildly technical documentation, edit configuration files, and do a little tinkering to get it to work.

It is excellent at downloading files from supported sites. Generally that means images, videos, comics, and manga, but not strictly. It is not a viewer or file manager; you will need another tool for that.

It can keep track of which files you have downloaded so you can "watch" an album or user and don't need to download duplicate files. But it does not do that automatically; you need to know how to script and schedule it, or run it manually.

This is not the right tool for torrenting or private trackers.

Does it support this one site I use or can you add it?

Today, gallery-dl supports hundreds of sites!

1. Check the Supported Sites list, as these work out of the box using the Basic Usage instructions.

2. If your site is similar to other sites, you can do a custom configuration to add your site. See the Custom Site Support page for details.

3. You can also develop your own extractor! If you have a moderate level of Python experience, we are creating instructions to walk you through how to setup your own. We love to have new sites added.

4. Check the issues page by searching to see if someone else has requested the site. If so, leave a thumbs up so we know you support their request.

5. As a last resort, you can post a new issue asking for your site to be supported. As we are a volunteer community, these take a while to get to.

Can it monitor for changes to files?

In general, no. gallery-dl downloads files based on their name. It does not recognize updated modification dates or different file versions. If you downloaded a file from one URL and have configured it to "skip":true, then it will not attempt to download another file at the same URL.

Can it detect or remove duplicate files?

No. It downloads files and albums from the URLs you provide, and saves them in a folder structure based on the site it was downloaded from. (Save location can be configured, but this is it's default action.) It does not recognize the files or take action for duplicate or similar files.

I've used gallery-dl for a while. One of my sites suddenly stopped working or is having problems. What should I do?

This isn't uncommon. Websites change how they work, and gallery-dl needs to be manually updated to keep on top of those changes.

1. For starters, you should upgrade to make sure you are running the latest version. You can do this with gallery-dl -U, pip -U gallery-dl, a git fetch, or your distribution's upgrade mechanism.

2. Run gallery-dl with a -v option for verbose output. Read the logs and see if there's an explanation. Many times a website will have an outage, or may block your IP address. Sorry, there's not much we can do if their website is down or you can't get to it.

3. If that doesn't work, check the issues page to see if it's been reported. If it has been, use the thumbs-up emoji to cast a vote of support for that issue.

4. If it still doesn't work, the site works OK, and it hasn't been reported, post a new issue. Include a clear description of the issue, when it started, and the log results of running gallery-dl with a -v option for verbose output.