Hydra is a free and open-source download manager written in Rust. It dynamically splits a file across multiple connections and across independent mirror sources, then keeps rebalancing that work while the download runs, so one slow server does not hold the whole transfer hostage. Hydra is a high-performance network file retriever designed for speed, resilience, and adaptability. It dynamically partitions downloads across multiple connections and independent mirror sources, continuously rebalancing work to maximize throughput without stalling on slow peers. It ships as both a wget/curl-compatible CLI and a cross-platform desktop download manager with browser integration.
It ships in three shapes from the same engine:
- Desktop app — Windows, macOS and Linux, with categories, a queue and scheduler, tray icon, and browser integration.
- CLI — `wget` / `curl` compatible, with an interactive TUI queue manager.
- `libhydra` — the engine on its own as a C ABI shared library, for embedding in other applications (permissively licensed, separate from the GPL app).
Engine
- Adaptive concurrency — splits files across connections and mirrors, rebalancing live
- Range stealing — work is reassigned from slow peers to fast ones automatically
- Stall detection — statistical estimators catch degraded connections early
- HTTP(S), FTP, CONNECT tunnelling, SOCKS4/4a/5
- Integrity checks — checksum manifests plus Reed–Solomon bitrot protection
- Flat memory use — positioned writes keep RAM constant regardless of file size
Desktop app
- Browser integration for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari — downloads are handed off automatically, plus right-click capture and media sniffing
- Queue and scheduler with start/stop times and retry tracking
- Tray icon, sounds, launch-on-startup
- Localized in 10 languages (ar, en, es, fa, fr, ja, ko, nl, ru, zh)
- In-app updater, including for installs in root-owned directories
CLI
- Drop-in `wget` / `curl` flag and dialect support (`hydra compat-link` installs the shims)
- Interactive TUI to manage, pause, resume and monitor the queue
- Content-based file type detection and auto-sort
- Remote checksum lookup — verify server-advertised digests before or after downloading
What’s new in 0.3.10
– Firefox Add-ons store publication: direct store link to the official listing (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hdm-integration/) in Options > Extensions, replacing the manual installation guide with one-click store installation.
– Updated Firefox extension translation strings across all 10 supported locales (ar, en, es, fa, fr, ja, ko, nl, ru, zh).
Recent highlights (0.3.9)
– Linux StatusNotifierItem (SNI) tray integration via D-Bus (ksni / zbus), with desktop environment detection and runtime fallback between D-Bus SNI and X11/muda. Works on GNOME (AppIndicator), KDE Plasma, COSMIC, Sway and Hyprland. Selectable tray backend under Options > General.
– Linux taskbar and launcher progress: Unity/KDE D-Bus progress bars and transfer count badges via com.canonical.Unity.LauncherEntry.
– In-app browser extension manager: a Browser Extensions tab in Options and an Extensions toolbar button, with status badges, install directories, packed files and one-click actions to open the browser extension pages.
– Official Debian/Ubuntu Launchpad PPA packaging.
– Official Fedora Copr packaging.
– Post-install extension setup guidance in install.sh / install.ps1.
– Interactive web changelog and documentation portal.
– Debian packaging native messaging manifest generation.
– Debian changelog formatting in Launchpad release automation.
Requirements
- Windows — Windows 10 or later, x64 or ARM64
- macOS — macOS 11 or later, Intel or Apple Silicon
- Linux — x86_64 or aarch64; `.deb`, `.rpm` and portable tarballs provided
- Building from source needs Rust 1.80+
macOS note: the app is not notarized yet, so Gatekeeper may block it. If macOS
> says the app is damaged or from an unidentified developer, run: xattr -cr /Applications/Hydra\ Download\ Manager.app
