Astra Downloader v2.0.0 — its own product, designed around downloading.
Paste a link from almost any site — YouTube, Reddit, X, TikTok, Vimeo,
Instagram, Twitch, or any of the hundreds yt-dlp
supports — and it downloads.
What changed
Astra Downloader used to live inside the
Astra Deck browser-extension
repository as a companion service, and the UI said so: the window opened on a
server dashboard, and the paste box was a card on a secondary tab. Someone who
wanted a video downloader had to navigate to one.
The downloader is the product now. The local API that serves the browser
extension is a feature of it.
- The window opens on Download. The paste box is the first thing on the
first page, sized as the product's front door, with the queue beneath it. - The server moved to a Browser extension page that says plainly that
downloading by pasting a link never needs it. - Tool readiness moved to the Download page — yt-dlp, FFmpeg, the
JavaScript runtime and SABR support are what decide whether a download works,
so they are visible where downloads happen. - The rail is ordered by use: Download, History, Sign-ins, Subscriptions,
Browser extension, Settings. Its status line now says "Extension server" — an
unlabelled "Stopped" in a downloader reads as a broken app. - An empty queue points at the paste box, not at a dashboard.
- Self-update targets this repository. The release feed, executable, and
SHA-256 sidecar all resolve here instead of the extension's releases, which
stopped carrying the executable.
Four tests pin the downloader-first layout so it stays a decision rather than
an accident of edit order.
Install
Download AstraDownloader.exe below and run it. It installs to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\AstraDownloader, registers its Start Menu and desktop entries,
and starts. First launch fetches yt-dlp and ffmpeg on its own.
The build is unsigned, so SmartScreen warns on first run — choose More info →
Run anyway. Verify AstraDownloader.exe.sha256 against the download if you
want to check the bytes.
To remove it completely, including shortcuts, the logon task, and the protocol
handlers:
& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\AstraDownloader\AstraDownloader.exe" --uninstallUpgrading from v1.x
Run the new executable over the old install; settings, history, the download
queue, subscriptions, and stored sign-ins are kept. Releases before v2.0.0 were
published from the Astra Deck repository.
Verification
436 Python tests and 9 Node tests pass; npm run check exits 0. The build was
driven end to end: installed, launched, and a real 59 MB download completed
through the running v2.0.0.