Repository navigation
keyboard and accessibility
rDownloader targets WCAG 2.2 level AA. Everything the interface can do is reachable without a pointer, including the two things list interfaces usually get wrong: reordering and bulk actions.
Press ? anywhere for the list.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Go to Downloads |
| 2 | Go to LinkGrabber |
| 3 | Go to Streams |
| 4 | Go to Subscriptions |
| 5 | Go to Remote jobs |
| 6 | Go to Automation |
| 7 | Go to Statistics & history |
| h | Go to the download history, the second tab of Statistics & history |
| 8 | Go to Logs |
| 9 | Go to the audit log |
| 0 | Go to Settings |
| b | Collapse or expand the sidebar |
| n | Import files (NZB, torrent, containers, link lists) |
| p | Start or pause all downloads; ends a timed pause while one holds |
| k | Remove completed packages (on Downloads); k again confirms |
| f | Search: opens the indexer search in the LinkGrabber, from any page |
| a | Add: links in the LinkGrabber, a direct job on Downloads |
| e | Enqueue all (in the LinkGrabber); e again confirms |
| w | Add all paused (in the LinkGrabber); w again confirms |
| r | Delete all links (in the LinkGrabber); r again confirms |
| x | Close the dialog |
| ? | Show keyboard shortcuts |
| / | Open the search |
| Ctrl+K (⌘+K on a Mac) | Open the search, also from inside a text field |
The navigation keys follow the sidebar from top to bottom: 1 through 9, then 0 for Settings, the last entry. h opens the history tab of the page under 7 directly.
b does what the switch in the sidebar header does; on the collapsed rail that switch shows the rDownloader mark and is named Expand sidebar. Your keyboard focus stays on it.
p announces what it did, e.g. 3 transfers were paused. The Start all / Pause all button, and Resume now while a timed pause holds, tell a screen reader their key, as every button in the top bar with a shortcut does.
k works on the Downloads page only. It is the menu's Remove completed packages: the same question first, then every package whose files have all finished leaves the list. Press k a second time to answer the question; its button shows the key. The files stay in their destination folder.
f opens the indexer search from every page: it goes to the LinkGrabber and opens the indexer search drawer — the Search indexers button, which shows the key — with the keyboard in its field. While no indexer is enabled under Settings → Usenet → Indexers the indexer field is disabled, and the key lands on the hint's link to those settings instead. The name search on Downloads has no key; click into it. Ctrl+F stays your browser's find, and Shift+F does nothing. See Usenet and NZB.
a, e, w and r are the LinkGrabber's buttons Add links, Enqueue all, Add paused and Delete all; each button's tooltip names its key — Enqueue all (E) — and a key does nothing while its button is disabled or outside the LinkGrabber. When one of them asks first — Delete all always, the two enqueue buttons when duplicates would be taken along — the same key a second time answers the question. See The LinkGrabber. On Downloads a opens the Direct job dialog instead, the icon button beside the page title whose tooltip reads Direct job (A); the address field has the keyboard. See The download queue.
The key that asks a question answers it; x closes every dialog. x works like Esc: it closes the dialog on top, cancelling a question, and leaves alone a dialog that cannot be dismissed, such as a captcha. In a text field it types an x, so a dialog whose cursor sits in a field — Add links, for instance — closes with Esc there.
Shortcuts are suppressed while a dialog is open or a text field, textarea or editable element has
focus — so typing n into a package name does not open the import dialog. The one exception in
a dialog is x, which closes it.
Both the queue and the LinkGrabber let you drag rows by a handle. The handle is also focusable: tab to it and use ↑ / ↓ to move the row; focus stays on the handle after each move, in long lists too. NZB and torrent import rows share the LinkGrabber's order and move the same way.
Two moves are refused with a stated reason rather than silently doing nothing:
- reordering while a filter is active — the visible list is not the whole package;
- moving a package out of its priority tier — set the priority first.
The column edges in the header of the download list and the LinkGrabber are focusable too: tab to one and use ← / → to move it (Shift for larger steps), and Enter to reset that column. A screen reader announces each edge as a separator with the column's name and its current width. See Column widths.
See The download queue.
Changes that happen without you doing anything — a transfer finishing, a captcha arriving, a bulk action completing — are announced through a live region rather than only appearing visually.
Counts are announced too. A long list tells a screen reader its real length, not the number of rows currently drawn.
Several row controls are icons so the file name keeps its width on a narrow screen. Each keeps its word as its accessible name: Complete and Extracted still read as those words, the priority arrow announces Priority: High, and a subscription row's kind and mode icons carry theirs.
A click captcha asks you to click one spot in a picture. The picture is a focusable surface: the arrow keys move the mark by one pixel, Shift with them by ten, and Enter sends it. Nothing is sent on the click itself, so the mark can be moved as often as you like first.
Every settings page has its own address — /settings/usenet, /settings/bandwidth — so a page
can be bookmarked, linked to and reached directly. /settings is the overview of all of them; an
address naming no page lands on the overview.
Light, dark or system, chosen under Settings → Interface → This browser or from the footer. Beside it, a Colour theme on the same tab changes the accent and the greys for this browser — Signal (default), Ocean, Violet, Forest, Rose or Amber; every one keeps its accent at a contrast of at least 4.5:1 in light and in dark, and warnings and errors keep their colours. Nothing depends on colour alone: a state carries a label, not just a hue.
English, German, French and Spanish, auto-detected from the browser on the first visit and switchable at any time. Every user-facing string exists in all four.
Error messages from the service are shown in your language too.
Under Settings → Interface → Display, two independent choices:
- Ladder — binary (KiB/MiB/GiB) or decimal (KB/MB/GB). Binary is the default.
-
Magnitude —
Scale automatically, or a pinned step (byte, kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta).
A pinned magnitude lets a column of sizes be compared straight down — useful with a screen reader.
A pinned figure keeps roughly three significant digits; anything below a thousandth of its unit
reads <0.001.
While something is running, the tab reads 1.5 MiB/s · 3 active · rDownloader, falling back to
the application name at rest. A rate that cannot be measured is left out.
It is one switch under Settings → Interface → Display, on by default — turn it off if a title that keeps changing is a distraction.
Automated checks over every view and settings page and a manual pass found and fixed a set of issues, but neither proves the interface is usable with every assistive technology in every configuration.