Repository navigation
the interface
rDownloader's web interface is a single application with ten main views and a settings area. It is responsive, works in English, German, French and Spanish, and follows the system theme unless you tell it otherwise.
This page is the map: what each screen is, and which wiki page explains it.
- Sidebar — the nine views and the expandable Settings group. Three of the entries carry a live badge: Downloads shows active packages against the total, LinkGrabber the number of packages waiting for review, Streams the number of channels. It can be collapsed to a 64 px rail with the switch in its header or with b; on the rail the rDownloader mark expands it again. On a settings page the Settings group is open with that page highlighted, and the bar at the top names the page — Bandwidth, Tools.
- Bar at the top — on Downloads and in the LinkGrabber it holds the view's actions as icon buttons. Point at one, or reach it with the keyboard, and its tooltip names it with its key in parentheses, Direct job (A); a key you change in the shortcut list changes the tooltip too.
- Transfer rail — a compact strip showing what is currently moving, visible from every view, so you do not have to switch back to Downloads to see progress. Beside N running it sets how many downloads may run at once (max, 1–32; Apply or Enter), and beside that the global speed limit. Both take effect without a restart; on a narrow window the first folds away. While rows are ticked it shows what is selected, packages and files apart — 4 packages · 11 files selected — and its size; a narrow window shows the file count, both numbers in the tooltip.
-
Footer — a gear named Language and theme holding those two preferences, and
Sign out. A language still being translated is marked (in progress) and shows English
wherever it has no text yet; Translating rDownloader explains how to add one.
The running version closes the sidebar —
vX.Y.Zwhile it is open,X.Yon the rail, the full version in its tooltip — and leads to Settings → About rDownloader. The sign-in page and the setup assistant end on a signature line naming the version and the publisher, DEGOYA.digital. -
Browser tab title — while transfers are running the tab reads
1.5 MiB/s · 3 active · rDownloader, and falls back to the application name at rest. Switch it off under Settings → Interface → Display if a changing title distracts you.
Dialogs appear for anything destructive or ambiguous: deletions, resets, replaying a captured request, and bulk actions name what they will affect and how many.
An empty list is a dashed box — the torrent's files, peers and trackers, a backup's runs, the profiles in a settings card — with a sentence saying what would be listed there; an empty view adds an icon, a title and the button that fills it. A plain line beside a control is a hint instead: it says what leaving that list empty means for the form, such as a schedule without a time span or a category without a post-processing step.
Every form has the same shape. The field that decides which others exist comes first — the type of a subscription, for example — then one field per row. Success and error messages appear above the form, and one action row closes it: the primary action first, and while you edit an entry, a cross to leave the edit without saving. Enter submits everywhere.
Number fields take numbers the way your language writes them — German and French type a decimal comma — and a count takes no fraction. A value above a field's maximum becomes the maximum. Plus and minus buttons appear only on small counts such as parallel downloads. An optional number left empty — a limit, a port, a value inherited from elsewhere — means what its description says, usually no limit or the inherited value; an obligatory one left empty holds the save: the settings say A number field is empty. Enter a value to save., and a form does not submit.
Files are chosen or dropped in a file field — a plugin package, an NZB or torrent, a backup,
a settings export or a site-rule export. The field goes by the file's extension alone, so it takes
an .nzb even from a browser that cannot name its type. A token, header, command or redirect address
to copy sits in a read-only field with its copy button, which says Copied.
Lists whose entries are often near-copies of each other offer Duplicate: automation and notification rules, notification targets, bandwidth profiles and schedule windows, stream schedules, Usenet servers, categories, category rules, watched folders, subscriptions and site rules. The copy takes every setting under a free name and opens in the form to be adjusted. Secrets are never copied — a password, key or token has to be entered again, and until then the copy has none.
Names are unique among notification targets, categories, NNTP servers and bandwidth profiles, and storage roots and watched folders also by their folder: creating or renaming one onto a name another already has is refused with a message saying so — A category with this name already exists — and nothing is saved.
| View | Shortcut | What it is for | Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downloads | 1 | The queue: packages, files, states, progress, speed limit, post-processing | The download queue |
| LinkGrabber | 2 | Intake and review before anything downloads | The LinkGrabber |
| Streams | 3 | Livestream channels and recording schedules | Livestream recording |
| Subscriptions | 4 | Channels, playlists, galleries, feeds, indexers and release pages, polled on a schedule | Subscriptions |
| Remote jobs | 5 | Work that runs at a provider — a magnet, .torrent or .nzb handed to a provider account — watched and answered here |
Remote jobs |
| Automation | 6 | Event-triggered rules: when X happens, do Y | Automation |
| Statistics & history | 7, h for the history tab | Two tabs. Statistics: six figures, bytes per hour or day, and the range by kind and by provider; the figures survive a restart. History: every package that completed or failed, searchable after it left the queue, and added again with one click | Statistics, Download history |
| Logs | 8 | The service's own records, filtered by level, component, code, correlation id and text — and the place a diagnostic bundle is built | Diagnostics and maintenance |
| Audit log | 9 | Who signed in, which token did what, what was deleted. Append-only | Accounts, sessions and permissions |
Press ? anywhere for the list. Shortcuts are suppressed while a dialog is open or a text field has focus — all but Ctrl+K, which opens the search from anywhere, and x, which closes the open dialog.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 … 9 | Go to Downloads, LinkGrabber, Streams, Subscriptions, Remote jobs, Automation, Statistics & history, Logs, the audit log |
| h | Go to the download history, the second tab under 7 |
| 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; the files stay) |
| f | Search: opens the indexer search in the LinkGrabber, from any page |
| a | Open the direct job (on Downloads) |
| a / e / w / r | Add links, enqueue all, add all paused, delete all links (in the LinkGrabber; the same key again confirms a question) |
| x | Close the dialog, as Esc does |
| ? | Show keyboard shortcuts |
| / or Ctrl+K (⌘+K on a Mac) | Open the search |
The numbers follow the sidebar order, top to bottom: 1 is the first entry and 0 the last, Settings.
Package and file ordering is reachable without a pointer too: focus a drag handle and use ↑ / ↓. See Keyboard and accessibility.
The search finds every view, every settings page and the cards and fields on them, so you do not need to know on which page a setting lives. Open it with Ctrl+K (⌘+K on a Mac) — that works even while you are typing in a field — with / anywhere else, or with Search at the top of the sidebar (a magnifier on the collapsed rail).
- Type a few letters in the interface language: proxy, passphrase, allowed host names, hotfolder. Synonyms work too (dark mode, watch folder, quota), and so do names that are the same in every language: ntfy, rclone, 7-Zip, S3, SFTP, TOTP.
- Results come in three groups: Go to (the main views, with their number key), Settings pages and Settings — cards and single fields, with the page they are on beside them.
- ↑ / ↓ choose, Enter opens, Esc closes.
- Opening a setting goes to its page — on a page with tabs also to the right tab — scrolls the card or field into view and outlines it for a moment. A field gets the cursor, so you can type straight away. With reduced motion switched on in the system, the page jumps instead of scrolling.
Settings (0) is an overview page: one card per settings page, grouped into six
rubrics, each card carrying that page's title and description. Every page has its own address —
/settings/bandwidth opens Bandwidth directly; an unknown one lands on the overview.
A page with more than five cards, or with two subjects, is split into tabs by topic —
Storage & rules, Bandwidth, Accounts, Usenet, Plugins, Clients & API,
Network, Security and System; every other page is one scroll. The tab is part of the
address (/settings/plugins?tab=trust), so reloading, Back and Forward, a
bookmark and the settings search all land on it; an unknown tab opens the first one. The save bar
appears only under the tabs whose fields it saves. Media (Media, Galleries, Streams) and
FTP, SFTP, WebDAV & S3 (FTP, SFTP & WebDAV, S3) are split by service, each tab with that
service's notice while it is switched off.
A change you have not saved is not lost without a question. Moving to another settings page or another tab keeps it and asks nothing. Leaving the settings with a change still unsaved asks Discard unsaved changes?: Discard leaves and drops it, Cancel stays with it. Closing or reloading the browser tab brings up the browser's own question instead. The Captcha & solver form and the proxy profile being typed on Network are dropped with their page, so leaving that page for another settings page asks too. Pages that save each entry on its own — accounts, Usenet servers, watched folders, plugins — have no save bar and never ask. Outside the settings, a subscription being typed and an open automation draft ask the same question before a leave drops them.
Nothing is saved over settings that did not load. While the settings are still loading, or when loading failed — the service restarting with the page open, say — the fields bound to them, Save and Reset wait; a failure is shown with Retry. Only the tabs that edit or show those settings wait: categories, rules, sign-in and the other tabs that keep their own data stay usable, and the tab bar stays in reach.
| Page | What it configures | Page here |
|---|---|---|
| General | Queue & retries: simultaneous downloads, chunks per file, connections per host, retries and the automatic retry of failed downloads, auto-removal of finished packages, SHA-256 | The download queue |
| Interface | Tabs This browser and Display: language, theme, colour theme, browser notifications and push on this device for this browser; byte display, tab-title status, indexer cover images and the NZB hand-over menus for every browser | this page |
| Page | What it configures | Page here |
|---|---|---|
| Hotfolders | The watched folders and how often all of them are checked | Watched folders |
| LinkGrabber | Tabs General (mirror recognition, duplicates in the history), Blocklist (excluded domains), Containers (DLC and CCF) and LinkFilter | The LinkGrabber |
| Storage & rules | Tabs Storage roots, Categories and Rules: storage roots with the global storage capacity (minimum free space, headroom, collision policy, automatic resume), categories and routing rules | Storage, categories and rules |
| Post-processing | Tabs Unpacking, Repair & cleanup, Package names, Malware scan (ClamAV) and Scripts & upload | Post-processing |
| Bandwidth | Tabs Status & limits (the live state, the download and upload limits set by hand), Profiles (scoped limits, traffic budgets) and Schedule | Bandwidth and power |
| Unattended operation | Quiet hours, what happens once the queue is empty, and pausing on battery or a metered connection | Bandwidth and power |
| Page | What it configures | Page here |
|---|---|---|
| Services | Switch off what this installation should not do | The download queue |
| Accounts | Tabs Accounts (hoster, multihoster and cloud-drive logins) and Site logins (the sign-ins for protected sites) | Hosters and accounts |
| Captcha & solver | Whether a captcha goes to a solver service or is asked of you, and how long it waits | Hosters and accounts |
| Site rules | Which release pages are recognised and by which rule: the switched-off bundled rules, exporting and importing rules with their switches, the rule editor, duplicating a rule, deleting all rules | Site rules |
| Usenet | Tabs Servers (the NNTP server chain with its quotas, NNTP connections per server and Usenet files at once) and Indexers | Usenet and NZB |
| BitTorrent | Listen port and port test, sharing and seeding, active download and seed limits, interface binding and kill switch, blocklist, peer proxy | BitTorrent |
| Media | Tabs Media (yt-dlp), Galleries (gallery-dl) and Streams (streamlink) — host lists, parallelism, output template and pauses between requests | Video and audio downloads |
| FTP, SFTP, WebDAV & S3 | Tabs FTP, SFTP & WebDAV (stored logins, confirmed SSH host keys, transfer limits) and S3 (object storage profiles) | FTP, SFTP and WebDAV, Object storage |
| Page | What it configures | Page here |
|---|---|---|
| Plugins | Tabs Installed (enable, disable, remove), Catalogue (package upload, every service and plugin with its updates), Repositories and Trust (withdrawn packages, confirmed publishers) | Installing and trust |
| Tools | Tabs Status, Paths and Managed tools: the vendor folder every tool is looked up in, Custom paths to yt-dlp, ffmpeg, gallery-dl, streamlink, the RAR tool and rclone, the version each one reports and whether it is supported, and the managed versions the service installs itself | External tools |
| Notifications | Tabs Targets & rules (webhooks, e-mail, Apprise and notifier plugins, and the rules that send to them) and History (the delivery history) | Notifications |
| Clients & API | Tabs Desktop (pairing the capture agent, its shortcuts and game mode), Browser (pairing the browser extension) and API & MCP (API tokens for REST, the CLI, SABnzbd-, qBittorrent- and aria2-compatible clients and MCP, and the aria2 switch) | Desktop capture agent, Browser extension, MCP server, Automation tool compatibility |
| Page | What it configures | Page here |
|---|---|---|
| Network | Tabs Proxies & TLS (proxy profiles and the global fallback, your own certificate authority) and Reconnect (the reconnect script) | Security and privacy |
| Security | Tabs Sign-in (the administrator password, Disable admin login, second factor, passkeys), Sessions (how long a sign-in lasts, live sessions) and Reachability & reverse proxy (the UI port, the external address and the reverse proxy this service may believe) | Accounts, sessions and permissions |
| Page | What it configures | Page here |
|---|---|---|
| Backup & restore | Tabs Configuration (export and import of the settings bundle), Full backup (the scheduled encrypted full backup: passphrase, schedule, destinations, history) and Restore (restoring a full backup) | Backup and restore |
| System | System & maintenance, in tabs Status (service status, capture-agent pairing state, readiness, key facts), Updates (the application update check) and Logs & retention (the retention of the statistics, the log, the audit log and the download history, clearing each of them, and whether the import history is kept) | Diagnostics and maintenance |
| About rDownloader | Nothing to configure: tabs About (the running build, the project's addresses, the author) and Licenses (the licenses of everything the packages ship) | Diagnostics and maintenance |
Under Settings → Interface, on two tabs. The tab This browser holds the card This browser only — what this browser alone remembers, also reachable from the footer:
- Language — English, German, French or Spanish. Auto-detected from the browser on first visit.
- Theme — light, dark or system.
- Colour theme — the accent and the greys of the interface: Signal (default), Ocean, Violet, Forest, Rose or Amber. It sits beside light and dark, not instead of them, and holds in this browser only. Warnings and errors keep their colours in every theme.
- Browser notifications — permission for the notifications the interface itself raises when links arrive, the queue finishes, or a download fails.
-
Push on this device — rDownloader's notifications as push messages, even with no tab open,
best in the installed app; it needs
https(orlocalhost), and below it you choose this device's events. See Push to this device.
The tab Display holds the card of that name, saved with the settings in the service and holds in every browser:
-
Byte display — two independent choices. The ladder is binary (KiB/MiB/GiB) or decimal
(KB/MB/GB); the magnitude is either
Scale automatically(each value on the step that fits it) or a fixed step — byte, kilo, mega, giga, tera or peta — so a column spanning several orders of magnitude can be read straight down. Anything below a thousandth of a fixed unit prints<0.001. - Tab title status — whether the browser tab carries the rate and active count.
- Show cover images — whether the cover images of indexer hits are loaded.
- NZB hand-over — whether the Hand to provider menu appears in the LinkGrabber and in the Downloads.
- Package groups — whether a package you have not opened or closed yet starts closed, one switch for the Downloads (on) and one for the LinkGrabber (off). What you opened or closed by hand stays that way in this browser.
The UI port is under Settings → Security → Reachability & reverse proxy, beside the
external address. It takes effect
on the next start, and --listen and RDOWNLOADER_LISTEN always override it, so a wrong value
cannot lock you out.
Two choices decide how rDownloader looks, and both belong to this browser — a phone, a laptop and a second browser can each look different:
- Theme — Light, Dark or System, which follows the operating system and switches with it. Under Settings → Interface → This browser, or from the footer.
- Colour theme — the accent and the greys: Signal (the default teal), Ocean, Violet, Forest, Rose or Amber. Under Settings → Interface → This browser, beside the theme. Every colour theme works in light and in dark, and warnings and errors keep their own colours in all of them.
Any combination works — twelve in all:
The web interface is a Progressive Web App: it carries a manifest, icons and a standalone display mode, so your browser can install it and it gets its own window and home-screen entry.
The API, the event stream and the compatibility adapters are never cached, so an installed app never shows a stale queue. The interface itself is cached once per version: after an update the app offers New version available — reload instead of keeping the old one (see Updates).
rDownloader registers as a Web Share Target, so sharing a link from a mobile browser opens the LinkGrabber with it already filled in. A share carrying no link is ignored.
A seven-step tour of the interface is offered at the end of the setup wizard and can be replayed afterwards. It is a quick orientation, not a substitute for these pages.