Download all files in a directory

First published on June 11, 2006

Have you ever been sent a web link to a folder containing a bunch of files to download? Well, it’s a pain to continually right-click and choose save as… and gets exponentially more painful as the number of files increases.

I found a free plugin for Firefox called DownThemAll, which will automatically download every link on a page. It will even give you a list of the files so that you can check/uncheck which ones you want. Downloads are even much faster with it. It is a truly amazing tool that I wish I’d found earlier!

And no, I’m not getting any sort of commission for this free plug.

Facebook Twitter Email this

Related posts:

1. Download the original Jezzball

This entry is filed under Computer Stuff and written by Peter Keung. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

10 Responses to “Download all files in a directory”

1. April 20th, 2008 at 10:45 am
   Caleb says:

   Thanks for the info! I needed something like that, and it’s great to know it’s even a Firefox plug-in

2. September 10th, 2008 at 7:28 am
   Adaptiv Media says:

   Very useful plugin.
   It is exactly what I am in need of right now.
   Thank you.

3. November 2nd, 2008 at 2:34 am
   andrew says:

   Shame it doesn’t do recursive directory-based slurping too, really would be great for those archives of old crap which could be dehosted any day… Still a lot of rclick -> save as… in my future, tho this’ll help a little.

4. May 18th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
   Brad says:

   Excellent – thanks for this post Peter. Your site is more than just useful crap – legendary crap is more like it. This plugin saved me heaps of time. It’s especially useful when a client doesn’t know their FTP details and the previous developer disappeared.

5. May 31st, 2009 at 6:06 am
   Inspired Economies says:

   I’m looking for a way for users to click a "download all" or "download selected" button on my website, so I don’t have to tell them to get a plugin – and get Firefox if they don’t have it. Any ideas? Thanks.

   Reply from Peter: Server-side, this is a whole different ball-game. You probably want to look for something that will zip all of the files in a directory (or a list that you regularly maintain) and then present that file to the user. I don’t have a handy script for that, but I’m pretty sure you could find one. Depending on how many files you have and how many different packages you want to present, you could also do that manually.

6. September 13th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
   JB says:

   Fatal flaw. If the directory has too many files in it, FF dies trying to display it

7. January 26th, 2010 at 11:41 am
   Mainul says:

   what an idea my friend!!!!
   simply great tool!
   

8. August 31st, 2011 at 7:22 pm
   Georgia Arnold says:

   I’m not computer-literate. I have dozens of PDF files that I would like to open and save or delete. I need to know how to go directly to them instead of seeing them only when I add another file to them.

   Can you help me?

   Reply from Peter: Sorry, I don’t think I’ll be able to help on that one.

9. February 4th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
   babatanese says:

   nice tool!!!
   thank you

10. March 30th, 2016 at 9:35 am
    Frenchie says:

    10 yrs later, and that link still saved me at least an hour!

Speak your mind