Building from source

The pages before this one are written for people using the app. This one is for whoever builds it.

Requirements

Tool	Notes
Node.js	20 or later
Rust	1.77 or later, stable toolchain
pnpm	any recent version
Windows	Microsoft C++ Build Tools (Desktop development with C++) and WebView2, which ships with Windows 10 and 11
macOS	Xcode Command Line Tools: xcode-select --install
Linux	WebKitGTK and the Tauri prerequisites

The window frame, tray icon and rounded corners are tuned for Windows. The engine and the interface build on macOS and Linux, where window corners fall back to the square shape the content draws itself.

Run from source

pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

The first run compiles the Rust engine and takes a few minutes; later starts are fast.

The frontend on its own:

pnpm dev

That serves the interface at http://localhost:1420 with no engine behind it, so every download and every engine call fails. It is only useful for layout and styling work.

Build a bundle

pnpm tauri build

The installer and the binary land in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/. Application icons are generated from the single brand source:

pnpm tauri icon src/assets/brand/logo.png

Browser extensions

The app runs a small JSON API on 127.0.0.1:27500. It starts and stops with the app, answers only requests carrying X-BDM-Client: browser-extension, and accepts an Origin only when it comes from an extension. There is no native messaging host to register and no registry entry to add, which is why the app must be running before the extension can do anything.

The extension treats /v1/ping as the handshake: a different program holding the port is reported as a mismatch, not as a connection.

• Firefox (extension-firefox/): Manifest V3 with an event page, the right-click hand-off, download takeover and a download button on each detected video with live progress. Load it temporarily from about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox; a permanent install needs a signed .xpi.
• Chrome and Edge (browser-extension/): the right-click hand-off and download takeover, with no video overlay and no live download list. Load it with Load unpacked on chrome://extensions or edge://extensions.

Both read the same versioned loopback API.

What the application writes

Each download writes its part files beside the destination file, plus a .idm.json manifest recording which ranges are finished and the referer the browser passed along. The list of downloads is saved between runs, so a restart brings the rows back with their state.

Removing a download stops it and drops it from the index. Nothing on disk is deleted.

What is not built yet

An installer on a release page, the scheduler, media splitting for HLS and DASH streams, batch adding, and the File types, Browser capture, Sites Logins, Dial Up / VPN and Sounds settings pages. PROGRESS.md in the repository keeps the authoritative list.