About
Ghost Downloader is a download manager for macOS (Apple silicon and Intel, macOS 13+) that handles many protocols in one app: HTTP with smart chunking and no merge step, BitTorrent magnet links and .torrent files, FTP (plain and over TLS), M3U8 and MPEG-DASH streams, and eD2k. It is meant to replace a separate download manager, torrent client, eD2k client, stream recorder, and video parser. The site says it stays fast on throttled servers and links, reporting a best case of 2.9× faster in its own tests, and says it uses real-browser TLS fingerprints so anti-bot checks let it through.
A companion browser extension (Chrome, Edge, and Firefox) detects video and other media on a page, including the streams behind players, and sends them to the desktop app. Cookies and headers are passed along so logged-in downloads work without copying links. The site also describes purpose-built parsers for YouTube and Bilibili with clip selection, quality options up to 4K HDR, subtitles, and playlists, plus GitHub and HuggingFace downloads with mirror acceleration, and live M3U8 stream recording.
Ghost Downloader is also available for Windows, Linux, and Android, where the site says the same engine handles live M3U8 recording and background downloads.
What's new
All release notesHomebrew cask ghost-downloader 4.4.6 (sha256 13309754dcc6ac42165a406875607c5a5f1f8fcdc6570ceb062d48df7c234b24).