XiaoYouChR/Ghost-Downloader-3

What it does

Ghost Downloader 3 is a desktop and Android download manager intended to replace several single-purpose download tools. It covers HTTP, Magnet/BitTorrent, FTP, M3U8, MPEG-DASH and eD2k, and adds site handlers for YouTube, Bilibili, GitHub and HuggingFace, including playlists, quality and subtitle selection, and mirror acceleration. A browser extension can list media on a page and hand downloads to the desktop app while carrying authentication state across.

It uses adaptive chunking without file merging and bandwidth detection for unstable connections, and optionally emulates browser TLS fingerprints for sites with anti-bot checks. The project is written in Python with PySide6/PyQt-Fluent-Widgets and is licensed under GPL-3.0 repository.

Getting started

Download a build for your system from the Releases page. Windows 10+, macOS 13.0+, Linux with glibc 2.35+, and Android 9.0+ are supported on x86_64/arm64 where listed platform table. Install and open the app, then paste a URL or add a torrent/magnet link to start a task.

For scripting, enable ghd under Settings -> Command Line Tool, then use the CLI:

ghd probe "https://example.com/a.torrent"
ghd add "https://example.com/a.torrent" --select 0,3 -o ./downloads
ghd wait tsk_0123

probe previews contents without creating a task, add starts tasks, and wait blocks until completion. Installable packages for Arch Linux are community-maintained as ghost-downloader-bin and ghost-downloader-git. Full documentation is at the official docs site.

Constraints

Qt 6.6+ drops support for CPUs without AVX, so older hardware may not run the app. Android builds are listed for arm64-v8a only. The plugin API for Feature Packs is still being stabilized and is not yet public. An aria2-compatible RPC API is available for third-party integration, but changing URL, headers or proxy mid-download is a feature of the app rather than a documented CLI operation here.

HotRepo's take

On 2026-11-08 the project appeared on the Python daily list at 10th place with 46 stars gained, and it had accumulated over 10,000 stars by that snapshot. That places it among the more visible Python download-manager projects on HotRepo; the single recorded snapshot supports that day's ranking but not a longer trend claim. The breadth of protocols and the separate Android client are the differentiating factors described in the README, while the GPL-3.0 license and the not-yet-public plugin API are the practical limits for people considering downstream integration.