{"slug": "aria2", "name": "aria2", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 8, "warners": 0, "score": 5.286, "rising": 1.02, "first": "2025-11-24", "latest": "2026-10-13", "why": "uses aria2 for HTTP download, which has resumability.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 2], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "uses aria2 for HTTP download, which has resumability.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/aria2/aria2", "official_url": "https://aria2.github.io", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["aria2"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 801056368, "item_id": 50066023, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50066023", "by": "abdusco", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Aria2 is the way.", "excerpt": "Aria2 is the way. The only thing missing for me was a way to monitor progress in the menu bar, so I built this https://abdus.dev/projects/tricklebar/", "context": "", "use_case": "Multi-protocol download manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making big downloads resumable in Firefox"}, {"id": 801022208, "item_id": 50063888, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50063888", "by": "Retro_Dev", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like using the aria2[0] download utility", "excerpt": "I like using the aria2[0] download utility - I don't think I've downloaded anything bigger than a dozen megabytes through a web browser for the last several years, and this method allows me more protocols, multiple connections, and of course continuing downloads. That said, it's nice someone found a solution to the problem - makes life easier for everyone who doesn't use an external download utility... How do you eve", "context": "", "use_case": "Multi-connection downloads", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making big downloads resumable in Firefox"}, {"id": 779145220, "item_id": 48696576, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696576", "by": "haunter", "date": "2026-06-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can use curl, wget, aria2 etc to access online content", "excerpt": "And you can go even smaller with TinyCore Linux [0] or the xwoaf-rebuild [1] 0, http://www.tinycorelinux.net/ 1, https://web.archive.org/web/20240901115514/https://pupngo.dk/xwinflpy/xwoaf_rebuild.html Honestly it comes down to what do you mean by using Linux. In 2026, or well at least since the mid 2010s, the biggest hurdle will be the web browser. Do you need that? If yes then you are already in the higher system r", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide"}, {"id": 743817985, "item_id": 46488624, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488624", "by": "BrandonSmith", "date": "2026-01-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "uses aria2 for HTTP download, which has resumability.", "excerpt": "For years, my team uses the third-party tool `xcodes`... `brew install xcodes` or use the [GUI](https://www.xcodes.app/). It allows you to easily install and maintain several versions of Xcode (beta / RC versions). And, more importantly, uses aria2 for HTTP download, which has resumability.", "context": "", "use_case": "Resumable downloads", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible"}, {"id": 736633425, "item_id": 46039589, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039589", "by": "johng", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "aria2c is great.", "excerpt": "transmission-cli is great. aria2c is great. There's even tget that works good: https://github.com/jeffjose/tget As far as WebUI goes I do prefer qbittorrent. For people really serious about torrents on the CLI/TUI, this is the best one I've seen: rTorrent-ps: https://github.com/pyroscope/rtorrent-ps", "context": "", "use_case": "CLI downloads and scripting", "switched_from": "", "story": "A ncurses-based command line torrent client for high performance"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["downloading files", "multi-protocol download manager", "multi-connection downloads", "downloading dumps", "resumable downloads", "cli downloads and scripting"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50061791", "title": "Making big downloads resumable in Firefox", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598291", "title": "bzip3", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48668747", "title": "Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550726", "title": "Show HN: Gosh-dl an embeddable download engine for Rust", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46483023", "title": "Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46029312", "title": "A ncurses-based command line torrent client for high performance", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 801109776, "item_id": 50069361, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50069361", "by": "stratos123", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "it doesn't fully support retries", "excerpt": "I use aria2 sometimes, but one thing that surprised me is that it doesn't fully support retries. As in, even if you pass something like \"--always-resume=true --continue=true\", if you try to use aria2c on a bad connection, you will sometimes get errors which make aria2c just exit. Thankfully it does have good resume support, so I was able to wrap aria2c in a bash script that calls it repeatedly until the download succ", "context": "", "use_case": "downloading files", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making big downloads resumable in Firefox"}, {"id": 801056368, "item_id": 50066023, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50066023", "by": "abdusco", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Aria2 is the way.", "excerpt": "Aria2 is the way. The only thing missing for me was a way to monitor progress in the menu bar, so I built this https://abdus.dev/projects/tricklebar/", "context": "", "use_case": "Multi-protocol download manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making big downloads resumable in Firefox"}, {"id": 801022208, "item_id": 50063888, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50063888", "by": "Retro_Dev", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like using the aria2[0] download utility", "excerpt": "I like using the aria2[0] download utility - I don't think I've downloaded anything bigger than a dozen megabytes through a web browser for the last several years, and this method allows me more protocols, multiple connections, and of course continuing downloads. That said, it's nice someone found a solution to the problem - makes life easier for everyone who doesn't use an external download utility... How do you eve", "context": "", "use_case": "Multi-connection downloads", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making big downloads resumable in Firefox"}, {"id": 793626337, "item_id": 49601646, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49601646", "by": "igoose1", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "download them with aria2", "excerpt": "I have an anecdote about compressed data. When I studied at school, I used ZFS with lz4 enabled on my working machine. During that times I had a task of parsing Wikipedia's data. I had enough brain cells to find compressed dumps and download them with aria2 but not enough to leave the file compressed. I ran a decompressor. It'd been taking longer than I expected so I went out to walk a dog. Imagine how fast me and th", "context": "", "use_case": "downloading dumps", "switched_from": "", "story": "bzip3"}, {"id": 779145220, "item_id": 48696576, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696576", "by": "haunter", "date": "2026-06-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can use curl, wget, aria2 etc to access online content", "excerpt": "And you can go even smaller with TinyCore Linux [0] or the xwoaf-rebuild [1] 0, http://www.tinycorelinux.net/ 1, https://web.archive.org/web/20240901115514/https://pupngo.dk/xwinflpy/xwoaf_rebuild.html Honestly it comes down to what do you mean by using Linux. In 2026, or well at least since the mid 2010s, the biggest hurdle will be the web browser. Do you need that? If yes then you are already in the higher system r", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide"}, {"id": 744811633, "item_id": 46550727, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550727", "by": "darknightrealm", "date": "2026-01-08", "stance": "compare", "quote": "The main difference from tools like aria2", "excerpt": "Hi All, Been working on this tool for a while and finally felt ready to share and get feedback on it. gosh-dl,a Rust download engine meant to be used as a library, not a separate process. It supports HTTP/HTTPS and full BitTorrent (DHT, PEX, magnets, encryption). The main difference from tools like aria2 is that you call a native async Rust API instead of spawning a process and talking JSON-RPC. Please let me know wh", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Gosh-dl an embeddable download engine for Rust"}, {"id": 743817985, "item_id": 46488624, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488624", "by": "BrandonSmith", "date": "2026-01-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "uses aria2 for HTTP download, which has resumability.", "excerpt": "For years, my team uses the third-party tool `xcodes`... `brew install xcodes` or use the [GUI](https://www.xcodes.app/). It allows you to easily install and maintain several versions of Xcode (beta / RC versions). And, more importantly, uses aria2 for HTTP download, which has resumability.", "context": "", "use_case": "Resumable downloads", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible"}, {"id": 736633425, "item_id": 46039589, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039589", "by": "johng", "date": "2025-11-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "aria2c is great.", "excerpt": "transmission-cli is great. aria2c is great. There's even tget that works good: https://github.com/jeffjose/tget As far as WebUI goes I do prefer qbittorrent. For people really serious about torrents on the CLI/TUI, this is the best one I've seen: rTorrent-ps: https://github.com/pyroscope/rtorrent-ps", "context": "", "use_case": "CLI downloads and scripting", "switched_from": "", "story": "A ncurses-based command line torrent client for high performance"}]}