oxdm

Download manager for Linux, macOS and Windows.

Features

• Lightweight UI. Drawn in software: no GPU, no toolkit. Every window is its own process and opens in about 90 ms.
• Scheduled queues. Run on a timetable, or only under conditions you pick: unmetered connection, AC power, an idle machine. When a run ends it can notify you, run a command, or shut the machine down.
• Segmented downloads. A file is split across connections.
• Browser capture. Downloads arrive from the extension with their cookies, headers and referrer, over WebSocket or native messaging.
• Resilient. Interrupted parts resume, and failures retry on a fixed-then-exponential backoff that you can configure.
• Per-job settings. Proxy, credentials, headers, cookies and checksum, with speed limits set globally or per job.
• Easy updates. It tells you a release is out; you download and install it from About.

Install

Linux / macOS

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jd1378/oxdm/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Downloads the release archive for your platform, checks it against the published SHA-256, installs oxdm and oxdm-native-host into ~/.local/bin, and adds a launcher entry.

Custom directory:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jd1378/oxdm/main/tools/install.sh | sh -s -- --dir /usr/local/bin

Windows

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jd1378/oxdm/main/tools/install.ps1 | iex

Installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\oxdm, adds it to your user PATH, drops a Start-menu shortcut.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/jd1378/oxdm
cd oxdm
cargo build --release --bins

No system dev libraries are needed beyond a C toolchain. Everything that talks to the desktop (tray, notifications, keyring, network and power state) goes over D-Bus in pure Rust, so there is nothing to install for it.

Outputs:

• target/release/oxdm: main app
• target/release/oxdm-native-host: browser native-messaging bridge

Packaging oxdm

If you are building oxdm for a distro repository, a Flatpak, or any other channel where a package manager owns the installed files, build it with:

OXDM_NO_SELF_UPDATE=1 cargo build --release --bins

That build never checks for a new version, never downloads one, and offers no way to install one: About shows the version and nothing else, and the update rows disappear from Settings → General and Settings → Notifications. The daemon refuses update requests over its own IPC socket too, so nothing left over from a previous install can start a self-install behind the package manager's back.

Settings → Advanced drops its "launcher entry" button for the same reason: the .desktop file and its icon are yours to ship, and a copy written to ~/.local/share/applications would shadow the packaged one.

Leave it unset for anything users install themselves — the tarball, the install scripts, a local build.

For development there is also cargo run -p oxdm-testserver, a local server whose endpoints each misbehave in one specific way (no ranges, unknown length, wrong checksums, ranges advertised but ignored). Its index page at http://127.0.0.1:8088/ lists them. It is a separate workspace member, so release builds do not include it.

Uninstall

Linux / macOS:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jd1378/oxdm/main/tools/uninstall.sh | sh
# also wipe settings + queue DB
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jd1378/oxdm/main/tools/uninstall.sh | sh -s -- --purge

Windows:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jd1378/oxdm/main/tools/uninstall.ps1 | iex
# also wipe settings + queue DB
$env:OXDM_PURGE = "1"; irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jd1378/oxdm/main/tools/uninstall.ps1 | iex

Browser extension

The companion extension is published for both browsers:

• Chrome Web Store
• Firefox Add-ons

Tools → Browser extension links to the same pages.

The host side is a stable contract (see docs/EXTENSION_API.md), so any extension can use it. Both transports are supported:

• WebSocket at ws://127.0.0.1:<port>, simplest for development.
• Native messaging via the oxdm-native-host shim plus a per-OS manifest. oxdm registers the manifest itself: on first run, again whenever it finds one missing or stale, and on demand from Settings → Browser. oxdm --install-native-host [--chromium-id ID] does the same from a terminal.

The pairing code the extension asks for lives in Settings → Browser, with Copy and Regenerate buttons. It bundles the port and the auth token in one string.

Configuration

Settings + queue persist in a SQLite DB:

OS	path
Linux	~/.local/share/oxdm/db/oxdm.db
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/oxdm/db/oxdm.db
Windows	%APPDATA%\oxdm\db\oxdm.db

It has a directory to itself so a sandboxed browser can be granted read access to the database without also being given the working and update directories beside it. A database from before that change is moved into db/ the next time the daemon starts.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 jd1378

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. See LICENSE.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. Later versions of that license do not apply. It is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.