Apex Download Manager
A free, open source download manager for Windows.
A native Rust engine splits every download across up to 32 parallel connections
and resumes from the exact byte after pauses, restarts and network drops, so a
transfer uses the whole connection instead of one stream. No account, no ads, no
telemetry, and every line is yours to read. GPL v3.
⚡ Single native binary (Tauri v2 + Rust). No Electron, no JVM, no bloat.
Download for Windows · also on
Chrome,
Edge and
Firefox for browser capture ·
Website
Install
The winget package is waiting for approval and the Chocolatey package is not
published yet; until they are, those two commands won't find Apex.
Features
Engine
- Multi-connection segmented downloads (up to 32 parallel streams per file)
- Pause / resume that survives app restarts - per-segment progress is persisted.
After a restart, unfinished downloads wait paused until you resume them;
scheduled downloads keep their time and start on their own
- Resume integrity:
ETag/If-Range validation prevents silently corrupted files
- Automatic retry with backoff on stalls and dropped connections
- Download queue with a concurrency limit and global speed limiting
- Per-download speed caps, adjustable live while the download runs
- Proxy support (HTTP / HTTPS / SOCKS5, with authentication)
- Scheduling: start any download at a chosen time, sleep/shut down when the queue finishes
- Video grabber: yt-dlp integration with quality picker, playlists, and
one-click tool install (ffmpeg merging for highest resolutions)
- Auto-organize: sorts downloads into category folders (Video, Music,
Programs, Archives, Documents…). Each category can have its own folder,
even on another drive, and you can send extra file types to it
(Settings → Auto-organize → "Sort downloads into category folders")
- Stream grab: on Firefox and Edge the extension sniffs the
.m3u8/.mpd
manifest and passes the player's referer through, so players that build the
stream in script work even though there is no address to copy. The Chrome
Web Store build ships without the grab feature, by their policy
- Download progress on the Windows taskbar
Capture
- Browser extension (Chrome / Edge / Brave / Firefox) that hands downloads to
Apex - and safely falls back to the browser when Apex isn't running
- Cookie/referer handoff so downloads behind logins just work
- Clipboard watcher: copy a download link anywhere, get a one-click toast
- Drag & drop URLs onto the window, batch-add multiple URLs at once
Safety
- Carries its own up-to-date list of trusted certificate authorities alongside
the Windows one, so sites with newer certificates work on the first try
- Every completed file is tagged with Mark-of-the-Web so Windows SmartScreen
and Defender scan it like a browser download
- Built-in SHA-256 checksum verification against publisher-provided hashes
- The extension requests zero website permissions - it cannot read your pages
- Local-only: no accounts, no telemetry, nothing leaves your machine
Interface
- Minimal dark UI: dashboard with live speed chart, filterable download list,
per-download properties panel with live segment view
- Keyboard-first:
Ctrl+N new download, Ctrl+F search, Space pause/resume,
Del delete, Enter open
- System tray: close the window, keep downloading
Project layout
apex-download-manager/
├── desktop-ui/ # Tauri v2 app
│ ├── src/ # React 19 + TypeScript + Tailwind v4 frontend
│ └── src-tauri/ # Rust: download engine, SQLite, capture server
├── browser-extension/ # Chrome MV3 extension (capture + context menu)
└── website/ # Landing page (static, self-contained)
Building from source
Prerequisites: Rust (stable, MSVC toolchain),
Node.js ≥ 20, and the Visual Studio Build Tools
(C++ workload + Windows SDK).
cd desktop-ui
npm install
npm run tauri dev # development
npm run tauri build # produces MSI / NSIS installers
Browser extension
- Open
chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, click Load unpacked,
select the browser-extension/ folder.
- In Apex: Settings → Browser Integration, copy the pairing token.
- Click the extension icon, paste the token, Save - the status dot turns green.
Architecture notes
- The engine probes each URL with a ranged request, plans segments, and writes
all connections into one preallocated temp file (
.adm), renamed on completion.
- State lives in SQLite (WAL) under
%APPDATA%/com.apex.download-manager/.
- The extension talks to a token-gated HTTP endpoint bound to
127.0.0.1:43666.
Interception is cancel-then-hand-off: the browser download is cancelled
immediately (before any Save As dialog), then handed to Apex - and restarted
in the browser if Apex is unreachable or rejects it, so nothing is lost.
Roadmap
Support Apex
Apex is free and built by one person. If it saves you time:
License
Copyright © 2026 ThembaTman0.
Apex Download Manager is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version. See LICENSE for the full text.
It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
