Resumable by default
Sessions are persisted and .part files survive restarts. A download interrupted at 90% continues at 90% — not zero.
Features
Everything YDM does — and why it does it.
YDM is a desktop download manager, not a browser gimmick. Every feature below exists to make large, real-world downloads finish reliably.
Download engine
Adaptive concurrency
Workers start at 4 and climb a 2→12 ladder based on real throughput and fragment error rates, with hysteresis against oscillation.
Gentle, smart retries
Backoff of 1s, 1s, 2s, 2s, 3s… capped — fast recovery from throttling without hammering servers. Errors are classified into human-readable causes.
Stream-copy merging
Video and audio are merged by stream copy — no re-encode, no generational quality loss, minimal CPU. MP3 only when requested.
Always-current parsing
YDM's built-in extraction layer is refreshed with every release, and automatically detects a local JavaScript runtime (Deno / Node / Bun) when one is installed, for the newest YouTube formats.
Speed limiter
Throttle to 500k, 2M, or any rate you like — useful on shared connections or metered links.
Queue & selection
Per-video playlist selection
Checkboxes for individual videos, or compact index expressions — 1-10, 3,6,8, 5,9-20 — validated with friendly errors.
Multi-job queue
Run up to 8 jobs in parallel (default 3). Start, pause, stop, delete, reorder, or edit queued jobs — downloading jobs report live blended progress.
Real-time metrics
Instant and 20-second rolling speed, ETA, worker count, and retry counters — plus per-file progress for dual-stream downloads.
Numbering modes
Ascending or descending playlist prefixes, or keep original titles — your archive, your order.
Searchable history
The last 500 downloads, grouped by day, with reveal-in-folder and open-in-player actions — and optional duplicate skipping.
Disk-space guard
Free space is checked before and during downloads with a 512 MB margin — doubled while video and audio await merging.
Workflow & integration
Clipboard detection
Copy a supported link and YDM offers a one-click “Add to Queue” popup — or a native toast if you prefer. Detection pauses from the tray when you need quiet.
Single instance
Launching YDM twice hands the link to the running copy instead of starting a second server — a named kernel mutex and lock file make it race-proof.
Sensible defaults
360p, MP4, ascending numbering — a link queued from the tray just works. Every default is configurable in Settings, which auto-saves as you change it.