Developer(s) Giorgio Maone Type Firefox add-on Website flashgot.net | Platform Mozilla Firefox License GPLv2 | |
Stable release 1.5.6.14 / December 1, 2016; 3 months ago (2016-12-01) | ||
FlashGot is a free and open source add-on for Mozilla Firefox meant to handle single and massive ("all" and "selection") downloads with several external download managers.
Contents
Overview
Download managers are software that help downloading files from the Internet faster and in a more organized manner. However, not all these software may recognize or support Mozilla Firefox; even if they do, they may not integrate with Firefox. FlashGot resolves this situation by integrating them into Firefox. As of December 2011, FlashGot recognizes and supports 51 different external download managers for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. When a user chooses to download a file, FlashGot offers to send the file to a download manager that it has detected.
FlashGot supports metalinks for sending mirror and checksum information to supported download managers for faster and more reliable downloads.
Sometimes, a user is willing to download a number of files from a website, such as a number of images from an image hosting website or a blog. Normally, the user must issue a separate download command for each file. FlashGot however can send a list of links selected by user or a list of links for all images found on a certain web page to a supported download manager.
Additionally, FlashGot can detect video embedded in web pages and send their download links to download managers. It supports downloading from the popular YouTube service.
Version 1.2.1.13 included an experimental "Search Refinements for downloadable files and media" feature based on Surf Canyon technology. This functionality, which submitted search keywords to Surf Canyon for processing, was easy to opt out of with one click but enabled by default, prompting criticism equating the feature to adware and spyware, even though no user data was reused, shared or stored. The feature was disabled in version 1.2.1.14 and removed in version 1.2.1.15.
Reception
PC World included FlashGot in its list of “101 Fabulous Freebies” and regards it as “indispensable”.