Download files from the web via the OS X command line
May 11, 2007 - 8 Comments
I am frequently developing web pages and often times I find it frustrating when I can not restart my browser because I’m in the middle of a download. So when I need to download a large file and I don’t want to have to worry about whether or not Safari or Firefox continues to run with out interruption, I turn to the trusty Terminal! Next time you have a file you want to download, option-click it and copy the URL into your clipboard. Now open a Terminal window and type:
cd ~/Desktop
Now that we have changed our directory to the “Desktop” we can start our download. For the download we are going to use a built in utility called “curl”.
curl -O http://www.bluechipx.com/downloads/BlueChip.sit
Read on for a screenshot of curl in action.
You might want to include a few extra bits in that post. First, always include the -L (or –location) switch, since that will allow curl to follow any redirects (if the file gets moved, but there is a redirect for it). Also, if the URL’s file part (the section after the last slash) is not pretty, you can give a name for the downloaded file by using a lower-case -o (instead of -O), followed by a space and the name in quotes. Also, always put the URL in single-quotes – ampersands and a few other characters will break on the command line if they aren’t in quotes. Here’s an example of those ideas combined:
curl -L -o ‘myfile.dmg’ ‘http://www.somewebsite.com/files/getdmg?id=24‘
Thanks for adding that, Dan. That was the crucial tip I needed, especially the reminder about the quotes.
I have never used the curl command but this is pretty good
I use wget
nice, this really helped me tonight
I also use wget. you have to download it and compile it. or install it using fink or macports.
Thanks, for your share.I’m happy to use Terminal download ISO file
Is there an addon or a command I can use to download all files from a directory or a page ?