Dynamic range stealing
Laggard connections are detected mid-flight and their remaining byte ranges are handed to faster peers, with zero server coordination overhead.
Hydra splits each file across parallel connections and mirror sources, then rebalances work away from slow peers while the transfer runs. Built in Rust, for the terminal and the desktop.
The core is a statistical scheduler for byte ranges. It measures every connection, predicts stalls before timeouts fire, and keeps the fastest paths busy until the last byte lands.
Byte ranges are distributed across parallel connections and independent mirror origins, with the concurrency level discovered automatically per server. Point Hydra at two mirrors of the same ISO and both are drained at once, so high-bandwidth links stay full instead of waiting on a single stream.
Laggard connections are detected mid-flight and their remaining byte ranges are handed to faster peers, with zero server coordination overhead.
Two-sided CUSUM and dual-window statistical estimators flag collapsing or degraded connections long before a traditional timeout would expire.
Per-chunk checksum manifests, verification against server-advertised digests like Content-MD5, and local Reed-Solomon erasure coding against bitrot.
Magic-byte inspection detects the real file type regardless of extension, and downloads can be sorted into category folders automatically.
HTTP/1.1 and HTTPS via rustls with Mozilla roots, FTP with resume support, HTTP CONNECT tunneling, and SOCKS4 / SOCKS4a / SOCKS5 proxies. Positioned writes stream data straight to disk, so resident memory stays constant whether the file is 10 MB or 100 GB.
The Hydra app wraps the engine in a native, localized interface for Windows, macOS, and Linux, with the workflow you expect from a classic download manager.
Extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari hand downloads to the app over a local WebSocket bridge, with a native-messaging fallback that can launch the app on demand.
Group downloads into queues with scheduled start and stop times, retry tracking, and one-click start or stop for the whole queue.
One toggle cuts interface wakeups: slower refresh, no progress animation, coarser transfer ticks. Download speed is unchanged while your battery lasts longer.
Copy a link and Hydra picks it up automatically, filtered by the file types you choose, with per-site exceptions when you want it to stay out of the way.
Cap bandwidth to a fixed budget per interval and set the default connection count per download, so background transfers never starve your video call.
Compressed, Documents, Music, Programs, Video: incoming files are routed to the right category and folder by type, each with its own default directory.
System tray with light and dark aware icons, launch on startup, minimize to tray, and optional hiding from the Dock or taskbar for a fully background setup.
A translated interface, per-event sounds for completed or failed downloads, and a completion dialog with Open and Open-folder shortcuts.
The same engine drives a scriptable CLI and a full-screen queue manager, so servers and headless boxes get the multi-source treatment too.
Compat personalities accept common wget and curl flags as-is, so Hydra drops into existing scripts without edits.
A full-screen TUI for adding, pausing, resuming, and monitoring queued downloads without leaving the shell.
Inspect server-advertised digests before downloading, or verify the finished file against a target hash inline.
# saturate the link across two mirrors, 8 connections $ hydra -x 8 https://mirror1.example.org/ubuntu.iso \ https://mirror2.example.org/ubuntu.iso # reuse your wget muscle memory $ hydra --compat=wget -c -O kernel.tar.xz https://cdn.kernel.org/... # verify against a target hash while downloading $ hydra --checksum sha256:e3b0c442... https://example.com/release.tar.gz # open the interactive queue $ hydra interactive
One command installs the CLI, the desktop app, and the browser integration for your OS and architecture.
Native x64 and ARM64 builds. Windows on ARM runs Hydra natively, no emulation layer.
Apple Silicon and Intel, with a bundled app, Dock and menu-bar integration, and Safari support.
amd64 and arm64 archives, plus deb and rpm packaging with tray and autostart support.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ja7ad/hydra/main/install.sh | bash
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ja7ad/hydra/main/install.ps1 | iex
Prebuilt archives are on the releases page, or build from source with Rust 1.80+.