How can I resume a download started in Chromium?

Question

I was in the middle of a large download in Chromium and the power supply to my computer failed (well I tripped over my power cord ...). I see the entry in chrome://downloads/ which says the download was cancelled.

There is a link to the file called "Retry download" but I would rather not start the download from scratch because I have limited downloads. How can I resume this download?

Solution 1

You can resume any download using the wget command provided:

• You know the url of the file
• You have the partially downloaded file and know its location
• The server the file is on supports resuming downloads

Getting the required information

In Chromium, go the the chrome://downloads/ page. Find the failed download that you want to resume. To get the url, right click on the "Retry download" link and click "Copy Link Address". The location to the file will be ~/Downloads/NAME.crdownload - NAME is the file name that is displayed above the url in the entry on the chrome://downloads/ page.

Downloading the file

The command to resume the download is:

wget -c URL -O FILE

where URL is the url of the partially downloaded file and FILE is the location of the partially downloaded file. Make sure you escape any spaces in the file path. If the server supports resuming downloads you will see a progress bar like this:

100%[++++++++++++++++++++++++========================>]

where the '+'s indicate what was previously downloaded and the '='s indicate what is currently being downloaded.

If the server doesn't support resuming downloads, you will get an error message and it will fail to download. In this case you have no choice but to restart the download.

Solution 2

Open this url in Chromium:

chrome://flags/

Find this setting and enable it:

Enable Download Resumption Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS Allow downloads that have been interrupted to be continued or restarted, using the Resume context menu item.

You should now be able to pause/resume downloads if the server supports it (although I think you may not be able to resume downloads interrupted before enabling it).

Comments

[boehj]

I wish I could give you +10 for this answer. Awesome.

[illya]

Some sites don't allow access without the right referrer, cookies or similar precautions. I know, you can fake all of this with wget. This all doesn't change the fact that chromium deleting aborted files and generally not providing a resume option is just a pain.