Stellar

Stellar Download Manager 🌌

A clean-room reimplementation of Internet Download Manager for Windows and Linux, with a built-in torrent client and yt-dlp support for downloading from YouTube and other video sites. Written in C++ and Qt.

Screenshots

  

Status

Work in progress, but fully functional

Features

• Splits each download into multiple parts so it finishes faster, and shifts work to the slowest part as it goes
• Pause and resume any download, including after a crash or power loss
• Browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that sends downloads straight to Stellar (Snap version of Firefox not supported)
• Full-featured torrent client
• World map showing where your torrent peers and trackers are located
• Download videos and audio from YouTube and similar sites, with a picker for quality and format
• Site grabber that walks a website and pulls every file matching the requirements you give it
• Built in torrent search engine (compatable with qBittorrent plugins)
• Download queues with a scheduler (pick days and times)
• Speed limiter
• Categories with custom save folders
• Available in 77 languages

How to Install 📦

Grab the latest installer from the Releases page.

• Windows: download the .exe and run it.

• Linux (Debian / Ubuntu / Mint / Pop!_OS / …): download the .deb. Most desktop environments will open it in a graphical installer when you double-click it (Discover on Ubuntu/KDE, Package Installer on Linux Mint, GDebi on others). If yours doesn’t, install it from a terminal:

  sudo apt install ./stellar_*.deb
  

• Linux (Fedora / RHEL / Rocky / Alma / openSUSE / …): download the .rpm and install it from a terminal:

  sudo dnf install ./stellar-*.rpm        # Fedora / RHEL family
  sudo zypper install ./stellar-*.rpm     # openSUSE
  

Building 🔨

Requires CMake, Ninja, Qt 6 (Core, Quick, Network, QuickControls2, LinguistTools), Boost, and OpenSSL. libtorrent and libmaxminddb are not bundled — see Third-party source dependencies below for how to obtain them.

You will also need to download a GeoIP database for the torrent world map to work. See the GeoIP database section below.

Third-party source dependencies

These libraries must be placed under third_party/ before configuring, or pointed to via CMake variables. The directory is excluded from version control.

libtorrent-rasterbar 2.0.12 (required for torrent/magnet support)

Download the release tarball from GitHub and extract it:

mkdir -p third_party
curl -L https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/releases/download/v2.0.12/libtorrent-rasterbar-2.0.12.tar.gz \
    | tar -xz -C third_party/
# Result: third_party/libtorrent-rasterbar-2.0.12/

On Windows, download from https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/releases/tag/v2.0.12 and extract to third_party\libtorrent-rasterbar-2.0.12\.

Alternatively, point CMake at an existing source tree or installed package:

cmake --preset windows-debug -DLIBTORRENT_SOURCE_DIR=C:\path\to\libtorrent
# or, if already installed system-wide:
cmake --preset linux-debug -DLibtorrentRasterbar_DIR=/usr/lib/cmake/LibtorrentRasterbar

Without libtorrent, torrent and magnet downloads are disabled; everything else works.

libmaxminddb (optional — enables GeoIP world map)

Linux: install the system package — no manual step needed:

sudo apt install libmaxminddb-dev      # Debian / Ubuntu
sudo dnf install libmaxminddb-devel    # Fedora / RHEL

Windows / manual build: clone and place under third_party/:

git clone https://github.com/maxmind/libmaxminddb.git third_party/libmaxminddb

Or disable it entirely:

cmake --preset windows-debug -DENABLE_MAXMINDDB=OFF

Linux 🐧

sudo apt install build-essential cmake ninja-build \
    qt6-base-dev qt6-declarative-dev qt6-tools-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools \
    qml6-module-qtquick qml6-module-qtquick-controls qml6-module-qtquick-layouts \
    qml6-module-qtquick-dialogs qml6-module-qtquick-window \
    libboost-all-dev libssl-dev libmaxminddb-dev \
    python3 patchelf npm

Then:

cmake --preset linux-debug
cmake --build --preset linux-debug
./build/linux-debug/Stellar

For a release build use linux-release instead.

Windows 🪟

Install:

• Visual Studio 2022 with the C++ workload
• Qt 6 from https://www.qt.io/ (MSVC 2022 64-bit), or vcpkg install qt6
• Boost (e.g. via vcpkg: vcpkg install boost)
• OpenSSL (vcpkg install openssl)
• Ninja (bundled with VS, or download from https://ninja-build.org/)

Set environment variables before configuring:

set QTDIR=C:\Qt\6.8.0\msvc2022_64
set BOOST_ROOT=C:\path\to\boost
set OpenSSL_ROOT_DIR=C:\path\to\openssl

Then from a “x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022”:

cmake --preset windows-debug
cmake --build --preset windows-debug
build\windows-debug\Stellar.exe

GeoIP database

-Only needed if building from source. The torrent peer/tracker world map uses a MaxMind-format city database. Download dbip-city-lite.mmdb from https://db-ip.com/db/download/ip-to-city-lite and place it in app/data/ in the repository.

Command Line

Stellar accepts IDM-compatible flags. Both /d and -d style prefixes work.

Stellar /d URL [/p path] [/f filename] [/q] [/n] [/a]
Stellar /s

Flag	Meaning
/d URL	Download the URL
/p path	Save to this directory
/f name	Save as this filename
/q	Quit after the download finishes
/n	Silent: no dialogs, no foreground
/a	Add to queue but do not start
/s	Start the queue scheduler

A second invocation forwards to the running instance over a local socket. See command_line_help.md for the full reference and edge cases.

License 📜

Copyright (C) 2026 Ninka_. Stellar is free software released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. You may redistribute and modify it under the terms of that license. See LICENSE for the full text.

Third-party software 💿

Stellar bundles or invokes the following third-party components. Full license texts are in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt.

• FFmpeg (LGPL-2.1+ / GPL-2+) — Copyright (C) 2000-present the FFmpeg developers. Used for merging video and audio streams. FFmpeg is a trademark of Fabrice Bellard. https://ffmpeg.org/
• libtorrent (BSD-3-Clause) — Copyright (C) Arvid Norberg and contributors. Used for BitTorrent protocol support. https://libtorrent.org/
• yt-dlp (The Unlicense) — yt-dlp contributors, public-domain dedication. Used for video metadata extraction and media downloading. https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
• Qt (LGPL-3) — Copyright (C) The Qt Company Ltd. Used under the LGPL-3 with the Qt LGPL exception. https://code.qt.io/
• DB-IP City Lite (CC BY 4.0) — Geolocation database distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. https://db-ip.com/

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