8 Best Free Download Managers

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

Chris Selph is a CompTIA-certified technology and vocational IT teacher. He also serves as network & server administrator and performs computer maintenance and repair for numerous clients.

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Download managers aren't necessary, but they are helpful for file management and pause/resume support; they might even speed up the download process. Below is a list of completely free download managers that I think you'll like.

Free Download Manager (FDM)

• Able to integrate with your web browser.
• Supports pausing and resuming downloads.
• Enables bandwidth control.
• Can download whole websites.
• Lets you download specific files out of archives.

• Your antivirus program might identify the software as malicious and block it from installing or being used correctly.

This free download manager is called (you guessed it!) Free Download Manager (FDM). It can monitor and intercept downloads from web browsers, but can also work independently.

All in all, this is very much my favorite pick that I recommend above all the others in this list. I say this because of the huge number of useful features it has.

You can create batch downloads, download torrents, preview ZIP files before they're downloaded and even deselect files you don't want from the compressed folder, download entire websites, resume broken downloads, run automatic virus checks on downloads, quickly control the bandwidth allocation for all downloads, and download all links from the clipboard.

Downloads are performed in the order they are listed in FDM, but you can move files up or down the list to set their priority. This is an awesome function that's commonly found in download managers, so it's nice to see here.

In addition, you can preview and convert audio and video files before they're finished downloading, set traffic limits, create a portable version of the app, and schedule downloads to occur on certain days only.

The latest version of this program runs on Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7. It can also be installed on Linux, Android, and macOS 10.12 and later. The browser extension works with Chrome and Firefox.

FDM Lite for Windows XP requires less disk space than the regular version by removing things like the torrent client. If a download manager is all you're after, and you need it to run on XP, this is the better choice.