# HDoujinDownloader pulls gallery pages down and files them by metadata > HDoujinDownloader is a portable Lua application that grabs doujinshi and image galleries, organises them using gallery metadata, and repacks them as CBZ, PDF, RAR, 7Z or CBW archives. It suits a collector who wants one window to handle fetching, foldering and packaging, and it offers nothing to anyone who needs a headless pipeline. **HDoujinDownloader/HDoujinDownloader** — A general-purpose doujinshi and image gallery downloader - Repository: https://github.com/HDoujinDownloader/HDoujinDownloader - Website: https://doujindownloader.com - Stars: 849 · Forks: 40 - Language: Lua - License: MIT - Published: 2026-10-20 · Updated: 2026-10-20 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/hdoujindownloader-hdoujindownloader ## A downloader aimed at collectors, not at a single site The README calls HDoujinDownloader a general-purpose doujinshi and image gallery downloader that works with a wide variety of different websites. That single sentence sets both the promise and the boundary. The project is not tied to one host, and the topics attached to the repository name exhentai, manga, scraper and download-manager, which points at a scraping approach that spans galleries rather than a plugin for one portal. The user it serves is someone with a growing local collection who wants the boring half of acquiring a gallery automated: fetching the pages, choosing where the images land, and wrapping the result in a file a reader or an archive tool can open. The tool exists to remove bookkeeping, not merely to move bytes. There is a second audience in the documentation that is worth stating plainly. The project points at exhentai and similar sources, and it ships a feature for chapter tracking, which is aimed at people following ongoing series. Nothing in the project restricts which pages you may point it at, and nothing in it grants permission to save what it fetches. The MIT licence covers the code. The responsibility for what you download stays with the user. ## Installation is a download of a portable executable There is no package manager entry here, no install script and no build step in the file list at the top of the repository, which holds .gitattributes, LICENSE, README.md and a modules directory. The primary language is Lua, and the code is delivered ready to run. The README routes you to the latest release hosted on the project's own site at doujindownloader.com, under a download path that redirects to GitHub, and then to a Getting Started guide kept in the project wiki. The documentation states that the program runs as a portable executable with no installation required, so the practical first step is to fetch the build for your platform, unpack it wherever you keep tools, and run it from there. Because the executable carries its own runtime, there is no dependency tree to resolve and no interpreter to install. The first real use is small. The program accepts a gallery address, and a second documented path lets you skip even that: the Clipboard Monitor watches for a copied URL and starts the download on its own. Either way the useful part is what happens afterwards, because the feature list goes straight from fetching to file naming, to archive conversion, to image conversion and resizing, and each of those stages has its own setting inside the application. The README does not print those setting names or the exact menu paths, so the wiki page is the reference for the first run, not the README. ## Gallery metadata is what decides the folder tree The organise step is where HDoujinDownloader does more than a browser download. The feature list promises that you can download, save and organise your collection based on the gallery's metadata, and that is the mechanism that separates it from a script that dumps files into a single directory. Titles, identifiers and series information are read from the gallery page and used to shape the path where the images are written, so a collection can be browsed by series instead of by download time. The topic list on the repository includes hdoujin-downloader, which is the name of the application itself, and the presence of a modules directory at the top of the repository indicates that the Lua code is split into modules. The README does not describe what each module holds, so it would be guesswork to claim that a particular file parses titles or a particular one writes archives. What can be said is that the structure is modular and that the metadata handling is a first-class feature rather than a side effect of the fetch. For a collector this is the part that pays off over months of use. A download tool that ignores metadata produces a directory of hash-like filenames. One that maps it produces a library that can be navigated later without touching the source site again. ## Two automations work while you are elsewhere Two features remove you from the loop once a collection is set up. The Clipboard Monitor is the first. Copy a gallery URL from anywhere on your system, and the application notices the clipboard and starts the download on that address. This is the fast path for someone browsing a site in a browser and collecting links as they go, since the only manual step becomes a copy rather than a paste into a form. The second is chapter tracking. The README states that the tool tracks chapters and notifies you when new chapters become available. For a series that updates over time, that turns a recurring chore into a prompt: the application keeps the series on a watch list, checks it, and raises a notification when something new appears. The documentation does not describe the check interval, the notification style, or whether the schedule is configurable, so the practical value depends on defaults you would have to observe in use. Together these two features make the tool an ongoing subscription rather than a one-off grab. Neither is documented in depth, which is a fair warning: both are listed as headline features with no configuration reference behind them. ## One click turns a gallery into a comic or book archive HDoujinDownloader can convert galleries to ZIP/CBZ, RAR/CBR, PDF, CBW and 7Z automatically, and the images can be converted and resized in the same pass. That range of targets matters because it covers several different reading ecosystems in one run. CBZ and CBR are the archive formats comic readers expect, PDF is what a tablet or a reader app usually opens, and 7Z and CBW cover the cases where size matters or where a specific book format is required. The wording of the feature list is worth reading carefully. It says galleries are converted automatically, which suggests the output format is a setting applied to a download rather than a separate export step you trigger per library. The README does not document which setting controls this, whether one format can be produced alongside another, or what happens when a gallery contains mixed page sizes that do not fit a single page format. The same quiet gap sits over conversion and resizing. Whether you can target a specific pixel width, and whether resizing happens before or after archive creation, is not stated. If your workflow depends on a particular output size, treat those two settings as the first thing to verify after the first download rather than something the documentation will answer. ## Ten interface languages and a permissive licence The application ships its interface in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and more, and the MIT licence at the top of the repository is one of the most permissive in common use. MIT means the code can be read, modified and redistributed with the notice retained, which is why projects like this one can be examined and tweaked freely. Two points deserve care. First, a permissive licence on the code says nothing about the content the application helps you fetch, and the README does not discuss rights to the downloaded files at all. Anyone deploying this in a shared or commercial context should treat that as an open question rather than an answered one. Second, MIT grants no warranty and no support commitment. On upkeep, the file list shows a code base organised into a modules directory, which is the shape you want in a project that has to keep adapting as source sites change their markup. The most recent push to the repository was on 2026-06-25. The tagged releases tell a different story: the newest release in the listing, v2025.1.6.2, is dated 2025-01-07, following v2024.11.17.0 and v2024.11.9.0. The version numbers follow a date pattern, which makes the age of a given build easy to read, but it also means the releases in the list are older than the last code push, so a visitor downloading a tagged build may be behind the source. ## Where a general-purpose gallery downloader stops working The clearest limitation is the shape of the delivery. Everything the documentation describes is a portable graphical executable, and the top-level file list shows no scripts directory, no service definition and no documented command line entry point. A scheduled job on a server, a nightly sync triggered from cron, or a download queue fed by another program all fall outside what the project documents. If your requirement is unattended operation, this tool is the wrong shape, and no amount of configuration will turn it into a headless worker. The second limitation is generic by design. A general-purpose downloader has to treat every site as a variation on the same idea, and the trade-off is that site specific options are limited to what a shared interface can express. Where a purpose-built scraper for one gallery site can encode that site's quirks, HDoujinDownloader relies on the same code path for everything and adds versatility instead of specialisation. The third is where the documentation thins out. There is no published list of supported sites in what is available, no statement about how the project reacts to a source that changes its page structure, and no description of error handling for a failed fetch or a failed conversion. A new user is trusting the tool's site coverage without being able to audit it in advance. ## Conclusion HDoujinDownloader is the right pick for a collector who already knows which sites to pull from and wants a desktop application that fetches, names, converts and packages in one place. It is the wrong pick for a server-side or scheduled pipeline, because the project documents a portable graphical executable and no command line entry point. Before adopting it, check the latest release on the project's download page against the last push of 2026-06-25, and read the Getting Started guide for the settings the README leaves unstated, especially how a failed conversion is reported. ## FAQ ### Does HDoujinDownloader need to be installed? No. The README states that it runs as a portable executable with no installation required, and the top-level file list holds .gitattributes, LICENSE, README.md and a modules directory rather than a build setup. The project sends you to the latest release on its own download page and then to the Getting Started guide in the wiki. ### Which archive formats can HDoujinDownloader produce from a gallery? The feature list names ZIP/CBZ, RAR/CBR, PDF, CBW and 7Z, and says galleries are converted automatically. The README does not document where that choice is configured or what happens when a gallery contains pages that do not fit the selected page format. ### Will HDoujinDownloader notify me when a new chapter of a series appears? Yes, the README lists chapter tracking with notification when new chapters become available, along with a Clipboard Monitor that starts a download when a URL is copied. Neither feature is described in configuration detail, so check the Getting Started guide for the defaults. ### What language is HDoujinDownloader written in, and how is it licensed? The primary language is Lua, and the repository ships an MIT licence, which permits modification and redistribution as long as the notice is kept. The MIT licence covers the application code only, and the documentation does not address the rights of the content the tool downloads. ### Can I run HDoujinDownloader on a server or from a script? Nothing in the documentation describes a command line interface, a service or an API, and the file list at the top of the repository contains no scripts directory. The documented distribution is a portable graphical executable, so unattended and scheduled use is outside the documented scope. ## Sources - [HDoujinDownloader/HDoujinDownloader on GitHub](https://github.com/HDoujinDownloader/HDoujinDownloader) - [License: MIT](https://github.com/HDoujinDownloader/HDoujinDownloader/blob/master/LICENSE) - [Project website](https://doujindownloader.com) - [README](https://github.com/HDoujinDownloader/HDoujinDownloader/blob/master/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/HDoujinDownloader/HDoujinDownloader/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/hdoujindownloader-hdoujindownloader