Elephant gives Free Download Manager a yt-dlp powered video downloader

An add-on, not an application

Elephant is an add-on for Free Download Manager, and it provides support for downloading videos from various sites. The key word in the description is add-on, and that determines everything about how you install it, how you configure it and what it depends on.

Free Download Manager is a download manager, an application that handles the transfer, the queue, the resuming, the scheduling and the post processing of files. It can already handle a direct link to a file. What it cannot do out of the box is talk to a video site the way a dedicated video downloader does, because that means parsing a page, negotiating with an API, and sometimes assembling several streams.

That is the gap Elephant fills, and the answer is delegated rather than reimplemented. The project states that it is powered by yt-dlp, which is the well known extractor that handles that side of the problem. Elephant is the adapter that lets Free Download Manager's own machinery drive it, so a video that the add-on resolves becomes an ordinary entry in the download manager's queue, with the same controls as anything else in the list.

For a user, the appeal is obvious. If you already keep a download manager open, you do not want a second tool with a second queue, and a second tool is also one more thing to keep updated.

The licensing is MIT, and the code is Python, with the repository holding a build/ directory and a plugin/ directory. The releases are frequent, with 1.3.7 on 2026-07-11, 1.3.8 on 2026-08-20 and 1.3.9 on 2026-10-01, and the last push was on 2026-10-15.

The dependency chain: FDM, Python and Deno

The requirements section is short and worth reading literally.

Free Download Manager 6.32 or higher is required. That is the host application, and the version floor is a hint that the add-on interface has changed over the years.

Python 3.10 or higher and Deno 2.3 or higher are also required. The important detail is the sentence that follows: both can be installed by Free Download Manager automatically when installing the add-on. So the two runtimes are not something the user has to provision, although the versions are pinned, and the fact that a JavaScript runtime is in the chain is a hint about what yt-dlp's newer components need.

That is a well designed dependency story for a non developer user. You install an add-on in an application and the application handles the runtimes, in the same way that a browser extension brings its own engine.

It does mean the add-on is not portable on its own. If your Free Download Manager installation is older than 6.32, or if your policy forbids the application from downloading additional runtimes, the add-on cannot be installed at all, and there is no alternative path in the readme.

The project also links to the Free Download Manager forum thread for more details, which is where a user would go for support, and to a separate website at free-addons.org.

You do not have to build it, and building it is two commands

The building section opens with a note that is unusually direct for a project: you do not have to build the Elephant add-on on your own if you do not want to, and you should proceed to the installation section instead.

That is the right advice, because the installation offers a prebuilt artefact. The add-on is distributed as an .fda file, which is Free Download Manager's add-on package format, and a prebuilt one is downloadable straight from the GitHub releases page:

https://github.com/meowcateatrat/elephant/releases/latest/download/elephant.fda

So the entire installation is: download that file, then install it into Free Download Manager using the application's own menu, making sure you have the latest FDM installed.

For anyone who does want to build, the steps are short. You clone or download the repository, on Windows you make sure 7-Zip is installed, and then you run the build script for your platform:

build/build-windows.bat
build/build-unix.sh

The Windows script is a batch file and the Unix one is a shell script, and the reason 7-Zip is called out is presumably something the Windows build unpacks along the way. The build produces the same elephant.fda that the release page offers, so the only difference between building and downloading is whether you trust the published artefact or want to produce it yourself.

The build directory is present in the repository listing, alongside the plugin directory, which is the shape you would expect for an add-on where the plugin code and the packaging script are separate.

Cookies are the troubleshooting step, and the risk is stated

The troubleshooting section is the most important part of this readme, and it deals with the one thing that separates a working video download from a failing one.

If you cannot download using Elephant, the first thing to check is that the Allow add-ons to use web browser cookies option is enabled in the add-on settings of Free Download Manager. The reason is straightforward in hindsight: many sites serve a logged out or restricted version of a video, and the only way to get the version your account can see is to present the session cookies from your browser.

The warning is stated just as plainly. Beware that by enabling this option you run the risk of your account being banned, temporarily or permanently. Be mindful with the request rate and the amount of downloads you make with an account.

That is the honest description of the trade-off, and it deserves to be read as a real constraint rather than as a footnote. Handing a download tool your session cookies means the tool is acting as you on that site, and a site that sees an unusual number of authenticated downloads from one account can act on that. The request rate point is the same issue seen from the other side: the volume of requests is what makes an account look wrong, whether or not the downloads are legitimate.

So the practical guidance is not to enable the option reflexively. Use it when a download fails for a reason that suggests the site is serving a restricted version, keep the number of downloads low, and treat the account as the asset at risk rather than the file.

Firefox, for the cookie part

The last line of the troubleshooting section is a browser recommendation: Mozilla Firefox is recommended, as it is well supported for getting the cookies.

The reason is not that Firefox downloads videos better, it is that the cookie extraction step is better supported there. Since the cookies option is the documented path to fixing a failed download, the browser you use affects whether that path works, and the project names Firefox as the one where it does.

That is a narrow, practical recommendation, and it is the kind of detail that saves a user an afternoon: the tool is not browser agnostic at the point where it matters most, and the readme says which browser to use.

It also shapes the overall picture of this project. Elephant is a bridge between a specific download manager and a specific extractor, with a specific browser requirement for its most common failure mode, and it is meant to be installed as a binary add-on by someone who does not want to read a manual. Everything else in the readme, the dependencies, the build scripts and the troubleshooting section, is oriented towards that user.

Editorial conclusion

Elephant suits a Windows user who already runs Free Download Manager and wants its queue, scheduling and post processing applied to video downloads instead of direct links. It is the wrong choice if you need a standalone command line downloader, since the whole add-on is delivered as a Free Download Manager plugin and depends on that application being installed, and a poor match if your account matters, because the documented way to get past a download that needs a session is to hand the add-on your browser cookies, and the project states plainly that doing so risks a temporary or permanent ban. Before installing, check the Free Download Manager version, since 6.32 or higher is required, and read the cookies section before you enable that option.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. meowcateatrat/elephant on GitHub
4. README
5. Releases