Entry no. 32

The Digital Peregrine

Falco peregrinus digitalis

Plate 1. In a stoop. The arrow points at your file.

The fastest download manager in its habitat. It splits its prey into up to 32 parts, chases them all at once, and never gives up its progress: not on a dropped Wi-Fi, a crash or a power cut.

Download for Windows Source on GitHub

v0.4.3 · Free · open source (GPL-3.0) · no ads · no account · no tracking

Field notes

Habitat

Windows 10 and 11, macOS 12 and later. Seen on Linux at the command line.Also nests in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi through an extension that hands over downloads with their cookies.

Diet

HTTP and HTTPS, FTP, torrents and magnet links, HLS and DASH streams, video sites.Does not eat your data. It makes no network requests except the downloads you start.

Behaviour

When one connection finishes its part, it stoops on half of the slowest part that is left.So no connection ever sits idle while one slow part drags the download out.

Memory

Writes its position to a crash-safe database every second.Bytes go to a .peregrine.part file and get the real name only after they are verified.

Plate 2. A dive, recorded

debian-12.8.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso57%

186.0 MB/s0:12 left8 connections

#136.0 MB/s
#215.0 MB/s
#328.0 MB/s
#48.0 MB/s
#531.0 MB/s
#621.0 MB/s
#734.0 MB/s
#813.0 MB/s

A live model of the engine. Watch a finished connection take half of a slow one, and connection #6 get cut by the server and resume without losing a byte.

Observed in captivity

Before every release, the engine is released into an enclosure with a test server built to misbehave. These behaviours were provoked on purpose, and this is how it reacted:

The server cuts the connection halfway through.Reconnects and continues from the last byte it wrote.
The server ignores Range requests.Notices, falls back to one connection, and does not corrupt the file.
The server sends no file size at all.Downloads it as one stream.
The server swaps the file between requests.Sees the changed ETag and starts clean instead of stitching two files together.
The link expires with a 403.Pauses and lets you paste a fresh link. Everything already downloaded is kept.
The server answers 503 to the first tries.Retries with back-off, then carries on.
Every response is throttled.Keeps every connection busy, so the total stays as fast as the line allows.

The enclosure is in the repository: internal/testsrv.

Similar species

How to tell it apart from its relatives in the wild. IDM has years of polish that Peregrine does not have yet; Peregrine is free, open and lives on more than Windows.

The Digital PeregrinePeregrine

Free and open source
Windows, macOS and a Linux CLI
Torrents, video and a command line

The Internet DownloaderIDM

Paid after a trial
Windows only
Very mature

The Browser Downloaderbuilt in

One connection per file
Resume not guaranteed
Found everywhere

Full comparison

	Peregrine	IDM	FDM	Browser
Price	Free	Paid after a trial	Free	Free
Source code you can read	Yes, GPL-3.0	No	Older versions only	Depends
macOS	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Linux	Command line	No	Yes	Yes
Connections per file	Up to 32, re-balanced	Many	Many	One
Resume after a crash	Yes, saved every second	Yes	Yes	Sometimes
Fresh link for an expired one	Yes	Yes	Limited	No
BitTorrent	Yes	No	Yes	No
Command-line tool	Yes	Basic switches	No	No
Maturity	Early preview	Very mature	Mature	Mature

From each product's public information, November 2026. Something wrong? Tell us.

Its call

Heard on servers and in scripts on Windows, macOS and Linux. Make the same call again and it resumes.

# 16 connections, capped at 5 MB/s
$ peregrine get https://example.com/big.iso -o ~/Downloads -c 16 --limit 5M

# hand a link to the desktop app
$ peregrine add https://example.com/file.zip

Where to find it

These links always lead to the newest release. Current version: 0.4.3

Windows 10 / 1164-bit installer, about 63 MBDownload portable .zip →
macOS 12 and laterOne .dmg for Apple Silicon and IntelDownload
LinuxCommand-line app, x64Download ARM64 →
Browser extensionChromium browsers; the app walks you through itDownload

Early preview: builds are not code-signed yet. Windows SmartScreen: More info → Run anyway. macOS: right-click the app → Open. Check any file against SHA256SUMS.txt.

All files and older versions on GitHub

Notes from observers

Is Peregrine really free?

Yes. It is open source under GPL-3.0. There is no paid version, no trial, no ads and no bundled offers.

Is it a good alternative to IDM?

It covers what most people use IDM for: many connections per file, resuming broken downloads and catching downloads from the browser. It is free and also runs on macOS. It is an early preview, so expect rough edges and please report them.

Why does Windows SmartScreen warn me?

The builds are not code-signed yet. Click More info, then Run anyway. You can check the file against SHA256SUMS.txt and the signed build provenance on GitHub.

Does it work on Linux?

On Linux, Peregrine is a command-line tool for x64 and ARM64. The desktop app is for Windows and macOS.

Does it collect any data?

No. No analytics and no telemetry. It only connects to the internet for the downloads you start. This website has no trackers either.