Downloader
When you navigate to your own collection page, you will find the Bandcamper download bar next to
Bandcamp's own
search box. On the download bar, you will find the following controls:
Download Button
Once you have selected the items you want, click here to download them. If a batch has items that
failed to complete
(due to a network interruption, for example) this button will become the 'retry' button, and
clicking it will
attempt to download the failed items only.
Format Selector
Bandcamp provides you with a number of format options. Choose the format for the files you want to
download, here.
In the current version of Bandcamper, only single-format downloading is available. Multi-format
downloading might
become available in a future version.
Select All
Clicking this button selects all visible items. Like the individual selectors, its function
is additive,
meaning that you can use Bandcamp's search feature to find one or more items, click 'select all' to
select all of
these items, search again for some different items, click 'select all', and the two selections will
be combined in
union (if an item is in both search sets, it will will not be downloaded twice).
Clicking 'select all' while it is highlighted (while all visible items are selected) has a slightly
different
effect depending on whether or not you are in a search. If you are in a search, just the search
results will be
removed from your selection. Otherwise, all items will be removed, not only the visible ones.
Info Display
The info display gives you basic statistics about your collection, your selection, and about the
current
download status.
During Selection
Before you click the download button, the info display will tell you:
- collection: The number of downloadable items in your collection.
- showing: The number of downloadable items currently visible on the page.
- selected: the number of items you have selected for download.
During Download
After you click the download button, the info display will tell you:
- waiting: The number of items currently waiting to be downloaded.
- downloading: The number of items currently being downloaded. You can set the maximum
number of
concurrent
downloads on the options page. The default is 3.
- completed: The current number of successfully completed downloads.
- interrupted: The number of downloads that have failed, but that can be resumed from
where they
left off.
- failed: The number of downloads that have failed and must be started again from
scratch.
Tips on Downloading
Selecting Items for Download
When you visit your own profile page (while you are logged in), you will see that the bandcamp's
'download' link in
the bottom-left corner of each downloadable collection item has been replaced with Bandcamper's
'select' control.
Clicking this will select the item for download. Clicking it again will deselect the item. A
selected item is
indicated by a dashed blue outline.
Selecting a Range
You can select a range of items by selecting the first item in the range, then holding down the
shift key and
selecting the last item in the range. Any non-downloadable items in the range will be skipped over.
Similarly,
you can deselect a range by deselecting the first item you want to deselect, holding down the shift
key, and
selecting the last item. If the last item in the range is selected without selecting the first item,
the first
visible, downloadable item will be assumed to be the start of the range.
Selecting All
You can use the 'select all' button to select all visible items on the page. Bandcamp
initially loads a
limited number of collection items, and then loads more after you click the 'show all items' button
at the bottom
of the page, and as you scroll down. Bandcamper cannot select items that have not yet been loaded
onto the page
by Bandcamp. To ensure that your whole collection can be downloaded, click 'show all items' at the
bottom of the
page and scroll down until you hit the bottom.
Additive Selection
You can select items by scrolling through your collection, and combine this with multiple searches
using
Bandcamp's search facility, and all of your selections will be remembered.
Downloading
Once you have selected the items you want, select your desired format with the format selection
drop-down and
click the download button. A few things will happen:
- A badge showing the number of downloads waiting to be completed will appear on the Bandcamper
toolbar button.
This will decrement as downloads are completed.
- The info display will switch to display information about the batch
download
status.
- If your collection page is open in any other Chrome tab or window on your machine, these will
also start
to reflect this batch download state. Any selections that you had made on those pages will be
cleared, and the
selections for the current batch will be shown
- The selection and download controls will be disabled
Color Coding
The outlines around selected collection items are color-coded to reflect their download status. When
the item
starts to download, its outline will change from a dashed blue to solid blue line. Completed
downloads are
represented by a green outline, interrupted downloads are orange, and failed downloads are red. An
alert sound
will play when a single download completes (a whooping sound), when a single download fails (three
quick bleeps)
and when the whole batch is completed, with or without errors (a kind of sighing sound). These
sounds can be turned
off on the options page.
Cancelling the Download
You can cancel a download batch at any point by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Shift + e (Ctrl + Opt +
Shift + Escape
on a Mac or Linux). Take note that this also clears your selection and resets the downloader to its initial
state.
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + e can also be used to free up the user interface should an error cause
it to become
unresponsive.
Retrying Failed Downloads
Once the batch has finished, the info display will show you how many
failures there
were, if any. If any items did fail to download, the big, blue download button will now be a big,
orange retry
button. Clicking it will retry the failed items only. Bandcamper will attempt to resume any
partially downloaded
items from where they left off. Otherwise, it will start the download again from scratch.
If you don't want to retry the failed items, you can just press the Escape key to reset the
downloader and return
control to you.
All Good
If all downloads were completed successfully, or if you don't want to retry the failed items, press
the Escape key
to reset the downloader and return control.
Resetting the Downloader
Should the interface remain unresponsive after pressing the Escape key once a download has
completed, pressing
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + e (Ctrl + Opt + Shift + Escape on a Mac) will reset the downloader to its
initial state.