KGet Capture

A Chrome (and other Chromium-browser) extension that sends downloads to KGet, KDE's download manager, instead of (or in addition to) the browser's built-in downloader.

• Right-click any link, image, video, or audio element and choose "Download with KGet" to send it straight to KGet — it starts downloading immediately into your Downloads folder, no dialog.
• A toolbar toggle enables auto-capture: while on, every download Chrome starts is cancelled and handed off to KGet the same way, automatically, with the correct filename (resolved by Chrome itself, so it's right even for URLs whose path is just an opaque ID). Defaults to ON.
• A "Download complete" desktop notification appears once a capture actually finishes downloading. This is driven by the extension itself (not KGet's own per-transfer notification, which KGet silently skips for downloads that finish very quickly — see Troubleshooting), so it fires reliably regardless of file size or speed.

Requirements

• Linux with KGet installed (and running, or set to autostart)
• One of: Google Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Vivaldi, Microsoft Edge
• python3 and dbus-send on PATH (standard on virtually all Linux/KDE systems already)
• notify-send (ships with most Linux desktops via libnotify) — optional, only used for the download-complete notification; captures still work without it, just silently
• kwriteconfig6 (ships with KDE Plasma) — optional, only used to disable KGet's own unreliable per-transfer notification so it doesn't double up with the extension's; install still works without it

Install

git clone <this-repo-url> kget-capture
cd kget-capture
./install.sh

install.sh registers a native messaging host for every supported browser it finds installed, then prints the extension's fixed ID and next steps:

1. Open chrome://extensions (or your browser's equivalent).
2. Enable Developer mode (top-right toggle).
3. Click Load unpacked and select this repo's extension/ directory.
4. Confirm the loaded extension's ID matches the one install.sh printed.
5. Open chrome://settings/downloads (or your browser's equivalent, e.g. brave://settings/downloads, edge://settings/downloads) and turn off "Ask where to save each file before downloading". Chrome shows this dialog itself, before the extension ever gets a chance to intercept the download — no extension API can read or suppress it, so this one-time setting change is required for captures to work without an extra prompt.

Usage

• On-demand: right-click a link/image/video/audio → "Download with KGet".
• Automatic: click the toolbar icon and flip "Auto-capture all downloads" on or off. The badge shows "ON" (green) or "OFF" (grey).

Uninstall

./uninstall.sh

This removes the native messaging host registrations and the installed host script. You'll still need to remove the unpacked extension yourself via chrome://extensions — that step can't be scripted.

Releases

Pushing a tag matching v*.*.* (e.g. v1.0.0) triggers a GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/release.yml) that zips extension/ and publishes it as a GitHub Release with auto-generated release notes. Bump "version" in extension/manifest.json before tagging so the packaged extension's version matches.

git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

Known limitations

• blob:/data:/file:/filesystem: URLs can't be captured. There's no real network URL to hand to KGet — this includes saving a page you navigated to directly via file:// (Ctrl+S on it is still a "download" as far as Chrome is concerned) — so these downloads proceed normally through Chrome (a console warning is logged in the extension's service worker).
• Auto-capture has a brief head start. Manifest V3 removed blocking webRequest, so Chrome begins the download before the extension can cancel it. A small/partial temp file may transiently appear before it's erased.
• No editable dialog. Captures start immediately with no chance to rename the file or pick a different folder beforehand — rename/move it afterward in KGet or your file manager if needed. This is intentional: KGet only skips its interactive "New Download" dialog when given a real destination path up front, so instant capture and an editable prompt are mutually exclusive given KGet's D-Bus API.
• The context-menu capture can't always get the correct filename. Auto-capture gets the real filename for free from Chrome's own Content-Disposition resolution. Right-click captures don't have that — the extension only has the raw URL — so KGet falls back to guessing from the URL path, which is wrong for opaque/signed URLs (e.g. cloud storage links). Fixing this would require broad host permissions and an extra HTTP request per right-click, which isn't worth it for now.
• Chrome may still show its own "Save As" dialog if you skipped step 5 of Install above — see there for why and how to fix it.
• KGet must already be running. If it's not, captures fail silently from the user's perspective — check the service worker console for the actual error (see Troubleshooting).

Troubleshooting

• Check native host registration: confirm ~/.config/<browser>/NativeMessagingHosts/com.kget_capture.host.json exists and its path points at an executable file (~/.local/share/kget-capture/kget_capture_host.py).
• Inspect the extension's logs: on chrome://extensions, find "KGet Capture", click "service worker" under "Inspect views" to open its console.
• Test D-Bus directly:

  dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.kde.kget /KGet \
    org.kde.kget.main.addTransfer string:"https://example.com/file.zip" string:"$HOME/Downloads/file.zip" boolean:true
  

  If this fails with ServiceUnknown, KGet isn't running.
• Download-complete notification not showing? Confirm notify-send is installed (command -v notify-send) — without it, kget_capture_host.py skips the notification entirely rather than erroring. Otherwise, check that the transfer actually reached 100%: kget_capture_host.py polls org.kde.kget.transfer.percent on the new transfer's D-Bus object path (e.g. /KGet/Transfers/9, printed by the addTransfer call above) until it hits 100, so a stuck/erroring transfer never fires one. Note this notification is separate from KGet's own built-in "Download Finished" event — install.sh disables that one (kwriteconfig6 --file knotifyrc --group "Event/kget/finished" --key Action None) because KGet only fires it for transfers it observed in a non-finished state at least once, so it silently skips small/fast downloads that complete before that first observation.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.