Downloads stalling or your browser freezing when grabbing multiple files? Pause everything first. Right-click any file, pick “Pause → Resume All,” then make sure the queue’s empty before you start again.
What’s happening here?
Chrome doesn’t come with a built-in batch downloader.
So when you need every PDF, image, or ZIP on a page, you’re stuck clicking links one by one—or adding an extension. The most popular one, uSelect iDownload, slaps a dark overlay on the page and lets you drag-select dozens of links at once. As of 2026, it runs on Chrome 124+ and Chromium-based Edge 124+.
People mess up by forgetting to turn on the overlay, skipping the file-type filter, or letting the queue blow past Chrome’s default 16-connection limit.
Here’s exactly how to fix it
Follow these four steps to batch-download with uSelect iDownload.
- Install uSelect iDownload • Open chrome://extensions • Flip the “Developer mode” switch in the top-right corner • Hit “Load unpacked” and point it to the extension folder, or search the store for “uSelect iDownload” and click Add to Chrome.
- Turn on the overlay • Head to the page with your files—say, a Reddit album or a GitHub release page • Click the extension’s toolbar icon; the page dims and a green “Select” box pops up.
- Drag and select the links you want • Hold the left mouse button and sweep a rectangle around every link you need • Hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) while dragging to add or drop individual items • Hit Esc to clear the selection.
- Kick off the download • Press Enter or click the green “Download” button • A tiny popup says “x items queued.” • (Optional) Click the extension icon again to open the manager and tweak speed limits or the download folder.
Still not working?
Try one of these three backups instead.
- Swap in Chrono Download Manager • Install Chrono 1.8+ • After it’s installed, right-click any link and choose “Download with Chrono”; the manager opens with every link on the page already checked.
- Scrape static pages with a one-liner
• In Chrome 124+, open chrome://flags, turn on “Download all links,” then restart
• Load the page, press Ctrl+Shift+J to open DevTools → Console, and run:
document.querySelectorAll('a[href$=".pdf"],a[href$=".zip"]').forEach(a=>a.click())• Approve the download dialog before Chrome’s popup blocker shuts it down. - Fall back to wget
• On Windows 11 23H2+, open PowerShell and paste:
wget -i <(curl -s https://example.com/page.html | grep -o 'https://[^"]*\.pdf' | sort -u) -P C:\Downloads• macOS 14+ and Linux users can run the same command in Terminal.
Stop the headaches before they start
Four quick tweaks keep your downloads smooth and organized.
- Pick a fast download folder up front
• In Chrome, go to Settings → Downloads → Location → Change to an SSD drive (for example,
C:\Users\YourName\Downloads\Batch). - Cap the number of simultaneous connections • In chrome://flags, search “parallel downloads,” and set it to Disabled if you only want one file at a time.
- Ask Chrome where to save each file • Settings → Downloads → Ask where to save each file before downloading keeps your folders tidy.
- Keep a list of trusted sites
• Save a text file called
allowed_sites.txtwith domains you trust; add it to your download-manager’s safe-list so future jobs skip the confirmation dialog.
