User manual

Using DownloadHelper

After you installed the DownloadHelper extension, you should see a new icon in your toolbar.

However, it may happen that this icon does not install automatically or simply disappear. This is sometimes the case after an update of Firefox or of the extension itself.

If you don't see the icon in the toolbar, you should install it, it's easy: Go to menu View/Toolbar/Customize and drag the DownloadHelper icon to your toolbar

Using DownloadHelper is simple. Just use your browser to visit video sites, when DownloadHelper can do something for you, this icon is animated:

It is possible to switch to a colored still icon through preferences:

When the icon is animated, you can see a small triangle at the right of the icon. Click on this arrow to open the download menu. You can now select directly a file to download.

Alternatively, download offers are also available from the context menu:

And the Tools menu:

If you press the CTRL key while selecting a file to download, the actual URL of the file is copied to the clipboard. You can paste the address to an external download manager if you want to.

When DownloadHelper notice links to image or movies files, moving the mouse over the items may highlight the corresponding links in the Web page:

Clicking on a particular item starts the download.

By default, the downloads are queued and done one by one. That keeps the bandwith usage to a minimum and allows you to browse other page to select new downloads. The screenshots below shows the number of files in the download queue. The number disappears when there is no more download in progress.

It is also possible to download several video files from YouTube at once, without even opening the video pages. Just select a region in a YouTube page containing links and right-click to display the context menu. A new entry offers to download all video files.

You can also right click on a single link without selecting a region.

Having meaningful default video file names

Fllow this link for details about the Smart Naming feature.

Converting downloaded videos

Check our Video conversion guide page.

Where to get videos from ?

If you are looking for places where to find videos to download, you may click on the DownloadHelper icon. It opens a dialog window showing a list of selected video sites.

The sites listed here have been selected for their quality (limited ads, hosted content) and are updated daily.

You can click on the column headers of the list to change sorting.

Double-clicking on any entry takes you to the corresponding site page at www.downloadhelper.net, another click on the button Visit VideoSite opens the actual site.

Configuring DownloadHelper

You can configure the extension by right-clicking on the icon, or from the Tools menu, and select Preferences:

You can also invoke the preferences from Firefox menu Tools/Addons, selecting Video DownloadHelper, the Preferences button.

Please check this page for more relevant information.

Monitoring the download queue

You can access the download queue by right-clicking on the DownloadHelper icon and selecting Download Queue. If you set the download mode one-by-one (the default), you can see from this dialog the list of downloads that have not been started yet. This gives you an opportunity to cancel them before they start.

Using the history

To have access to the history, you first need to enable the feature from the preferences and visit some video pages. Then, right-click on the DownloadHelper icon and select History.

From the history window, you can quickly see the videos you watched. Double click the history entry to start viewing the video. You can also go directly to the original page containing the video.

Use the CTRL key to select multiple entries. You can then remove or download them as a whole.

Note: This is a beta feature currently limited to FLV videos and recognized as such by DownloadHelper.

Need more information ?

Have a look at our FAQ and Support Knowledge Base.