Channex Downloader

A modern, cross-platform desktop app for browsing and bulk-downloading media from imageboard threads. Paste a thread link, preview every image and video in a thumbnail grid, and download exactly what you want — all in one click.

Built with Tauri (Rust) + React + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS.

Screenshots

Paste a link and get started

Full thumbnail grid with selection and bulk download

Settings — pick your imageboard, download folder, and concurrency

Features

• Paste a thread link from 4chan, or most lynxchan (8chan.moe, 8chan.se) and vichan-based imageboards
• Thumbnail grid preview of every image and video in the thread, with filename, size, and dimensions
• Filter and search by image/video, or by filename
• Select individual files, select all, or select none — then Download selected or Download all with one click
• Concurrent downloads with live per-file and overall progress, and the ability to cancel mid-download
• Organized downloads: every thread is saved to its own folder, structured as /{board}/{timestamp}_{board}_{threadId}/, so nothing overwrites or gets mixed together
• Settings panel: pick a preferred imageboard (with a quick "open site" shortcut), choose your default download folder, and set download concurrency — all persisted between launches
• Custom-drawn titlebar and window chrome, with fade-in/fade-out transitions and animated UI throughout
• All network requests happen in the Rust backend (not the webview), avoiding CORS issues across arbitrary imageboard domains

How to install

Pre-built binaries for every release are published on the GitHub Releases page. Grab the file that matches your OS/distro from the latest release and follow the instructions below.

Linux

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)

sudo apt install ./channex-downloader_<version>_amd64.deb

Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE (.rpm)

sudo dnf install ./channex-downloader-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm

Arch Linux (AUR)

A PKGBUILD is included in this repo for the channex-downloader-bin package, which installs the AppImage from the latest GitHub release. Once published to the AUR:

yay -S channex-downloader-bin

Or build it manually from the PKGBUILD in this repo:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/niruxx/imageboard-dl/main/PKGBUILD
makepkg -si

Any distro (AppImage)

chmod +x channex-downloader_<version>_amd64.AppImage
./channex-downloader_<version>_amd64.AppImage

No installation needed — the AppImage runs directly. For menu/icon integration, use a tool like AppImageLauncher.

Windows

Download the .msi or .exe (NSIS) installer from the latest release and run it.

macOS

Download the .dmg from the latest release, open it, and drag Channex Downloader.app into Applications.

Requirements

To run a built release, you only need the app itself — see OS support below for platform-specific runtime requirements.

To build from source, you'll need:

Tool	Version	Notes
Node.js	18 or newer	includes npm
Rust	stable toolchain (via rustup)
Tauri CLI prerequisites	—	platform-specific system packages, see below

Platform-specific build dependencies

• Windows: Microsoft C++ Build Tools (the "Desktop development with C++" workload) and the WebView2 runtime (preinstalled on Windows 11 and most up-to-date Windows 10 systems).
• macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install).
• Linux: webkit2gtk, libayatana-appindicator3, and related build packages — see the Tauri Linux prerequisites for your distro's exact package names.

OS support

Channex Downloader is built on Tauri and targets:

• Windows 10/11 (x64) — primary development/testing platform for this app
• macOS 11+ (Intel and Apple Silicon)
• Linux — most modern distros with WebKitGTK (Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc.)

tauri build produces the appropriate native installer for whichever OS you build on (MSI/NSIS on Windows, .dmg/.app on macOS, .deb/.rpm/AppImage on Linux).

Building and running

Clone the repo, then install dependencies:

npm install

Run in development mode

Starts the Vite dev server and launches the app with hot-reload:

npm run tauri dev

Build a release binary/installer

npm run tauri build

The compiled app and platform installer will be under src-tauri/target/release/ (and src-tauri/target/release/bundle/ for the installer packages).

Project structure

• src/ — React + TypeScript frontend (UI, Zustand store, Tauri API bindings)
• src-tauri/src/ — Rust backend
  • chan/ — thread-fetching logic per imageboard engine (4chan, lynxchan, vichan)
  • downloader.rs — concurrent file downloader with progress events
  • settings.rs — persisted user settings