// the take
XDM is a cross-platform download accelerator and streaming-video grabber (HTTP, HLS, MPEG-DASH) built in Kotlin/Swing, with a browser extension that hands off downloads and detected video streams to the desktop app over a local socket. It's aimed at people who routinely download large files or rip videos from streaming sites and want multi-connection speedups plus reliable resume, rather than a torrent client or generic file manager.
XDM 9 writes segments directly into the final file instead of assembling from temp parts, so large downloads finish the instant the last byte lands instead of sitting through a post-download merge. It muxes HLS/DASH streams to MP4 and extracts time-synced subtitles without shelling out to ffmpeg, which removes a common external-dependency headache for this category of tool. The download engine (xdm-core) is split out and licensed under Apache 2.0 separately from the GPLv3 app and extension, so it can actually be embedded in other projects including closed-source ones. It ships a real headless CLI mode (`xdm-app --headless`) alongside the GUI, so it's usable from scripts/servers and not just as a desktop app.
The project is explicitly mid-rewrite and the README asks contributors to hold off on PRs because the code 'is being restructured often' — anyone adopting it now is building on a moving target with no stated timeline for stabilizing. There's no magnet/torrent support at all; it's HTTP/HLS/DASH only, so it doesn't cover the full feature set some users expect from a 'download manager.' The browser extension talks to the app over a local HTTP server on 127.0.0.1:8597, and the README doesn't document what, if anything, validates the origin of those requests — local-port browser-to-app bridges in this category have a history of DNS-rebinding and malicious-page abuse if that's not locked down. Safety features like antivirus scanning and Mark-of-the-Web/quarantine tagging are both optional and user-disableable, so the actual security posture depends on defaults nobody changed.
We read the README, the directory tree and a key source file in October 2026. Nobody pays to be listed. How we judge →