A modern, high-speed desktop media archiver and downloader for Pawchive, Kemono, Coomer, Telegram, and external cloud hosts.
Built with Python, PySide6, and modern reactive QML.
Engineered for maximum automation: hands-off scheduled syncing, integrated media gallery, permanent link vaulting, multi-drive overflow, self-healing session recovery, and Telegram channel archiving.

(Portable — no Python or command-line setup required! Just extract and run Pawchive Downloader.exe)

💬 Need Help, Support, or Want to Chat?
If you run into any issues, have suggestions, or need further help, you can communicate directly with me on our Discord Server!

🖼️ Click to expand more interface screenshots

💡 Philosophy: Maximum Automation, Minimum Friction
Pawchive Downloader is designed to take the heavy lifting off your hands. You point it at what you want — and it handles the rest: automated schedules, background link harvesting, multi-drive overflow, self-healing recovery, and intelligent file organisation. You stay in control; the app does the work.

• 🖼️ Built-in Media Gallery & File Explorer: Dedicated local media manager and lightbox viewer built right into the app. Seamlessly browse downloaded collections, stream full-resolution video with responsive timeline scrub, play audio, and inspect animated GIFs/WebPs without opening external software. Includes instantaneous recursive subfolder search with syntax filters (ext:png, character tags), persistent star ratings and favorites tracked across folder moves, up to 25-step undo history for file operations, live folder monitoring, storage usage breakdowns, and a 1-click Check for Updates button to grab new creator posts right from the gallery.
• ✈️ Telegram Channel Downloader & Media Browser: Download photos, videos, and files directly from public channels, private links, and individual posts (t.me/...). Features an interactive visual thumbnail post selector with checkboxes, one-click criteria filtering (dates, media types), effortless QR code / phone login, client-side encrypted session storage, and automated anti-ban safeguards (locked 2-thread concurrency & FloodWait cooldowns).
• 🧹 Automatic Memory Cleanup Daemon (WIP): Periodic memory management daemon that continuously monitors process memory, sweeping cyclic objects and reclaiming unused RAM during massive download sessions to keep long-running tasks light and stable.
• 🛑 Sub-Second Multi-Service Cancellation: Universal instant abort across multi-part files, child yt-dlp video processes, cloud mirrors (Mega, Dropbox, GoFile), and Telegram downloads in less than a second.
• 🎵 Automatic ID3 Audio Tagging: Automatically embeds creator as Artist and post title as Track Title on .mp3, .m4a, .flac, .ogg, and .wav downloads for instant integration with iTunes, Plex, and MusicBee.
• ⏰ Task Scheduler & Automation Hub: Create recurring automation schedules to poll your Watchlist for new creator posts, schedule off-peak Night Owl download windows, prevent Windows sleep during active jobs, and automatically sweep-retry any rate-limited or dropped files.
• 🖼️ Interactive Post Selector & Inspector: Browse, search, and selectively download or queue individual creator posts. Drill down into post descriptions and passwords, pick individual attachments, view files in a fullscreen media Lightbox visualizer, and track real-time file and post selection tallies.
• 🗄️ Download Archive Database & Verifier: Dedicated offline database cataloging all downloaded posts and files. Includes a disk verification engine to detect missing files, red/amber visual warning indicators, and a one-click database cleanup flow.
• 🏷️ Custom Filename Template Builder: Flexible pattern designer with interactive tag chips ({artist}, {title}, {post_id}, {date}, {file_index}, etc.), real-time live preview, and filesystem sanitization.
• 🗄️ Permanent Link Vault & Harvester: Harvests external cloud links (Mega, Google Drive, Pixeldrain, etc.) and archive passwords from posts (WIP) into a permanent offline vault. Run link health checks, prune dead links, sync passwords to the Decompressor with one click, or harvest entire creator histories without downloading files.
• 💾 Multi-Drive Storage Pools (Auto-Spanning Overflow): Never suffer "Disk Full" crashes again. Automatically spills downloads to secondary drives or folders when your primary drive reaches its safety margin, preserving creator and post folder hierarchies seamlessly.
• 📌 Artist Watchlist: Track followed creators and automatically check for new posts. Features one-click "Download All Updates", an interactive post review drawer with per-post and bulk ignoring, custom download paths per artist, saved per-artist filter settings, and an editable last-downloaded cutoff date with smart auto-normalization.
• 🧩 Franchise Recognition Engine: Automatically structures downloaded files into clean creator/franchise folders using an integrated franchise database and fully customisable Known.txt rules — no manual sorting needed.
• 📦 Universal Bulk Decompressor: Automated scan across downloaded artists, multi-threaded parallel extraction for .zip, .rar, .7z, multi-part archives, disk safety pre-flight checks, creator-organized Password Bank with collapsible sections and emerald active-target highlights, alphabetical artist selector with keyboard jumping, automatic password prompting with wrong-password feedback, password bank auto-sync, and a re-extract confirmation flow for already-extracted archives with amber colour-coding.
• 🛡️ Zero-Loss Session Recovery: If the app is closed, crashed, or cancelled mid-download, atomic checkpoints allow instant one-click resumption right where you left off.
• 🔓 Client-Side Cloud Decryptor & Modern Host Support: Native AES client-side decryption for Mega folders, Google Drive full trees with live progress, 1-click browser cookie importer, and rebuilt Bunkr 2026 parallel resolution.

• Pawchive (pawchive.pw)
• Cum.st (cum.st)
• Kemono and Coomer: turned off for now. Both sites are mostly not working at the moment, so the app doesn't use them. Kemono links are offered as the same link on Pawchive (it has the same creators and IDs); for Coomer creators, use cum.st. Kemono artists in the Watchlist can be moved to Pawchive in one click.
• Telegram (t.me/... public channels, private links, and individual media posts)
• Supported creator services: Patreon, Pixiv Fanbox, Fantia, Subscribestar, Gumroad, Boosty, Discord, OnlyFans, Fansly, Afdian, DLsite, and more.

• Mega (folders and individual files with automatic AES decryption)
• Google Drive (shared files and public folders)
• Dropbox (direct download links and auto-extracted archives)
• GoFile (direct albums and folders)

• Bunkr, Erome, nHentai, Saint2, Pixeldrain, Catbox, Mediafire, SimpCity

• YouTube, Vimeo, Streamable, RedGifs, Twitter/X, Bilibili, SoundCloud, Dailymotion

1. Head over to the Latest Release page.
2. Download Pawchive-Downloader-v1.2.4-Windows.zip.
3. Extract the ZIP archive anywhere on your computer.
4. Run Pawchive Downloader.exe — that's it!

On Linux, download Pawchive-Downloader-v<version>-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz instead, extract it, and run ./pawchive. The Linux build is made on Ubuntu 22.04, so it runs on any distro with glibc 2.35 or newer (Debian 12+, Fedora 36+, Arch, Mint 21+, openSUSE Tumbleweed…).

Ensure you have Python 3.10 or newer installed.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/whyamihere773/Pawchive-Downloader.git
   cd Pawchive-Downloader

2. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

   or, with uv:

   uv pip install -r requirements.txt

   On Linux distributions that manage the system Python (Arch / CachyOS, Debian 12+, Ubuntu 23.04+, Fedora…), pip install refuses with externally-managed-environment. Use a virtual environment instead:

   python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate && pip install -r requirements.txt
   # or: uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate && uv pip install -r requirements.txt

   The in-app updater installs new dependencies the same way (uv when available, otherwise pip).

   Optional: offline AI character recognition (Settings → AI & Recognition) needs a few extra packages:

   pip install -r requirements-ai.txt

   The Windows and Linux downloads already include them.

3. Run the application:

   python main.py

4. Build a Windows package:

   python build.py

   The portable distribution will be output to dist/Pawchive Downloader/ alongside a compressed release ZIP archive.

Logs are saved in a logs folder next to Pawchive Downloader.exe, the Linux pawchive binary, or main.py:

logs/
  v1.2.1/        one file per session (2026-10-02_10-00-00.log); a <session>.crash.log appears only after a hard crash
  updater/       one file per update (2026-10-02_10-05-12 (1.2.1 to 1.3.0).log)
  older/         logs from versions before this layout

Each log starts with the app version, edition, system and Python/Qt versions and ends with a "Session ended" line, so a log without one belongs to a session that crashed or was closed by force. Passwords, MEGA keys, proxy logins and your home folder are hidden, so logs are safe to attach to bug reports. Logs are never deleted automatically: Settings → Storage → Logs shows their size and has a Clear logs button. If the app folder can't be written to, logs go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pawchive Downloader\logs (Windows) or ~/.local/share/pawchive/logs (Linux) instead.

Pawchive checks for updates on launch. Click Update now in the update dialog: the app closes, the updater installs the new version, and the app opens again. Your config/, downloads/, logs/, data/ folders, virtual environments and any files you added are never touched, and if anything fails the previous version is restored.

The update dialog shows the version you're running and its edition (Windows build, Linux build or Source code):

Source installs compare their commit with GitHub's main, so they're offered an update only when main has new commits (shown as "1.2.1 + 3 new changes"). A checkout with your own commits on top isn't nagged.

You can also run the updater yourself:

python updater.py            # check and update this source folder
python updater.py --console  # same, in the terminal (used automatically when no window can open)

Feedback, bug reports, and pull requests are warmly welcome!

• 💬 Need further help or want to chat? If you need assistance, have questions, or want to communicate directly with me, feel free to join our Discord Server!
• Have a suggestion or found a bug? Please open an Issue.
• Want to add a new host or feature? Fork the repository, create a feature branch, and submit a Pull Request.

This tool is intended strictly for personal archiving and backup purposes. Please respect content creators' terms of service and rights.