Automate gallery-dl: Your 5-Step Workflow Guide 2025

Introduction: Tame Your Digital Collection

In the digital age, we are surrounded by a constant stream of content. From artist portfolios on DeviantArt to entire video channels on YouTube, there's a wealth of media we want to preserve, study, or simply back up. Manually downloading these galleries is a tedious, time-consuming task prone to errors and omissions. What if you could set up a system that automatically archives your favorite online content for you? That's where gallery-dl comes in.

This powerful command-line tool is a digital archivist's dream, but its true potential is unlocked through automation. This guide for 2025 will walk you through a simple yet robust 5-step workflow to completely automate your gallery-dl downloads, creating a hands-off system that works tirelessly in the background. Stop clicking 'Save Image As' and start building a smart, self-managing digital library.

What is gallery-dl and Why Automate It?

At its core, gallery-dl is a command-line program designed to download image and video galleries from hundreds of websites. Think of it as a universal key for online media. It supports everything from major social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter to specialized art communities like ArtStation and Pixiv.

So, why automate it? The benefits are threefold:

• Efficiency: Set it up once, and it runs forever. No more spending hours manually saving files. It automatically checks for and downloads new content from your specified URLs on a schedule you define.
• Consistency: Automation ensures every gallery is downloaded with the exact same settings every time. This means consistent file naming, folder structures, and metadata handling, which is crucial for a well-organized archive.
• Completeness: Never miss an update. An automated script will diligently check for new posts, ensuring your local archive is a perfect, up-to-date mirror of the online source.

Prerequisites for Automation

Before we dive into the workflow, make sure you have the following tools installed and a basic understanding of them:

• Python and Pip: gallery-dl is a Python application. You'll need Python 3.6+ and its package installer, pip.
• gallery-dl: The star of the show. If you don't have it, install it by running: pip install -U gallery-dl
• A Plain Text Editor: Something like VS Code, Sublime Text, or even Notepad/TextEdit will be used to create your configuration, URL list, and script files.
• Basic Command-Line/Terminal Knowledge: You should be comfortable navigating directories and running basic commands.

Your 5-Step Automation Workflow

This workflow breaks down the process into five manageable steps, taking you from a manual command to a fully automated archival machine.

Step 1: Installation and Core Configuration

While you can pass options directly on the command line, a configuration file is essential for automation. It keeps your commands clean and your settings centralized. Create a file named config.json in your gallery-dl directory (check its location with gallery-dl --config -).

Here’s a great starting configuration. This example sets a base download directory and creates subdirectories for each website and user.

{
  "extractor": {
    "base-directory": "/path/to/your/archive",
    "directory": ["{category[0]}“, “{author[name]}"],
    "filename": "{date:%Y-%m-%d}_{id}_{filename}.{extension}"
  }
}

Replace /path/to/your/archive with your desired download location. For Windows, it might look like C:\\Users\\YourUser\\Downloads\\Archive (note the double backslashes).

Step 2: Creating and Managing Your URL List

Instead of passing URLs directly to the script, we'll use an input file. This makes it incredibly easy to add or remove sources without ever touching your automation script.

Create a file named urls.txt in the same directory. Add one URL per line. You can also add comments using a hash symbol (#).

# Art Portfolios
https://www.deviantart.com/someartist/gallery
https://www.artstation.com/anotherartist

# Social Media
https://www.instagram.com/photographer_xyz/

Now, when you want to archive a new gallery, you simply add its URL to this file. That's it!

Step 3: Crafting the Automation Script

The script is the engine of our workflow. It's a simple file that tells the computer to run gallery-dl with our specific settings. We'll create one for Linux/macOS (a shell script) and one for Windows (a batch script).

For Linux/macOS (save as run_gallery_dl.sh):

#!/bin/bash

# Navigate to the directory containing your config and url list
cd /path/to/your/gallery-dl-setup

# Run gallery-dl using the input file
/usr/local/bin/gallery-dl --input-file urls.txt

Make the script executable with: chmod +x run_gallery_dl.sh. Note: Use which gallery-dl to find the exact path for the executable.

For Windows (save as run_gallery_dl.bat):

@echo off

REM Navigate to the directory containing your config and url list
cd /d "C:\path\to\your\gallery-dl-setup"

REM Run gallery-dl using the input file
gallery-dl.exe --input-file urls.txt

Test your script by running it directly from the terminal (./run_gallery_dl.sh or double-clicking run_gallery_dl.bat). It should start downloading content from the URLs in your urls.txt file.

Step 4: Scheduling the Script with Cron or Task Scheduler

This is the automation part. We'll use the operating system's built-in scheduler to run our script automatically.

For Linux/macOS (using Cron):

Open your crontab file for editing by running crontab -e. Add the following line to the end of the file to run your script every day at 3:00 AM:

0 3 * * * /path/to/your/gallery-dl-setup/run_gallery_dl.sh

This cron expression means: at minute 0 of hour 3, on every day, of every month, of every day of the week.

For Windows (using Task Scheduler):

1. Open Task Scheduler from the Start Menu.
2. Click "Create Basic Task..." in the Actions pane.
3. Give it a name like "Automated Gallery-dl" and click Next.
4. Choose a trigger, like "Daily", and set a time (e.g., 3:00:00 AM).
5. For the Action, select "Start a program".
6. In the "Program/script" box, browse to and select your run_gallery_dl.bat file.
7. Click Finish. The task is now set!

Step 5: Implementing Logging and Error Handling

A truly automated task needs logging. How else will you know if it ran successfully or encountered an error? We can easily add this by modifying our script to redirect its output to a log file.

Updated Linux/macOS script (run_gallery_dl.sh):

#!/bin/bash

# ... (cd command remains the same)

# Run gallery-dl, appending all output (both standard and error) to a log file
/usr/local/bin/gallery-dl --input-file urls.txt >> /path/to/your/logs/gallery-dl.log 2>&1

Updated Windows script (run_gallery_dl.bat):

@echo off

REM ... (cd command remains the same)

REM Run gallery-dl, appending all output to a log file
gallery-dl.exe --input-file urls.txt >> "C:\path\to\your\logs\gallery-dl.log" 2>&1

The >> appends output to the file, and 2>&1 redirects the standard error stream to the standard output stream, ensuring all messages (successes and errors) are captured in your log file. Now you can check this file periodically to monitor your automated archivist.

Automation Methods Compared

While we focused on Cron and Task Scheduler, other methods exist. This table gives you a quick overview of the most common options.

Advanced Tips for Power Users

Once your basic automation is running, you can enhance it further:

• Post-Processing: Use the --exec option to run a command after each download. This is great for converting files, running optimizers, or updating a media server library.
• Filtering: Don't want videos? Use --filter "category == 'image'" to only download images. The filter system is incredibly powerful for fine-tuning what you archive.
• Credentials: For sites that require a login, use a .netrc file or the built-in keyring support to store credentials securely instead of putting them in a script.
• Archive File: Use the --archive flag with a path to a text file. gallery-dl will use this file to keep track of already downloaded files, preventing re-downloads and speeding up subsequent runs significantly. This is a must-have for large collections.

Conclusion: Your Automated Archive Awaits

By following these five steps, you've transformed gallery-dl from a simple command-line utility into a powerful, automated digital preservation system. You've built a workflow that is efficient, consistent, and easily managed through a simple text file. Now you can rest easy knowing your digital collections are growing safely and systematically, without you having to lift a finger. Go forth and archive!