The Ultimate gallery-dl Setup: 5 Essential Steps 2025

What is gallery-dl and Why You Need It in 2025?

In an increasingly ephemeral digital world, preserving online content is more important than ever. While browser extensions and simple downloaders have their place, they lack the power, flexibility, and automation required for serious digital archiving. This is where gallery-dl shines. It's a command-line program designed to download image and video galleries from hundreds of websites, from social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram to art communities like DeviantArt and ArtStation.

But gallery-dl is more than just a downloader; it's a sophisticated archiving tool. By harnessing its powerful configuration options, you can create a fully automated system that not only grabs content but also organizes, names, and even post-processes it according to your exact specifications. In 2025, with websites becoming more complex and content more fleeting, mastering a tool like gallery-dl is an essential skill for any data hoarder, digital archivist, or content creator looking to back up their portfolio. This guide will walk you through the five essential steps to create the ultimate gallery-dl setup.

Step 1: Flawless Installation and Verification

Before you can unleash the power of gallery-dl, you need a solid foundation. This starts with a clean installation. The process is straightforward thanks to Python's package manager, Pip.

Prerequisites: Python and Pip

gallery-dl is built on Python, so you'll need it installed on your system. As of 2025, it's recommended to use Python 3.8 or newer. Most modern operating systems (macOS, Linux) come with Python pre-installed. For Windows users, you can download it from the official Python website. During installation on Windows, be sure to check the box that says "Add Python to PATH."

Pip, the package installer for Python, is typically included with your Python installation. You can verify both are installed and accessible from your terminal or command prompt by running:

python --version
pip --version

If both commands return a version number, you're ready to proceed.

The Installation Command

With the prerequisites met, installing gallery-dl is a single command. Open your terminal (or Command Prompt/PowerShell on Windows) and execute the following:

pip install --upgrade gallery-dl

The --upgrade flag is crucial. It ensures that you're either installing the latest version or upgrading an existing installation. Once the process completes, verify it was successful by checking the version:

gallery-dl --version

This command should output the gallery-dl version number, along with the versions of its key dependencies. Congratulations, the software is now installed!

Step 2: Building Your Master Configuration File

Running gallery-dl with command-line arguments for every download is tedious and inefficient. The true power of the tool is unlocked through its configuration file. This file allows you to define default behaviors for all downloads, saving you immense time and effort.

Finding Your Config File Location

gallery-dl looks for a configuration file in a specific user directory. You'll likely need to create the folder and file yourself.

• Windows: %APPDATA%\gallery-dl\config.json (which usually translates to C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\gallery-dl\config.json)
• macOS & Linux: ~/.config/gallery-dl/config.json

Create the `gallery-dl` directory and then a blank text file inside it named `config.json`.

Core Configuration Directives

Your `config.json` file uses JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) syntax. Let's start with a robust base configuration. Open your `config.json` and add the following:

{
  "extractor": {
    "base-directory": "/path/to/your/downloads/gallery-dl",
    "sleep": [1.5, 3.5],
    "retries": 5,
    "oAuth": {},
    "cookies": {},
    "write-metadata": true,
    "write-tags": true,
    "archive": "archive.sqlite3"
  }
}

Let's break this down:

• base-directory: Change this! This is the root folder where all your downloads will be saved. Use an absolute path.
• sleep: A crucial setting to avoid being rate-limited or banned. This tells gallery-dl to wait a random duration between 1.5 and 3.5 seconds between downloads.
• retries: The number of times to retry a failed download.
• write-metadata and write-tags: Saves a separate JSON file with all available metadata and a text file with tags for each item. Invaluable for archiving.
• archive: This is a game-changer. It creates a database file (here, `archive.sqlite3`) to keep track of every file you've downloaded. When you run gallery-dl on the same URL again, it will automatically skip files it already has, downloading only new content.

Step 3: Advanced Filenaming for Perfect Organization

A pile of randomly named files is useless. gallery-dl's filenaming capabilities allow you to create a perfectly organized, self-sorting archive directly from the download process.

The Power of Keyword Formatters

You can define a global filenaming structure in your `config.json` using special keywords. Add a `"filename"` key inside the `"extractor"` block:

{
  "extractor": {
    "base-directory": "...",
    // ... other settings ...
    "filename": "{category}/{author[name]}/{gallery[id]} - {gallery[title]}/{num} - {filename}.{extension}"
  }
}

This powerful string creates a directory structure automatically:

• {category}: The name of the website (e.g., "twitter", "deviantart").
• {author[name]}: The username of the content creator.
• {gallery[id]} - {gallery[title]}: A folder for the specific gallery or album, using its ID and title.
• {num} - {filename}.{extension}: The final filename, prefixed with its number in the gallery sequence for proper sorting, followed by the original filename and its extension.

With this one line, you've ensured that content from different creators and websites will never conflict and will always be stored in a logical, browsable hierarchy.

Step 4: Supercharging with Post-Processors

Post-processors are actions that gallery-dl can perform on a file after it has been downloaded. This is where you can integrate other powerful command-line tools like FFmpeg to extend functionality far beyond simple downloading.

Integrating FFmpeg for Video Mastery

Many sites serve video in separate, lower-quality streams. By installing FFmpeg (and ensuring it's in your system's PATH), gallery-dl can automatically use it to download and merge the best possible quality video and audio. No extra configuration is needed; gallery-dl will detect and use it if available.

Executing Custom Scripts with `exec`

The `exec` post-processor is your gateway to limitless automation. It allows you to run any command-line script after a download. For example, you could run an image optimization tool like `jpeg-recompress` or a script to log download info to a central database.

Add this to your `config.json` to automatically run a custom script:

{
  "post-processor": [
    {
      "name": "exec",
      "command": ["/path/to/your/script.sh", "{_path}"]
    }
  ]
}

Here, gallery-dl will execute `script.sh` and pass it the full path of the newly downloaded file (`{_path}`).

Step 5: Mastering Site-Specific Configurations

A single global configuration is great, but sometimes you need different rules for different websites. For instance, you might want to use a different filenaming convention for Twitter than for ArtStation. gallery-dl handles this elegantly within the `"extractor"` block.

You can create a specific block for any supported website. The settings inside this block will override your global settings for that site only.

Here is an example of setting a different download path and filename format just for Twitter:

{
  "extractor": {
    // ... your global settings ...
    "filename": "{category}/{author[name]}/{gallery[id]}/{num} - {filename}.{extension}",

    "twitter": {
      "base-directory": "/path/to/your/downloads/twitter-archive",
      "filename": "{author[name]} ({date:%Y-%m-%d}) {tweet_id} {num}.{extension}",
      "include": ["images", "videos"]
    }
  }
}

In this setup, when you run gallery-dl [twitter-url], it will save to the specified `twitter-archive` directory using a date-and-ID-based filename. For any other website, it will fall back to your global settings. This level of granular control is what makes your gallery-dl setup truly ultimate.

Conclusion: Your Automated Archiving Engine

By following these five steps—installing correctly, building a master config, defining smart filenames, leveraging post-processors, and setting site-specific rules—you transform gallery-dl from a simple downloader into a powerful, automated digital archiving engine. This 2025 setup puts you in complete control, ensuring that the digital content you care about is preserved safely, organized logically, and ready for whatever the future holds.