Polite Mangadex Downloader

Small side project to manage reading your manga on Mangadex, a resource for scanslation groups. The UI is ugly, but functional (like this site), and it doesn't burden Mangadex. Bug reports to sizer99 at gmail.

Download v6.6.4

Download v6.6.4 Bulk Version (contains all dependencies, only if the version above doesn't work for you)

Download Database Converter from 4.x to 5.0+

Readme and Change List

Getting Started

This politely downloads your new manga chapters from Mangadex. It's less of a burden on the server than if you were reading it on the site. It only looks at your follows pages to find new chapters, so even if you have 3000 follows it only has to look at one or two pages. Cheap! It only grabs one page at a time, so it takes a while to download, but you can just leave it running all the time and read at your leisure.

It's for people who like reading manga offline fullscreen on our tablets with a full-featured reader like Perfect Reader or Manga Storm.

Mar 24 2024

Mangadex has officially added support for OpenID clients, so I have added support for that. Though if it's currently working for you as is with Username and Password, leave it alone!

Unfortunately they haven't added support for public clients yet, so you'll need your own personal API key. I explain how to do that on Options -> Mangadex Login.

I tried this with a test account, and had someone who accidentally changed his password so could no longer log in try it, and it worked!

Feb 10 2024

I apologize for having nothing on the New Series feature yet. It's because I got suckered into doing translation for Tsumiki Ogami and the Strange Everyday Life, which is pure school romcom werewolf fluff. That takes up quite a lot of spare time. But I will turn out emergency fixes like 6.6.2 as needed.

Nov 30 2023

This one actively marks groups that post fake chapters as 'ignore' right as soon as we detect them, and lets you recheck translation groups (in case they've changed their names or been deleted).

May 21 2023

I'm back. In March I got t-boned by four kids watching their tiktoks who ran a red light and t-boned the side of my car, totaling it. I know that's ridiculously cliche, but I have the police report! All my ribs were broken, along with various lacerations, blood on the brain, etc. So I woke up in the ICU, then hospital, then just recovering at home in a haze of drugs and lack of sleep (it's hard to sleep with all your ribs broken) till I'm finally to the point I want to work on PMDL again. I've added a lot of minor changes to this release.

Version 6.6.4 - 2024 Mar 28 12:55 PST

Fix: 6.3.3 was using the wrong endpoint for auth token refresh with OpenID, so you'd get 404s and have to log in new again. This would only show up after running for a while.

Version 6.6.3 - 2024 Mar 24 13:10 PST

New: Support for MD OpenId auth. If you create a new account or changed your password since 2023, well you can't log in using the old user/pw method. Go to Options -> Mangadex Login to see the steps you need to take. This is hopefully temporary till MD allows application API keys.

Version 6.6.2 - 2024 Feb 8 9:36 PST

Fix: MD no longer wants the Authorization header when DLing images. Not sure it ever did, but now it throws lots of 400s!

Version 6.6.1 - 2023 Dec 11 20:01 PST

Fix: Follows link on Known Series page needed updating.

Fix: Authors/Artists list could cause non-crashing error on startup with enough deleted authors/artists.

Version 6.6.0 - 2023 Dec 09 17:11 PST

Meta: The purpose of this release is to get Everything Else done before tackling New Series Watch V7.0.0, though there may be more 6.6.x bugfixes.

New: F1 shows key shortcuts for the main pages. Pops up only once the first time you run PMDL after this update.

New: Options -> Advanced. If we see a new chapter and it's been more than N days|weeks|months (default 1 month) since we checked this series, re-check series info looking for name, author, cover updates. You'll see all series get initial rechecks for new chapters.

New: Don't warn if the name has changed on a series and we've already warned about it.

New: Add Site -> Recheck Known Authors/Artists to go with groups/series.

New: Options -> Advanced has a new option to NOT automatically add new chapters to the DL Queue. You'll have to manually add anything you want to download from Series -> Chapters.

Change: For Delete/Resize Covers, move progress updates to progress bar.

Change: Flush the database when a favorites check/download finishes to trim the .wal (pending changes) file. If for some reason the .db file gets backed up while PMDL is still running this will help keep it self-contained. You should not notice!

Fix: The Options -> On Start dropdown has had an editable text box since version 1.0.0! Didn't hurt, no complaints, finally noticed and made it read only.

Version 6.5.2 - 2023 Dec 03 12:17 PST

Fix: When I was fixing the Resize All Covers option I forgot to fix the Delete All Covers option which had the same issue.

Version 6.5.1 - 2023 Dec 02 00:12 PST

Fix: Rechecking old Translation Groups worked okay, but updating new groups would add new rows to the end instead of replacing the current line so you'd get [unknown] till restart.

Fix: Using the filter box in Translation Groups could crash.

Version 6.5.0 - 2023 Nov 30 19:04 PST

New: Add 'Official Publisher' check for translation groups. Official Publishers are assumed to provide only fake chapters and will automatically be ignored. First time you run PMDL 6.5.0 it will re-check all groups.

New: Add option to right click group(s) and re-check them in the Translation Groups List.

New: Add Site -> Recheck Known Groups (SLOW).

Fix: Don't show blank group in Translation Groups

Version 6.4.2 - 2023 Nov 27 17:11 PST

Fix: Resize All Covers option was crashing out.

Version 6.4.1 - 2023 Aug 16 14:21 PST

Fix: If you have 'Skip GIFs' on, a chapter that was nothing BUT a gif could cause a crash. In that case, still get it.

Fix: In Options -> Advanced -> Run Program after cbz Save, the checkbox managed to get detached from its action, so it wouldn't change state.

Version 6.4.0 - 2023 May 21 18:48 PST

UPDATE: mangadex moved to oauth. I can't use it till they update their API

Fix: ME. A couple months ago I got hit by a car with four asian kids watching their tiktok who ran a red light. I've been in the ICU, hospital, and recovering. Catching up!

Fix: If checking new chapters fails, doesn't automatically schedule next check.

Fix: Warn about username/password not being set before even trying to log in.

New: Add New Series Priority (H) on Options -> Advanced to go with New Series Priority

New: Add Options -> Advanced -> Skip gifs

New: Add Options -> Advanced -> Skip last color page if chapter is less than [x] pages. Specifically because of two groups.

Version 6.3.0 - 2023 Jan 08 19:49 PST

Fix: MD changed authentication, always force new login when PMDL runs again.

Version 6.2.0 - 2022 Nov 26 00:27 PST

Fix: MD has yet another new way to mark chapters as read, using that.

New: Add more MD@Home fail statuses to those that cause temporary server bans (Page NotFound, actively refused).

Fix: Custom save formats could load as the series id.

Change: Reduce the server blacklist time from 12 to 6 hours.

Version 6.1.1 - 2022 Sep 09 15:28 PST

New: When a MD@Home server fails with a 403 or 503 blacklist it for 12 hours and just download from the central server. This will reduce the number of ominous looking 'failed' and 'switching to main mangadex server' messages. We can't just go to the main server all the time because that would be very Impolite (and they have threatened bans). We will continue to use the MD@Home servers whenever they're working properly.

Version 6.1.0 - 2022 Sep 08 22:31 PST

New: When MD throws a 503 or 403, switch to main image server. This sounds minor, but it's the fix for all the government server blocking in SE Asia!

Requirements:

Only Windows version for now, though Mono could be possible.
You must have a Mangadex account, because it needs your favorites page to work.
Manage your favorites on the Mangadex site. If you add a new favorite on the site, it'll pick it up automatically.
Manage your language or other filter preferences on Mangadex, not in the app.
Supports extra-favorite series (Komi-saaaaan) for priority download.
You can only find new series on the Mangadex site. It doesn't keep its own list of every single series on the site.
For speed, it will keep a local database of what you've already gotten, and supports manual download of old chapters.
Supports translation group ignore.
Supports cbz or individual image save. Supports pretty arbitrary filenames / cbz / zip / subdirectories.
Nothing is ever sent to me, and there are no ads - I don't care what you're reading, I've got too much to read already. It does do a new version check by loading this page, but nothing is sent.

Getting Started:

Install and run PMDL.
Choose 'Create New Database' and choose a new file. You should back this up occasionally!
On the 'Mangadex Login' tab, set your username and password. These are stored encrypted. - On the 'Save Optons' tab, set your Save Directory and File Format.
You can try setting the save file names if you want, though it has a decent default of SERIES\SERIES vVOL cCHAP TITLE - PAGE [GROUP].zip
IMPORTANT: If you don't want to download all your old chapters for followed series at this point, go to Options and uncheck 'Download old chapters for new series' for now. This could take a looong time.
Go to 'Known Series' tab, right click the upper grid, 'Recheck Favorite Series'
Say yes, and it'll fetch all your favorites from MangaDex
Probably go back to Options and check 'Download chapters for new series'
You're good!

Normal Use:

'Download Queue' tab, hit 'Find New', then 'Download'
You can also set 'Options -> General -> On Start' to 'Find and Download New Chapters'
There are lots of other options - try right clicking things or typing the start of a series name in the series box.
Set series priority so your favorites get downloaded first! You can use '=' and '-' keys.

FAQ: (probably)

Do you save my password? Yes, using .NET's ProtectedData class. Only the same user can decode it even if they know where to look.
Do you send my info anywhere? No, if I want to find out what you're reading I can just go look on Mangadex.
What's the database? SQLite. It's good enough for this small amount of data.
Mac and Linux versions? It's C#/WinForms, so a Mono version might be possible...
Open source? Maybe - it was a rush job, and while the design worked great it needs some clean up and more internal doc