Polite Mangadex Downloader

Small side project to manage reading your manga on Mangadex, a resource for scanslation groups. It works on Windows 10 or 11. The UI is ugly, but functional (like this site), and it doesn't burden Mangadex. Bug reports to sizer99 at sizer99 dot com.

Download v7.3.0

Download v7.3.0 Bulk Version (contains all dependencies, only if the version above doesn't work for you)

Download v6.6.5 which was stable for two years but won't work on Win10 now.

Readme and Change List (Ancient Changes List)

Getting Started

The very quiet Discord channel - seriously, I forget it exists

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 12000 follows (I do!) 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.

Jul 24 2026 - Version 7.3

If you're using 7.x you probably want 7.3. This was a big push to reduce memory leaks and reduce startup time.

It gets rid of one big memory leak (libCurl), one smaller one (ZetaLongPaths), and makes startup pretty much instant. On startup it should be only 20 MB memory used which will grow to about 100 MB as you download chapters then back down to about 50 MB. 7.x is now even smaller and much faster than 6.x, what a concept!

Jul 15 2026 - Version 7.2

7.2.0 has two big changes - first, if you're on 7.x at all you want 7.2.0 because 7.x would sometimes not automatically download the old chapters of new favorite series even if you asked it to. This is the first big bug I've found in the 7.x rewrite.

Second, because my old side monitor actually got burn-in from having PMDL sit there 24/7, I've added random window jiggle to 7.2. Whenever you move the window that sets the 'home' location. Then when you start PMDL or a scheduled check starts it slightly moves the window randomly up/down/left/right so the white lines aren't always in the same place. Since the new location is relative to your home location, it doesn't just walk across the screen. It does nothing if the window is minimized or maximized and it won't bring it to the front if it's behind other windows. You can turn this off in Options -> Advanced.

Jun 23 2026 - Version 7.x

Mangadex updated to new certs which use YE and YR roots that older Windows boxes don't know anything about (and never will). It also needs newer crypt and Win10's TLS 1.3 is broken. Windows 10 and earlier are never going to support this. Your browser works fine on Win10 because your browser handles all of this itself!

So PMDL 7.x fixes it by (like your browser) doing all SSL and web traffic itself using libCurl.

If you upgrade from 6.x (or earlier), uninstall the 6.x one first or 7.x will fail on startup because libCurl can't unpack its libraries to an admin directory. You won't lose your database or settings!

Version 7.3.0 - 2026 Jul 26 07:57 PST

Fix: Big memory leak with libCurl, smaller one with ZetaLongPaths

New: Don't pre-load series, groups, or authors unless you switch to the tab. More memory savings, much faster startup!

New: Make covers optional for oneshots. This will cut your database size a bunch if you read a lot of them. Options -> Including Oneshot Covers.

New: Purge old H or Oneshot covers at shutdown if you said don't save them.

Fix: Catch errors on update check/download - whine but don't crash.

New: Make favorited oneshots a different color on series page.

Fix: Tiny text change for recheck series description.

Version 7.2.0 - 2026 Jul 15 16:23 PST

Fix: Sometimes did not get old chapters of new series! First big bug of 7.x redo.

New: Random up/down/left/right movement to main window on startup and scheduled check to help reduce monitor burn-in. Options -> Advanced -> Window Move

Fix: When double clicking a chapter in the DL Queue to go to series in Known Series, make sure series is visible by clearing the filter box and checking show oneshots and unfavorites boxes if needed, or we could select an invisible row.

Change: Old version info in this README.txt was over a thousand lines and almost nobody cares about v1.0.5 any more. Moved it out to 'Old Version Info.txt'

Version 7.1.2 - 2026 Jun 25 18:34 PST

New: Whine at startup about running out of a location libCurl can't write to before libCurl crashes us anyhow.

New: Try showing a bit more error info (InnerException) on crash.

Change: Redo rounded button rendering. You shouldn't see any difference.

Fix: Visual Studio or JetBrains somehow lost the program icon, restore it.

Version 7.1.0 - 2026 Jul 09 14:09 PST

Meta: This is a HUGE optimization and cleanup release. There are some minor bug fixes, but nothing vital if it's working fine for you. Check the README.txt for the full list of changes.

Change: Vastly speed up (over 100x) Known Series, Translation Groups, and Artists pages by redoing how they're stored.

New: Take over drawing of DataGridView headers so cells and headers are now properly aligned.

New: We now notice oneshots, optionally filter from Known Series. On the first startup it will guess existing, from then on get from MD.

Fix: Add vertical padding to log box lines so descenders (g,q) don't get cut off.

Fix: Lots of little text/position things on Options pages.

Version 7.0.3 - 2026 Jun 25 21:29 PST

Fix: Delegate race condition with libCurl could cause rare ExecutionEngineException (then crash).

Version 7.0.2 - 2026 Jun 25 20:45 PST

New: Catppuccin Color Theme from Rhombic-Drive!

Fix: Wine doesn't support Per-monitor DPI, crashes on menus. Detect Wine and turn it off.

Fix: Theme Import broke because of Sqlite changes. Fixed.

Fix: Download Update file was mildly broken with new Curl stuff.

Version 7.0.1 - 2026 Jun 23 21:12 PST

Fix:The output log was getting color themed, should always be black background.

Fix:Apparently the color pickers in themes haven't worked for years and nobody noticed or cared!

Version 7.0.0 - 2026 Jun 23 00:44 PST

MAJOR rewrite of the guts to handle MD's new cert stuff not being handled by older Windows.

YOU do NOT need to update if 6.6.5 is working fine for you.

You might want to make a copy of your mangadex.db file first just in case.

If you update, you MUST uninstall your 6.x PMDL first. Otherwise it will just fail on start as libCurl tries to unpack its files and fails because it doesn't have admin rights. It's okay if you uninstall after, then install again.

Version 6.6.5 - 2024 Nov 17 20:09 PST

Plain username/pw login is DEAD. You also need an API key. See Options -> Mangadex Login.

Requirements:

Only Windows version, but will run under Wine for Linux or macOS!
You must have a Mangadex account, because it needs your favorites page and API key to work.
Requires .NET 10. If you run under Windows it should automatically prompt you to download and install it. Under Wine you may have to install that yourself.

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. Then on the same page:
On Mangadex, go to your settings (upper right, settings), 'API Clients', '+ Create', and give it a name of 'Personal PMDL Access', and add a description like 'Logging in with PMDL', 'Create'. It should be auto-approved after a while. Copy the personal key name from MD (should look like 'personal-client-xxxx-xxx') - paste that API Key Name in PMDL. Then (on the same MD page) Get Secret, Copy, and paste that into PMDL's API Secret.
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.
Now you should be able to 'Find New' and hopefully it'll log in!
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'. Now it will get all new chapters.
You're good to go!
If you want to download all of an old series, just go to it on Known Series, then in the bottom grid hit Ctrl-A (select all) then Ctrl-Shift-D (add to downloads and start).

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.
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.
You can only find new series on the Mangadex site. This doesn't keep its own list of every single series on the site.

Running in Linux or macOS using Wine

Install Bottles
Install .NET 10 with Bottles
Run the normal (not-bulk) PMDL installer
That's it! Thanks to Rhombic-Drive for trying it in Linux and letting me know. It might just work under normal Wine too if you install .NET 10, let me know if it does for you!

FAQ: (probably)

Do you save my MangaDex password? Your password and OpenAI secret are stored with .NET's ProtectedData class. Only the same user account can decode it even if someone else gets your database file.
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 a new version check by loading this page, but nothing is sent except to Mangadex.
What's the database? SQLite. It's more than good enough for this small amount of data.
Open Source? The code is hopelessly out of date. It started as .NET 4.6 and was dragged kicking and screaming to .NET 6, .NET 9, then .NET 10 and has NONE of the nullability stuff done properly. It would need tons of cleanup first.