Media
5 items
Description
Finds the ready-to-run download for your computer in a GitHub release — and says so honestly when there isn't one. Someone tells you to "just download it from GitHub", and the page you land on has thirty files with names like MyApp-4.2.1-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip, MyApp_4.2.1_amd64.deb and MyApp-4.2.1.tar.gz. Not one of them says "download". This extension reads that list for you. Open a repository on github.com and a panel appears at the top of the page. It works out which operating system and processor your computer has, reads what the project attached to its latest release, and names the one file most likely to run on your machine, with its size and a one-line reason. The download stays an ordinary link, and you are the one who clicks it. WHAT IS IN THE PANEL - The recommendation in plain words - "Windows installer", "Portable archive", "Debian/Ubuntu package", "macOS application" - instead of a filename left to speak for itself. - How sure it is. "Recommended download for this computer" when one file clearly fits, "This is probably the right download" when it is less clear, and "Several downloads may work" when two are equally plausible, rather than picking one and sounding certain. - Other downloads: every other file in the release, each with its own one-line reason, including the ones you should not click. Checksums, signatures, debug symbols, update metadata and source archives are named for what they are and never offered as the program. When two files are equally plausible the same section is headed "Review the choices" instead, because then there is a choice to make. - Advanced details, if you want to see the working behind the choice. - Overrides for when the guess is wrong: operating system, processor, installer versus portable, and whether unfinished prereleases count. An x64 browser on an ARM machine reports itself as x64, and this is how you correct it. - Outside the panel, on a release page: GitHub's own generated source-code archives get one added line of text saying they are source code rather than the application, because that is the link most people click by mistake. Nothing GitHub put on the page is changed, moved or hidden, and the options page turns this off. WHEN THERE IS NOTHING TO DOWNLOAD Most repositories on GitHub are not programs, and a confident wrong answer is worse than no answer. So the panel is just as willing to tell you that this repository does not appear to publish finished downloads through GitHub Releases, or that the latest release does not appear to contain anything that will run on your computer. Then it says where the download usually lives instead: the project's README, the project's own website, or a package manager such as pip, uv, npm or cargo, for the many projects on GitHub that are building blocks for programmers rather than apps. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO - It never downloads or runs anything. It renders a link; you click it. - The recommendation is about file compatibility - whether a file is built for your operating system and processor. It is not a security review. It does not know whether a project is trustworthy, whether a file is signed, or whether it is free of malware. - It never signs in to GitHub, handles tokens, or touches your account. - It collects nothing and sends nothing anywhere. There is no server, no analytics, no telemetry, no third-party code. PRIVACY The only host it contacts is api.github.com, GitHub's own public API, unauthenticated, to read the releases of the repository you just opened. Answers are cached on your device for an hour, so ordinary browsing does not ask twice. Your settings and that cache stay in your browser's extension storage and nowhere else. Chrome 121 and later. Open source under the MPL-2.0: https://github.com/jmgpgit/where-is-the-damn-download Not affiliated with or endorsed by GitHub.