Install wget with Homebrew, apk, chocolatey, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• wget

Project history

Wget descends from Geturl, a program by Hrvoje Niksic whose development began in late 1995. The name changed to Wget after the author learned of an earlier Amiga program called GetURL. Public Geturl releases appeared in 1996, and Wget 1.4.0 in November 1996 was the first release under the Wget name and the GNU GPL.

The tool solved a real mid-1990s problem: Unix users needed a reliable downloader that could handle both HTTP and FTP, run without a browser, survive slow or unstable dial-up and university connections, and build with ordinary Unix development tools. That combination made it spread quickly among Unix users and later most Linux distributions.

Wget's stewardship moved from the original author to broader GNU maintenance. The GNU project page lists Tim Ruehsen, Darshit Shah, and Giuseppe Scrivano as current maintainers and Hrvoje Niksic as original author. The source is hosted on GNU Savannah, and the manual's copyright range begins in 1996, reflecting the long-running GNU package history.

Adoption history

Wget became a default tool in the mental toolbox of system administrators, release engineers, distribution maintainers, researchers, and shell users because it is non-interactive and scriptable. Its adoption was reinforced by features that map directly to automation: retrying failed downloads, continuing partial transfers when servers support it, following links for recursive retrieval, converting links for local browsing, using timestamps for mirroring, supporting proxies, and reading URLs from files or standard input.

The package also became important outside ordinary downloads. Since Wget 1.14 it has supported WARC output, making it useful in web archiving workflows. GNU Wget2 is now developed separately for newer web protocols and parallelism, but classic Wget remains widely used because of its stable behavior and enormous installed base.

How it is used

Basic use is `wget URL`, but its package-nerd importance comes from flags and composability: `-r` for recursive retrieval, `-c` for continuing partial downloads, `-O -` for piping content to standard output, `-i` for reading URL lists, and `.wgetrc` for persistent defaults. It is equally at home in cron jobs, build scripts, Dockerfiles, release automation, and one-off shell sessions.

Wget's behavior is deliberately non-interactive, so it can keep working after a user logs out or when no graphical environment exists. That makes it a historical counterpart to browsers and graphical download managers: less interactive, but much better suited to repeatable automation.

Why package nerds care

Wget is one of the archetypal packages that demonstrates why small Unix command-line tools matter. It turned web and FTP retrieval into a dependable script primitive, which is why so many other package builds, test fixtures, mirrors, and operational runbooks have depended on it for decades.

Timeline

• Late 1995: Hrvoje Niksic begins Geturl.
• January 1996: Geturl 1.0 is the first public release.
• November 1996: Wget 1.4.0 becomes the first release under the Wget name and GNU GPL.
• 2012: Wget 1.14 adds WARC output support, extending its role in web archiving.
• 2020s: GNU Wget continues as the stable classic implementation while GNU Wget2 is developed as a successor for newer web features.

Related projects

• GNU Wget2 is the related successor project for newer web technologies, but Wget remains the classic implementation. curl overlaps with Wget for command-line retrieval, while Wget's traditional strengths are recursive downloading, mirroring, unattended operation, and `.wgetrc`-driven configuration.

Sources

• https://audio-video.gnu.org/video/ghm2017/2017-08--ruhsen-shah--wget--ghm.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget
• https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/wget.git
• https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/
• https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html