Basic usage

• Download a single file:
  wget https://example.com/file.zip
• Save with a different filename:
  wget -O myfile.zip https://example.com/file.zip

• Download in background (log to file):
  wget -b https://example.com/largefile.iso

• Resume an interrupted download:
  wget -c https://example.com/largefile.iso


Downloading multiple files

• From a list in a file (one URL per line):
  wget -i urls.txt


Recursive download (mirror a site or directory)

• Basic mirror (downloads site, follows links, converts links for local viewing):
  wget --mirror -p --convert-links -P localdir https://example.com/

  • –mirror = -r -N -l inf –no-remove-listing
  • -p downloads all files necessary to display pages (images, CSS)
  • –convert-links adjusts links for local browsing
  • -P localdir saves into localdir

Authentication and headers

• HTTP basic auth:
  wget --user=username --password=secret https://example.com/protected/file

• Send a custom header (e.g., API key):
  wget --header="Authorization: Bearer TOKEN" https://api.example.com/data.json


Limit speed, retries, and timeout

• Limit download rate:
  wget --limit-rate=200k https://example.com/file.iso

• Set number of retries (default 20) and timeout:
  wget --tries=10 --timeout=30 https://example.com/file


FTP, proxies, and passive mode

• Use FTP URL:
  wget ftp://ftp.example.com/pub/file.tar.gz

• Force passive FTP:
  wget --ftp-user=user --ftp-password=pass --passive-ftp ftp://ftp.example.com/file


Common useful flags (summary)

• -O : write output to file
• -c : continue/resume
• -b : background
• -q : quiet
• -nv : non-verbose
• -r : recursive
• -l : recursion depth
• -np : no parent (don’t ascend to parent directories)
• –limit-rate=RATE : throttle speed
• –header=”Header: value” : custom header

Examples:

• Download a webpage and its resources for offline viewing:

• Download 10 files listed in urls.txt concurrently (using xargs for parallelism):
  cat urls.txt | xargs -n1 -P10 wget -q

Tips:

• Check wget version: wget --version
• Use -q for scripting (quiet), and check exit status ($?) for success
• wget is simpler for straightforward downloads and mirroring.