GetRight (Windows) is a Download Manager that supports Metalink.
FlashGot (Cross platform, Open Source) is a Firefox extension that integrates with around 30 Download Managers and supports Metalink with wxDownload Fast, Speed Download, and GetRight 5.2d and later.
aria2 (Unix/Windows, Open Source) is a high speed download utility that supports segmented downloads, BitTorrent, and Metalink (HTTP/FTP/BitTorrent integrated) from the command line. aria2fe is a GUI front end for aria2, as is aria2::gui, and karia2, a QT4 based GUI in development. powerpill is a wrapper for the pacman package manager. Libretto (Unix) is a Web based download manager that supports Metalink through aria2.
Speed Download (Mac) is a slick Download Manager with fast downloads & P2P filesharing. It integrates with popular Mac browsers like Safari, Camino, & Firefox (along with 5 others).
wxDownload Fast (Mac/Unix/Windows, Open Source) supports Metalink.
Orbit Downloader (Windows) is a new download manager with interesting P2P features.
SmartFTP (Windows), an excellent FTP client on Windows, supports Metalink for adding files to a transfer queue and checksum verification (no acceleration).
Phex (Mac/Unix/Windows, Open Source) is a Gnutella P2P client that can download and export Metalinks.
Appupdater for Windows "is similar to apt-get or yum on Linux. It automates the process of installing and maintaining up to date versions of programs." They also have a Metalink Repository. It uses Metalinks for a specific set of programs and does not allow downloading with other .metalinks obtained elsewhere.
Metadl (Windows, Open Source), a NSIS download plugin based on libcurl, is used in Wubi which is a Ubuntu installer for Windows. Hampus Wessman has added download resuming, Metalink, checksum verification support, and repair information (in Wubi development branch, not in released version). Wubi downloads a Ubuntu ISO from one mirror over FTP/HTTP and takes advantage of Metalink's features of higher availability and increased reliability. If there are errors in the download, they are repaired.
DownThemAll! (Cross Platform Firefox Extension, Open Source) is a welcome addition. Nils Maier has added Metalink support, with checksum verification and multiple file selection.
TheWorld Browser (Windows) is a "tiny, fast, yet free, secure and powerful web browser." It's the first web browser to natively support Metalink.
Metalink Checker (Mac/Unix/Windows, Open Source) is a command line Python downloader that supports multi-source downloads and chunk checksums, as well as checking mirrors listed in a .metalink file. It can also be used as a library.
Retriever (Cross Platform, Java) is a download manager that includes Metalink and BitTorrent support.
GGet (GTK, Open Source) by Johan Svedberg is a Google Summer of Code project to make a modern download manager for GNOME. It uses Metalink Checker for the backend.
VeryCD easyMule - an eMule variant tied to the VeryCD site.
Mini Downloader, part of the Metalink tools, is a standalone downloader of Metalinks. The first release focuses on downloading OpenOffice.org.
KGet (KDE 4, Unix, Open Source) includes Metalink support. Snapshots and daily builds are already available for openSUSE, Kubuntu, and Arch Linux. KDE Commit Digest has details.
Net Transport (Windows) is a download manager that also supports BitTorrent and captures streaming audio/video.
yum, an automatic updater and package installer/remover for RPM systems (Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS) uses Metalinks behind the scenes for system updates. Details.
mulk (Open Source) is a non-interactive multi-connection network downloader with image filtering based on libcurl.
...Programs in progress...
DLApplet (Java, Open Source) is a proof of concept downloader and only supports basic Metalink downloads for now.
Celerius (GTK, Unix, Open Source) plans to be a powerful and simple download manager. Still in a pre-alpha state, and Celerius 0.1 release date is unknown. Code (Python) is available on launchpad for Celerius and Celerity. Celerity is the downloading library for Celerius. It can currently handle basic metalinks, multi-file support, automatic file verification via checksumming, and also supports segmented downloading.
Snappy (Open Source) simple downloading. The Snappy project develops libsnappy, a download library based on libcurl. It will support metalinks and segmented downloading. The emphasis is on simplicity and lightness, while providing fast and robust download capabilities.
Metalink Editor (Cross Platform, GUI, Open Source) is a Metalink editor by Hampus Wessman written in Python which allows you to create and edit almost any kind of Metalink.
Metalink tools (Unix/Windows, Open Source) - Bram Neijt's command line tools for generating Metalinks.
cURL provides Metalinks for their downloads with a Perl script.
Bouncer (Open Source) powers downloads for various projects like Mozilla. A patch for Metalink generation has been submitted by Bram Neijt but not yet integrated.
Origo is a new and easy to use software development and hosting platform for open and closed source projects. Among many features, it has easy release management and mirroring with automatic metalink generation.
Metalink Generator by NetCorp creates Metalinks in a Web UI. This application is unmaintained and does not support all Metalink features, so using another generator is advised.
SourceForge.net - Metalink support for their download services has been requested numerous times by users and has been submitted as a feature request by SF Support.
FreeBSD has some ideas about using it with the ports infrastructure.
Other Metalink clients and tools are in development. Please email us if you create one, so we can link to them here.
Specification, Client Requirements for Implementation
Metalink is a simple XML (text) format. Download one and open it with a text editor, & most of it should be self explanatory.
If you want to read the long, boring Metalink 3.0 specification, here you go: Plain text - OpenDocument - PDF - Schema.
An updated version of older the specification (found at Metalink_3.0_Spec3draftX) is in progress. Please post comments or questions on our Discussion mailing list.
[An Internet Draft is a work-in-progress, intended to possibly be an update to 3.0 in the future. Details on the differences between versions can be found at the Internet Draft wiki page. Please post your comments on the Discussion list.]
If your favorite client can already read XML (Atom/RSS/Podcasts) then adding Metalink support should be relatively easy.
Minimum & optional requirements for integration into clients:
Recommended: For file verification: Ability to verify at least MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 Checksums.
Optional: Ability to use multiple URIs, either sequentially or simultaneously.
Optional: Configurable options or settings for: language, location, operating system, etc. OpenPGP.
If you'd like to help out...Get involved! Join the Metalink Announcements and Discussion (also on Gmane) mailing lists. You can also find us on IRC at #metalink on Freenode (sometimes).
If you find Metalink useful, contact sites (Distributions) and programs and ask them to add support. Blog about it. Ask distributions to package and include the clients. If you're a developer, helping to add Metalink support to Open Source programs would be a huge help. Check out our ideas/getting started page!
We hope Metalink will be useful to Free and Open Source software. It was designed for community projects that use multiple mirrors and P2P. We invite other Download Managers, Web browsers, BitTorrent clients, and other P2P programs to support Metalink.
If you would like more information, we can be reached at:
Metalink Project Contributors
Metalink Project Contributors
