This is a guide for better usability of Internet Download Manager software.
First go through the basic guide provided on the Internet Download Manager website.
IDM app version: 6.42
IDM Fonts settings
IDM font setting is located at View > Font > choose fonts.
Configure the IDM font setting for better visibility.
Option Settings
General Settings
A. Customize keys to prevent or force downloading with IDM
Use the following keys to prevent downloading with IDM for any links: This setting can be used to assign certain key or key combinations that can be used to prevent downloading files with IDM when the user clicks on links containing files. This feature is useful when IDM has been configured to automatically catch download links from web browser with certain specific extension and the user wants IDM to not catch download links so that the web browser downloads the file.
Use the following keys to force downloading with IDM for any links: This setting can be used to assign certain key or key combinations that can be used to force downloading files with IDM when the user clicks on links containing files. This feature is useful when IDM has not been configured to automatically catch file download links from web browser with certain specific extensions and the user wants IDM to catch download links so that the file gets downloaded by IDM.
B. Customize IDM Panels in browsers
For Web players
This settings is related to showing the Download panel in the web browser when multimedia files are present in a web page. For users it is useful that IDM shows download panel for the for the multimedia files that is present in the webpage loaded by the web browser.
Show IDM download panel for the following files: This setting can be used to select certain extensions for which the IDM download panel will be shown in the web browser. Only select those extensions that you want IDM to show the download panel. Selecting minimal extensions will help in putting lesser load on CPU because the IDM will have to scan for less multimedia files in the webpage.
For selected files
This setting is related to showing the IDM download panel when user selects a text in webpage that contains links of files.
File Types
- Automatically start downloading the following file types
This setting is related to IDM feature to automatically downloading file types listed here.
Show IDM download panel for the following files settings overrides this setting. That’s why you must remove the multimedia file types listed here that has been unchecked in the Show IDM download panel for the following files settings.
My opinion is that user should keep the file types listed here to the minimal that is required by the user.
Google Chrome IDM extension settings
- Site access settings
This setting allows the IDM extension to read the data on websites and search for files that can be downloaded. It has three options available:
- On click: The IDM extension will access any website when the user clicks on IDM icon. This option is useful in minimizing the CPU usage by the IDM extension because IDM won’t be scanning each websites that gets open in the Google chrome web browser. I would encourage using this option for most users.
When On click option is selected, IDM icon will looks as shown in image above. The user will need to click on the IDM icon in order for the IDM to scan and catch downloads from a web browser.
- On specific sites: When On specific sites option is selected, The IDM extension will work as in On click mode and further extend the functionality where the user can add certain specific websites on which IDM extension will work by default.
- To add the specific websites, the user need to load the websites in a Chrome tab and right click on IDM icon. Then select the option This can read and change site data. Then select the website name from the menu.
The feature can be useful, when IDM extension needs to be enabled by default in certain specific websites.
- On all sites: The IDM extension will access each websites that has been open in google chrome. This unnecessarily increases the usage of computing power and may slow down the the loading of webpages.
- When the option On all sites is selected, user still have option to disable or enable the IDM extension on specific websites by clicking on IDM icon when the websites has been loaded in a tab of Google chrome.
- This feature can be useful in disabling IDM extension on certain websites that has a lot of media files which in turn will lower the CPU usage.
- When the option On all sites is selected, user still have option to disable or enable the IDM extension on specific websites by clicking on IDM icon when the websites has been loaded in a tab of Google chrome.
2. Pin to toolbar
Enabling this setting pins the IDM extension icon in the toolbar of Google chrome.
Microsoft edge IDM extension settings
IDM extensions in the Microsoft edge web browser will have similar settings to Google Chrome.