Simplest Example to Install WGet Command (Mac & Windows)

WGET is a free tool to crawl websites and download files via the command line.

In this wget tutorial, we will learn how to install and how to use wget commands with examples.

What is Wget?

Wget is free command-line tool created by the GNU Project that is used todownload files from the internet.

• It lets you download files from the internet via FTP, HTTP or HTTPS (web pages, pdf, xml sitemaps, etc.).
• It provides recursive downloads, which means that Wget downloads the requested document, then the documents linked from that document, and then the next, etc.
• It follows the links and directory structure.
• It lets you overwrite the links with the correct domain, helping you create mirrors of websites.

What Is the Wget Command?

The wget command is a tool developed by the GNU Project to download files from the web. Wget allows you to retrieve content and files from web servers using a command-line interface. The name “wget” comes from “World Wide Web” and “get”. Wget supports downloads via FTP, SFTP, HTTP, and HTTPS protocols.

Wget is used by developers to automate file downloads.

Install Wget

To install wget on Windows, install the executable file from eternallybored.org. To install wget on Mac, use the brew install wget command on Mac. Make sure that it is not already installed first by running the wget -V command in the command line interface. For more details on how to install Wget, read one of the following tutorials.

• Install Wget on Mac
• Install Wget on Windows
• Install Wget on Linux

Downloading Files From the Command Line (Wget Basics)

Let’s look at the wget syntax, view the basic commands structure and understand the most important options.

Wget Syntax

Wget has two arguments: [OPTION] and [URL] .

wget [OPTION]... [URL]...

• [OPTION] tells what to do with the [URL] argument provided after. It has a short and a long-form (ex: -V and --version are doing the same thing).
• [URL] is the file or the directory you wish to download.
• You can call many OPTIONS or URLs at once.

View WGET Arguments

To view available wget Arguments, use the wget help command:

 wget -h

The output will show you an exhaustive list of all the wget command parameters.

14 Wget Examples to Extract Web Pages

Here are the 11 best things that you can do with Wget:

1. Download a single file
2. Download a files to a specific directory
3. Rename a downloaded files
4. Define User Agent
5. Extract as Googlebot
6. Extract Robots.txt when it changes
7. Convert links on a page
8. Mirror a single page
9. Extract Multiple URLs from a list
10. Limit Speed
11. Number of attempts
12. Use Proxies
13. Continue Interrupted Downloads
14. Extract Entire Website

Download a single file with Wget

$ wget https://example.com/robots.txt

Download a File to a Specific Output Directory

Here replace <YOUR-PATH> by the output directory location where you want to save the file.

$ wget ‐P <YOUR-PATH> https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Rename Downloaded File when Retrieving with Wget

To output the file with a different name:

$ wget -O <YOUR-FILENAME.html> https://example.com/file.html

Define User Agent in WGET

Identify yourself. Define your user-agent.

$ wget --user-agent=Chrome https://example.com/file.html

Extract as Googlebot with Wget Command

$ wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/86.0.4240.198 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)" https://example.com/path

Use Wget to Extract Robots.txt When it Changes

Let’s extract robots.txt only if the latest version in the server is more recent than the local copy.

First time that you extract use -S to keep a timestamps of the file.

$ wget -S https://example.com/robots.txt

Later, to check if the robots.txt file has changed, and download it if it has.

$ wget -N https://example.com/robots.txt

Wget command to Convert Links on a Page

Convert the links in the HTML so they still work in your local version. (ex: example.com/path to localhost:8000/path)

$ wget --convert-links https://example.com/path

Mirror a Single Webpage in Wget

To mirror a single web page so that it can work on your local.

$ wget -E -H -k -K -p --convert-links https://example.com/path

Extract Multiple URLs with Wget

Add all urls in a urls.txt file.

https://example.com/1
https://example.com/2
https://example.com/3

$ wget -i urls.txt

Limit Speed of Extraction in Wget

To be a good citizen of the web, it is important not to crawl too fast by using --wait and --limit-rate.

• --wait=1: Wait 1 second between extractions.
• --limit-rate=10K: Limit the download speed (bytes per second)

Define Number of Retry Attempts in Wget

Sometimes the internet connection fails, sometimes the attempts it blocked, sometimes the server does not respond. Define a number of attempts with the -tries function.

$ wget -tries=10 https://example.com

How to Use Proxies With Wget?

To set a proxy with Wget, we need to update the ~/.wgetrc file located at /etc/wgetrc.

You can modify the ~/.wgetrc in your favourite text editor.

$ vi ~/.wgetrc # VI
$ code ~/.wgetrc # VSCode

And add these lines to the wget parameters:

use_proxy = on
http_proxy =  http://username:password@proxy.server.address:port/
https_proxy =  http://username:password@proxy.server.address:port/

Then, by running any wget command, you’ll be using proxies.

Alternatively, you can use the -e command to run wget with proxies without changing the environment variables.

wget -e use_proxy=yes -e http_proxy=http://proxy.server.address:port/ https://example.com

How to remove the Wget proxies?

When you don’t want to use the proxies anymore, update the ~/.wgetrc to remove the lines that you added or simply use the command below to override them:

$ wget --noproxy

Continue Interrupted Downloads with Wget

When your retrieval process is interrupted, continue the download with restarting the whole extraction using the -c command.

$ wget -c https://example.com

Using Wget to Extract an Entire Site (Proceed with Caution)

Recursive mode extract a page, and follows the links on the pages to extract them as well.

This is extracting your entire site and can put extra load on your server. Be sure that you know what you do or that you involve the devs.

$ wget --recursive --page-requisites --adjust-extension --span-hosts --wait=1 --limit-rate=10K --convert-links --restrict-file-names=windows --no-clobber --domains example.com --no-parent example.com

(Extra) Run Spider Mode

$ wget --spider -r https://example.com -o wget.log

Wget VS Curl

Wget’s strength compared to curl is its ability to download recursively. This means that it will download a document, then follow the links and then download those documents as well.

Use Wget With Python

Wget is strictly command line, but there is a package that you can import the wget package that mimics wget.

import wget
url = 'http://www.jcchouinard.com/robots.txt'
filename = wget.download(url)
filename

Debugging: What to Do When Wget is Not Working

Wget Command Not Found

If you get the -bash: wget: command not found error on Mac, Linux or Windows, it means that the wget GNU is either not installed or does not work properly.

Go back and make sure that you installed wget properly.

Wget is not recognized as an internal or external command

If you get the following error

'wget' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

It is more than likely that the wget package was not installed on Windows. Fix the error by installing wget first and then start over using the command.

Otherwise, it may also mean that the wget command is not not found in your system’s PATH.

Adding Wget to the System’s Path (Windows)

Adding the wget command to the system’s path will allow you to run wget from anywhere.

To add wget to the Windows System ‘s Path you need to copy the wget.exe file to the right directory.

1. Download the wget file for Windows
2. Press Windows + E to open File Explorer.
3. Find where you downloaded wget.exe (e.g. Downloads folder)
4. Copy the wget.exe file
5. Paste into the System Directory (System32 is already in your system’s path)
   • Go to C:\Windows\System32.
   • Paste your wget.exe file into your System32 folder

wget: missing URL

The “wget: missing URL” error message occurs when you run the wget command without providing a URL to download.

One of the use cases that I have seen this is when users used flags without the proper casing.

$ wget -v
# wget: missing URL

Above the casing of the v flag should not be lowercase, but uppercase.

$ wget -V
# No error

Or use the verbose way of calling it with the double-dash and full name.

$ wget --version
# No error

Alternatives to Wget on Mac and Windows

You can use cURL as an alternative of Wget command line tool. It also has to be installed on Mac, Linux and Windows.

Wget for Web Scraping

By allowing you to download files from the Internet, the wget command-line tool is incredibly useful in web scraping. It has a set of useful features that make web scraping easy:

1. Batch Downloading: wget allows you to download multiple files or web pages in a single command.
2. Recursive Downloading: the --recursive flag in wget allows you to follow links and download an entire website
3. Retries: wget is designed to handle unstable network connections and interruptions and retry failed extractions
4. Command-line options: Options are available to improve scraping capabilities (download speed, User-Agent headers, cookies for authentication, etc.).
5. Header and User-Agent Spoofing: To avoid being blocked by websites when web scraping, wget allows you to change the User-Agent header to make your requests appear more regular users.
6. Limiting Server Load: By using the --wait and --limit-rate options, you can control the speed at which wget fetches data.

About Wget

Wget FAQs

Conclusion

This is it.

You now know how to install and use Wget in your command-line.

Jean-Christophe Chouinard

SEO Strategist at Tripadvisor, ex- Seek (Melbourne, Australia). Specialized in technical SEO. Writer in Python, Information Retrieval, SEO and machine learning. Guest author at SearchEngineJournal, SearchEngineLand and OnCrawl.