Kescher
Kescher

Every video a page plays, saved to disk.

Kescher finds the videos a page plays and saves them to disk — HLS and DASH streams reassembled into one playable file, in every quality the site offers.

Install Kescher See how it works
  • Free of charge
  • No quota
  • No account
  • No telemetry
  • Nothing leaves your browser

How it works

Three steps, and none of them is a setting.

Kescher is German for dip net. When a video plays, its bytes are already flowing through your browser — Kescher just holds a net underneath.

  1. Open a page with a video

    Any site. There is no list of supported sites, because there is no per-site code in Kescher: it recognises media by what the browser requests.

  2. Press play

    That is all the page has to do. The player loads the video, Kescher watches what goes past and works out what it is — a single file, an HLS or DASH stream, or a video fetched in hundreds of pieces.

  3. Click the Kescher icon

    The popup lists everything found on the tab, in every quality the site offers. Pick one, press Download, and it is saved as a normal file while you carry on browsing.

What it does

Built for the streams that usually get away.

A modern site rarely serves one file. It serves a manifest, a few hundred segments and a separate audio track — and that is exactly the case Kescher is built for.

  • Files and streams

    Direct files (MP4, WebM, MOV, M4A, MP3 …) and adaptive streams — HLS .m3u8 and DASH .mpd — including streams playing inside an embedded frame.

  • Every quality

    Every variant of a stream with its resolution and estimated size, so you can take 1080p or save the data and take 480p. The quality you set in the settings is preselected.

  • One stream, one file

    Hundreds or thousands of segments are reassembled into a single playable file: AES-128 encrypted HLS, separate audio and video tracks muxed together, multi-period DASH. Nothing is re-encoded — the video data is copied, never touched.

  • Videos loaded in pieces

    Some players address one video as hundreds of byte ranges in the URL, often with the sound as a second stream. Kescher recognises the shape, takes it whole where the server allows and piece by piece where it does not, and muxes picture and sound into one file.

  • Audio languages and subtitles

    Pick the audio language a stream should be downloaded in, and save its subtitle tracks beside the video as .vtt files.

  • Audio only, MP3 included

    Save the sound alone from any video or stream — as .m4a without re-encoding, or as MP3 converted inside the browser. No converter, nothing to install on the computer.

  • Title, date and cover in the file

    A saved file carries the title, author, series, date and cover image the page itself published, so a media player, Plex or your phone shows more than a file name. Switch it off in the settings if you would rather it did not.

  • Running downloads in the popup

    Progress, speed, time left and a Stop button, right next to the media found on the page — the largest first, small clips folded into one line. A separate downloads page keeps history, pause, resume and retry.

  • Straight to disk

    The bytes stream into the file as they arrive. A feature-length film never sits in memory, and a long download does not slow the browser to a crawl.

  • Private windows

    A download started in a private window runs there, opens its page there, and leaves nothing on disk but the file you asked for — no history entry, nothing in a report.

  • Works where you are signed in

    Because Kescher runs inside your browser, pages that need a login, a session or a particular Referer work like any other. Your cookies are never read: the browser attaches them itself, exactly as it does for the page.

  • Nothing leaves your browser

    No account, no server, no analytics, no crash reporting, no remote code. The only requests Kescher makes are to the media you asked for. Read the privacy statement.

What it will not do: DRM

Widevine, PlayReady and FairPlay protected streams — Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and the like — are encrypted end to end. Kescher shows them as protected and offers no download. It reports protection; it does not circumvent it.

What it will not do: live

Live streams are labelled live and have no download button yet. Recording one while it runs is planned for a later version.

What it will not do: per-site tricks

Kescher is generic by design. If a site does not work, the cause is in the general layer and that is where it gets fixed — not in a special case for that one site.

Install

Pick your browser.

Kescher is one product with two packages: a signed add-on for Firefox, and a folder you load in any Chromium browser.

Firefox

Firefox, Firefox ESR, Developer Edition, Nightly.

From addons.mozilla.org Coming soon

Every stable release is submitted to addons.mozilla.org, where Mozilla reviews and signs it and Firefox then keeps it up to date on its own. That is the route to use as soon as the listing is live — and the only route for release and beta Firefox, which install signed add-ons only.

Open on addons.mozilla.org

Right now: the .xpi file Available today

Each release also ships an unsigned .xpi. Firefox ESR, Nightly and Developer Edition can install it permanently:

  1. Download the file below.
  2. Open about:config and set xpinstall.signatures.required to false.
  3. Open the .xpi file with Firefox and confirm the permissions. It stays installed across restarts.

Download the .xpi

Release and beta Firefox ignore that setting and will refuse the file.

Just having a look, on release or beta Firefox

Open about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, choose Load Temporary Add-on… and pick the .xpi. A temporary add-on disappears when Firefox restarts, which makes it fine for trying Kescher out and useless as an installation.

Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge, Brave, Opera

Any Chromium browser. There is no Chrome Web Store listing — here is why.

Download the folder and load it

  1. Download kescher-chrome.zip and unzip it.
  2. Open chrome://extensions — or vivaldi://extensions, edge://extensions, brave://extensions, opera://extensions.
  3. Turn on Developer mode.
  4. Choose Load unpacked and select the unzipped folder.

Download kescher-chrome.zip

Two things worth knowing

  • Keep the folder. The extension is loaded from it, so deleting it uninstalls Kescher. An update means unzipping the new release over it and pressing Reload on the card.
  • Chrome blocks local .crx installs on Windows and macOS, so Load unpacked is the only route outside the store — the .zip cannot be installed by double-clicking it.
Verify what you downloaded

Every release carries a SHA256SUMS.txt next to the files. Download it from the latest release, put it beside the file you downloaded and check it:

shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS.txt --ignore-missing

On Windows, certutil -hash-file kescher-chrome.zip SHA256 prints the hash to compare by eye.

Questions

The questions people ask first.

Why is there no Chrome Web Store version?

The Chrome Web Store forbids products that “encourage, facilitate, or enable the unauthorized access, download, or streaming of copyrighted content or media”, and its own troubleshooting page names downloaders as a common case. A generic downloader can be rejected — or unpublished months later — whatever it does about any one site. So Kescher is not submitted there for now.

Chromium users load the folder as described above, which takes about a minute. Firefox users get a reviewed, signed, automatically updating add-on from addons.mozilla.org, which has no equivalent policy.

Can it download Netflix, Disney+ or Prime Video?

No — and neither can anything else. Those services protect their video with Widevine, PlayReady or FairPlay, which keep it encrypted end to end inside the browser. Kescher shows such media as protected and offers no download button. It reports protection; it does not circumvent it, and it never will.

Does it work on YouTube?

YouTube is not a target platform and gets no special treatment in either direction: Kescher contains no code for any individual site. The single exception is written down in advance — a build made for the Chrome Web Store would have to exclude YouTube, because that store's policy demands it. There is no such listing today.

Where do the files go, and what do they look like?

Into your usual download folder, through the browser's own download manager, optionally into a subfolder you name in the settings. A stream becomes a single .mp4 — or a .webm when a DASH stream carries VP9 and Opus — audio-only downloads become .m4a, and subtitles are written beside the video as .vtt files.

One detail worth knowing: the index of an .mp4 is written last, because that is the most compatible layout and the one that costs the least memory. A download that was interrupted therefore leaves a file that is not yet playable, and there is no point in opening a file before it is finished.

Is it really free? What is the catch?

Yes, and there is none. No account, no subscription, no quota, no countdown after the third download, no watermark — and no telemetry to pay with instead. Kescher has no server to run and nothing to sell.

It is licensed under the PolyForm Shield License 1.0.0: use it for any purpose you like; you just may not use it to make a product that competes with Kescher.

What does Kescher know about me?

Nothing that leaves your browser, and nothing it does not need to find a video: the response headers of the requests your tabs make, the page title, and the media addresses themselves — all of it in browser memory, gone when the tab closes. Your cookies are never read. The privacy statement lists every item, where it is kept, how long, and how to delete it.