wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from the web. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, and can handle recursive downloads, file mirroring, and much more.

The name is a combination of “World Wide Web” and “get”, making it “web get” or wget.

It’s commonly available on Unix-like systems and can be installed on Windows. Here are some basic usage examples:

Basic file download:

wget https://example.com/file.zip

Download to specific filename:

wget -O output.zip https://example.com/file.zip

Mirror a website:

wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent example.com

Resume interrupted download:

wget -c https://example.com/largefile.iso

Download in background:

wget -b https://example.com/file.zip

Learn more: gnu.org/software/wget