Downloads

Yarkon uses a proprietary algorithm to decide how to handle downloads, which depends on user settings as well as network conditions and file types.

User settings

As a user, you can control the following properties of the application, allowing you to override the default settings.

From the Settings form, Network tab, you can change:

  • Timeout - override the network timeout for requests. Increase it if you are on a slow network. If your network is fast but instable (which means, network errors are common), you should reduce the timeout, allowing the system to retry following an error faster.
  • Retries - Yarkon will retry every request for a set number of times before giving up. If your network connection is poor, you can try increasing this number to improve your chances of success.
  • Spread - under some circumstances, detailed below, Yarkon will download multiple files one by one, instead of zipping them into a single package. You can override this settings to tell Yarkon to always try to zip multiple files into a single ZIP file when downloading.

Definitions

The following definitions are used in the next sections:

  • "Large file" - Yarkon considers any file above 1 GB "large".
  • "Media file" - Yarkon considers any file that would open in the browser by default, a "media" file. Practically speaking, these files are:
    • Text based files
    • PDF documents
    • Images
    • Videos

Downloading a single file

When you download one file, Yarkon determines how to handle it based on file size and type.

  • Media files and any file that is not large, are downloaded using Yarkon's download mechanism. It shows a large and clear progress indicator in the middle of the screen, and will download the file into the same folder the browser would.
  • Large files that are not media files are downloaded using the browser's download mechanism - which depends on which browser you are using. Usually, that will result in the standard browser progress indication, and the file being created in the Downloads folder.

Downloading multiple files

When you download multiple files, Yarkon determines how to handle it based on file size and type as well as if there are folders.

Files only, no folders

When there are no folders involved, Yarkon determines how to proceed based on the overall size of the download, that is, the combined size of the files involved in the download request.

  • If the total size is below the "large" threshold (which is 1 GB), Yarkon will download the files in parallel as much as possible, and will then combine the files into a single ZIP file.
  • If the total size is above the "large" threshold and "Spread" is enabled, Yarkon will use the browser's mechanism for download for non-media files, and Yarkon's download mechanism for media files, and will download each file separately. This is the best approach is you are working with large file over a slow network.
  • If the total size is above the "large" threshold and "Spread" is disabled, Yarkon will download all files using Yarkon's mechanism and will ZIP the downloaded files into a single ZIP files. Note that some browsers limit the amount of memory available to an application (such as Yarkon), thus limiting the size of the ZIP file that can be created. Consider a total download of about 2 GB to be the limit by any Chrome based browser (ie, Chrome, new Edge, Opera, Brave, etc.)

Files and folders

When there are folders in the download, Yarkon will always download into a ZIP file, so it can keep the original folder structure of the downloaded folder(s). As was mentioned before, this basically limits the total size of files downloaded to about 2 GB. If you have a folder structure that is larger than this, you'd have to download it in parts, meaning - split the download to sub-folders etc.

Large media files

This basically refers to movies that are larger than 2 GB.

Yarkon is a pure HTML application, running in the browser without any client side install or "Man in the middle" server. Therefore, it is bound by some restrictions and limitations imposed by the browser. Specifically, large media files have to be downloaded "in-memory" first. This means that your hardware might be a limiting factor in the size of media files you'd be able to download. While your mileage would vary, our tests show that you need to have a PC with 16 GB of RAM and sufficient disk space to be able to safely download media files that are over 4 GB.