ILIAS Downloader

Stop clicking through ILIAS for every file.

A small desktop app that logs into ILIAS with your campus account, mirrors your course tree, and keeps a local folder in sync — so your slides and handouts are already there, searchable, offline.

Download for macOS Download for Windows

Free and open source. Currently set up for HSLU's ILIAS 9.

ILIAS Downloader HSLU

From login to a synced folder, in four steps

  1. Open the app and log in

    A real browser window opens on ILIAS's own login page — account chooser, Microsoft Entra ID or SWITCH edu-ID, 2FA, exactly as usual. The app never sees your password.

  2. It scrapes your course tree

    Every course, folder and file gets mirrored into a tree, using ILIAS's own stable links — not screen scraping guesses. First sync takes a minute; the rest are incremental.

  3. Pick a folder, download what's new

    Point it at a folder on disk once. From then on, Alle neuen grabs everything you don't have yet — or download a single file, a folder, or a whole course.

  4. Search and preview, offline

    Every synced file is on disk and indexed by name, so you can find and preview a PDF, image, or slide deck without opening ILIAS at all.

Your files, always in one of three states

The tree view mirrors ILIAS exactly, but every file is tagged with what's actually on your disk — so a re-sync never has to guess, and you always know what's worth grabbing.

  • Missing — on ILIAS, not on disk yet
  • Downloaded — matches what's on ILIAS
  • Outdated — ILIAS has a newer version

What's in the box

Incremental sync

Only changed courses and folders get re-scraped by default, with live progress and a warning if something couldn't be read. A full resync is one click away.

In-app preview

Open a PDF, image, video, audio or text file right inside the app before deciding to keep clicking through your course.

Bulk selection and filters

Tri-state folder checkboxes, shift-click ranges, and filters for only-new, hide-ignored or only-PDF — all remembered across restarts.

Per-course overrides

Give a course its own download folder or a shorter display name, independent of whatever ILIAS calls it.

A download queue you can trust

Docked queue with pause, resume, cancel and retry, plus live speed and ETA for large courses.

Notifications and shortcuts

A desktop notification when a background sync or batch download finishes, and keyboard shortcuts for search, sync and download-new.

Your login stays yours

Login always runs through ILIAS's real Microsoft Entra ID / SWITCH edu-ID flow in an actual browser window — the app never sees or stores your password. Session cookies are encrypted at rest, and the embedded local server binds to 127.0.0.1 only, so it isn't reachable from your network.

Get it for your machine

Download for macOS Download for Windows

macOS: the app isn't code-signed yet, so Gatekeeper will call it damaged on first launch. Move it to Applications, then run xattr -cr "/Applications/ILIAS Downloader HSLU.app" once in Terminal.

Windows: SmartScreen may warn because the installer is unsigned — choose More info → Run anyway.