Varia is a download manager for Linux and Windows that supports regular files as well as torrents and video/audio streams. It is a frontend for aria2 and yt-dlp.

The main way to get Varia that is supported by me is via Flathub.

flatpak install flathub io.github.giantpinkrobots.varia

This requires you to have Flatpak and the Flathub Flatpak repository installed on your system.

You can get Varia through the Snap Store.

sudo snap install varia

However, you will need to give it additional permissions through the terminal if you want to use the "Shutdown after Completion" feature:

sudo snap connect varia:shutdown

These are unofficial methods of getting Varia. They are built and distributed by others and may get updates later than official methods.

• AUR on Arch Linux
• AppImage

You can find amd64 builds of Varia in the Releases section in both installer and portable forms. The installer version is recommended and it includes an auto updater function.

macOS version is brand new and still experimental. Available for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs in the Releases section.

Download it for Firefox or Chrome.

There are two branches here: 'next' and 'main'. The Next branch is where all new development happens before merging into the Main branch at each stable release. I develop and test for Flatpak first and tackle other platforms later, which may result in the Next branch not building on other platforms due to new platform-specific issues or newly introduced dependencies. Therefore it is recommended you use Flatpak to test out the Next branch, or at least keep this in mind in case of problems. Next is the default branch.

Varia is developed to be Flatpak-first, therefore the easiest way to build it from source on Linux is to run it with GNOME Builder.

Using flatpak-builder is also possible:

flatpak-builder --force-clean --install --user ./_build ./io.github.giantpinkrobots.varia.json && flatpak run io.github.giantpinkrobots.varia

To build Varia outside Flatpak, you need these dependencies:

• Meson
• Gtk4 and its development libraries
• Pango
• (Python) GObject
• Libadwaita
• aria2
• (Python) aria2p
• yt-dlp
• 7zip (7z)
• FFmpeg (without GPL is okay)
• Deno
• Libayatana-AppIndicator
• gettext
• (Python) appdirs
• (Python) requests
• (Python) emoji-country-flag
• (Python) dbus-next

Then, you can use meson commands to build Varia:

git clone https://github.com/giantpinkrobots/varia
cd varia
meson setup builddir
cd builddir
meson compile
sudo meson install

• Get MSYS2.
• Open the MSYS2 standard shell and update everything before continuing:

pacman -Syyu

• Either clone Varia inside the shell or copy the folder to your MSYS2 home folder and navigate into it:

cd varia

• Run the build script (which will also automatically install the dependencies):

./windows/build.sh

Or with the updater function enabled: (it just creates an empty file in the dist directory named 'updater-function-enabled')

./windows/build.sh -u

Varia will be built into src/dist/variamain. Main executable is variamain.exe.

macOS builds are handled with GitHub Actions through (this)[https://github.com/giantpinkrobots/varia/blob/next/.github/workflows/mac-package.yml] file. I will prepare a friendlier automatic build script (like on Windows) later.

Please refer to the contributing guide page.

Varia is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.

But it also relies on many other libraries each with their own licenses, all of whom can be found in the dependencies_information directory.

The name "Varia" comes from the aria2 software it is based on, and I added a "V" to make it "Varia". In the Metroid series of games, there is a special suit you eventually get named a "Varia Suit" with its main feature being allowing Samus to withstand extreme temperatures. I spent some time thinking about how to connect the Varia Suit to my app, but couldn't, soooo... I think it just sounds cool.