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BitDinghy is portable: one zip, no installer. Unzip it anywhere, even on a USB stick, and run it.

The first release is coming soon

BitDinghy 0.1.0 is being tested and will appear here when it's ready, with its checksum.

BitDinghy is a general-purpose download tool. It doesn't provide, host, search for or index any content: you choose what to download, and you're responsible for having the right to download and share it. BitDinghy is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, and its authors aren't liable for any damage from using it, as its MIT and Apache-2.0 licences say.

Check your download

Every release lists a SHA-256 checksum: a fingerprint of the file. If the fingerprint of the file you downloaded is the same, the file arrived complete and unchanged. It takes a few seconds:

  1. Open PowerShell (press the Windows key, type powershell, press Enter).

  2. Type this, with your file’s name, and press Enter:

    Get-FileHash "$env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\BitDinghy-0.1.0-windows-x64.zip" -Algorithm SHA256

  3. Compare the long code under Hash with the checksum above. Upper or lower case doesn’t matter; every character must match.

To let PowerShell compare for you, paste the checksum from this page between the quotes:

(Get-FileHash "$env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\BitDinghy-0.1.0-windows-x64.zip").Hash -eq "PASTE-THE-CHECKSUM-HERE"

True means it matches. False means the file is damaged or not the real one: delete it and download it again from this page.

Each release on GitHub also has a SHA256SUMS.txt file with the same checksum.

Install it

  1. Right-click the zip and choose Extract All…. Pick a folder you’ll keep, such as C:\Tools\BitDinghy, or a folder on a USB stick.
  2. Open the folder and double-click BitDinghy.exe.

The first time, Windows may show “Windows protected your PC”. That’s because BitDinghy isn’t code-signed yet (free signing for open-source projects is planned). If you checked the checksum, click More info, then Run anyway. Windows asks only once.

When BitDinghy first accepts connections from other people, Windows Firewall may ask whether to allow it. Allowing it on private networks helps downloads find more people; downloads also work without it.

BitDinghy keeps its settings, download list and crash reports in a data folder next to the program. To move BitDinghy, move the whole folder. To remove it, close it and delete the folder (your downloaded files are elsewhere, in your download folder, and stay).

Use dinghy from any folder (optional)

To type dinghy in any terminal without its full path, add BitDinghy’s folder to your Path. This changes only your own Windows account and needs no admin rights.

With the mouse:

  1. Press the Windows key, type environment, and choose Edit environment variables for your account.
  2. Under User variables, select Path and click Edit….
  3. Click New, type the folder (for example C:\Tools\BitDinghy), and click OK twice.
  4. Open a new terminal and type dinghy --version.

Or in PowerShell (change the folder to yours first):

$folder = "C:\Tools\BitDinghy"
$path = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "User")
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "$path;$folder", "User")

Then open a new terminal. To undo it, remove the folder from Path with the steps above.

If BitDinghy lives on a USB stick, its drive letter can change between computers; the Path then points at the wrong drive. Add it to the Path on each computer, or run dinghy from its folder.

Older versions

What changed in each version is on What’s new.