Priorities & the Queue

MacGet runs a bounded number of downloads at once and keeps the rest queued. Two things decide what runs next: the concurrency limit and each download's priority.

Concurrency limit

Maximum concurrent downloads (default 3) caps how many downloads are active simultaneously. This is separate from the thread count, which controls how many connections a single download uses.

The two multiply. Three concurrent downloads at 8 threads each is up to 24 open connections — which is why raising both aggressively tends to make everything slower rather than faster.

Priorities

Every download is High, Normal (the default), or Low. Change it from the context menu on any queued download.

The scheduler always prefers a higher-priority download when a slot frees up. Within the same priority, ordering is stable: downloads run in the order you added them. Bumping one item to High doesn't reshuffle everything else.

Priority affects scheduling only. It does not give a running download more bandwidth or more threads — an active download is never throttled in favour of a higher-priority one that starts later.

Pause, resume, cancel

• Pause stops the transfer and keeps the partial file and per-chunk progress. Resuming continues from where it stopped.
• Cancel stops the download and discards it from the queue.
• Pause All / Resume All apply to everything at once.

Pausing frees a concurrency slot, so the next queued download starts.

Bandwidth limiting

A global speed cap across all active downloads is available in Settings → Downloads. It's implemented as a token-bucket rate limiter over the aggregate, not per download — so three downloads under a 5 MB/s cap share that 5 MB/s.

Leave it unset for unlimited.

Live thread adjustment

You can change a running download's thread count without restarting it. MacGet splits an in-flight chunk to spawn additional workers.

Increases are subject to the per-host cap the engine has learned. If a host has been demoted to 2 workers, asking for 16 will not override that — the cap exists because the host was actively rejecting more.

On restart

What happens to in-flight downloads when you quit depends on Resume downloads on launch (on by default):

• On — downloads that were running are rescheduled and continue.
• Off — anything that was downloading is moved to paused, waiting for you.

Either way, no progress is lost: per-chunk offsets are persisted before exit.