A few days ago I was about to download a file of more than 3GB from the Mega cloud storage service, but I couldn't do it from the browser. I was using the FireFox browser and it seems that Mega is not fully compatible with this. That is why I had to dig through the network until I found a
solution to download large Mega files
.
The ideal would be to use the browser itself, but
if we use FireFox when trying to download a large file we will see a message
that tells us:
Unfortunately Firefox does not have enough memory to decrypt data. To download large files we recommend that you install the desktop application (or use Chrome).
The solution is very simple, you can install the Google Chrome browser and now it will allow you to download the file.
It is a fast and valid solution, but when our connection is not very fast or the file to download is very large, there are other alternatives.
Manage Mega file downloads with JDownloader.
The already mentioned solution to install Chrome can get us out of a hurry, but if we want to manage the downloads like a professional,
it is best to turn to JDownloader
. Mega's own service offers us a desktop application to manage files in the cloud. The problem with this application is that I see it
too intrusive
and I never know if I can trust how my information is treated.
The first step would be to download
JDownloader
from its official website. I like to use the
portable version of JDownloader
that, in addition to not requiring installation, comes in perfect Spanish.
Once installed just add the links from Mega to JDownloader and start the download.
By default in JDownloader it comes with the link capture enabled, whose mission is to automatically detect download links from the clipboard.
This grabber will help us add links in bulk in a few seconds.
Advantages of using JDownloader to download Mega files.
JDownloader is a multiplatform and free application, so we can use it in any operating system. This is already two great advantages, but it still has more:
-
Possibility of
managing a large number of download links by processing them in batches
.
-
It allows to summarize the slow download of very large files or when we have slow connections.
-
Compatibility with Mega premium accounts. If we have a premium account we can configure it in JDownloader and download as premium users.
-
Organization of downloads in different folders.
-
Schedule downloads and
manage bandwidth with speed limits
.
Why doesn't downloading large Mega files on FireFox work?
Once the problem is solved, I have begun to investigate why we cannot download large files from Mega using FireFox. The answer I found is because
FireFox does not support the API to manage system files
. This API is commonly known by its English name
FileSystem API
and apparently Mozilla does not plan to support it in the future.
At least in the case of Mega it is a technical limitation and it has not happened the same as with Dropbox. Remember that
in Dropbox you have
intentionally
limited
the maximum file size that we can download to 1GB.
While browsing I also found a very useful little tool, it is about
Megatools
. It is a multiplatform command line tool, free and open source with which to
manage our Mega files from the console
. Megatools has reminded me of the already known application
Rclone
, which we could also recommend if you do not disgust the use of the terminal.
