The sad demise of Download Shuttle

Since we’re talking about download tools for personal use, Download Shuttle is another casualty of the continued lack of updates from Fiplab, which is a shame, because it was pretty sweet app.

It was a lightweight and easy to use app to download audio and video to your local machine. It was basically a browser that scanned links on a page looking for content files. It was great for YouTube, but like Downie, you could use it against any site and have a lot of success.

There is no “extraction” feature, it was a downloader, but it worked well against all sorts of sites. It was fast, powerful, and easy to use.

I bought it as a companion app to Downie, or maybe it was the other way around. But, with the lack of updates, Download Shuttle isn’t what it used to be.

And that’s an unfortunate story for Fiplab, because they have some great tools like Download Shuttle, Mini Note, Infinity Dashboard, Smart Folder Cleaner, Memory Cleaner, and others that all seem defunct. I’ve purchased more than half their catalog, and have been slowly removing them over time due to lack of updates.

Mini Note was great because I could write notes on my Mac and see them on my iPad a few seconds later. The app still works, but the there is no sync.

Infinity Dashboard was a great tool with its main claim to fame of monitoring Amazon items for price changes. There was even a way for users to make and upload their own extensions, but the app hasn’t seen an update in years, the Amazon checker has been broken for all that time, so it’s basically lost all it’s functionality.

With the lack of updates, Download Shuttle fails more and more. It’s now to the point of crashing on multiple sites because it has no idea how to handle the web code.

The only tool I’m still using is the Smart Folder Cleaner, because it’s still working and still useful. It helps to clean out temp folders for SnagIt, Katalon Studio, my Downloads directory, and other areas so I don’t waste space. If a file isn’t touched in a week, off to the Trash it goes. I haven’t upgraded to an alternative because it still works, but I know when I upgrade to Silicon, this won’t be coming along for the ride.

Their last blog update was Aug 2022, and that was the Mini Note announcement. When services start shutting down, it’s the mark of a downward spiral.

If someone knows an update to date alternative to Smart Folder Cleaner, let me know…