Smart Downloads

Smart Downloads is Atahon’s automatic chapter download feature. When enabled for a manga, new chapters are automatically queued for download whenever they’re detected — so your reading material is always ready offline.

How It Works

  1. You enable Smart Downloads on a manga’s detail page
  2. When the app checks for updates (based on your library update interval), it fetches the latest chapter list from the source
  3. Any new chapters that weren’t previously in the database are detected
  4. If Smart Downloads is enabled for that manga, the new chapters are automatically added to the download queue
  5. The download worker processes the queue in the background

Enabling Smart Downloads

Per-Manga Toggle

Smart Downloads is configured on a per-manga basis:

  1. Open a manga from your library
  2. On the manga detail page, find the Smart Downloads toggle
  3. Enable it — new chapters will now be auto-downloaded

The Download Queue

All downloads — whether from Smart Downloads or manually triggered — go through the same queue system.

Queue States

Each download moves through these states:

StatusMeaning
queuedWaiting to be processed
downloadingCurrently being downloaded
pausedManually paused by user
errorFailed (with error message)
completedSuccessfully downloaded

Managing the Queue

Access the download queue from More > Downloads:

  • Pause/Resume — Pause individual downloads or the entire queue
  • Remove — Remove a download from the queue
  • Clear Completed — Remove all completed entries
  • Progress — See real-time progress for each chapter (0–100%)

Download Settings

Configure download behavior in More > Settings > Downloads:

Concurrent Downloads

Controls how many chapters download simultaneously.

  • Range: 1–6
  • Default: 6
  • Lower values use less bandwidth and battery; higher values finish faster

WiFi-Only Mode

When enabled, downloads only proceed when connected to WiFi.

Warning

If WiFi-Only is disabled, downloads will use mobile data. This can consume significant data depending on the manga source and compression settings.

Compression

See Chapter Compression for details on how downloaded pages are compressed.

How the Worker Operates

The download worker uses a pump loop architecture:

  1. The worker checks the queue for items with queued status
  2. It launches downloads up to the concurrent limit
  3. Each download: fetches the page list → resolves image URLs → downloads pages in batches of 3
  4. After each batch, progress is updated in both the UI (Zustand store) and the database
  5. When a chapter completes, a pages.json sentinel file is written
  6. The worker then picks up the next queued item
  7. When the queue is empty and all active downloads finish, the worker stops automatically
Tip

Downloads are persistent. If the app is closed and reopened, the queue is restored from the database and the worker resumes automatically.

Duplicate Prevention

The download system prevents duplicate entries:

  • If a chapter is already in the queue (any status), it won’t be added again
  • This applies to both Smart Downloads and manual download triggers