Can You Pause and Resume a Wget Download Later?

This article provides a quick overview of how to pause a running wget file download and resume it at a later date without losing your progress. You will learn the specific keyboard shortcuts and command-line flags required to halt a transfer, as well as the essential conditions your target server must meet for the resumption to be successful.

How to Pause a Running Wget Download

If you currently have a large download running in your terminal and need to pause it immediately, you can use standard Unix job control signals.

  1. Press Ctrl + Z while the download is active in your terminal.
  2. This sends a SIGTSTP (terminal stop) signal, which immediately freezes the wget process and puts it in the background.
  3. Your terminal will display a message like [1]+ Stopped wget <URL>.

If you intend to resume the download during the same terminal session before shutting down your computer, you can simply type fg (foreground) and press Enter to pick up right where you left off.

How to Resume a Wget Download at a Later Date

If you need to shut down your computer, disconnect from the network, or resume the download days later, you must completely stop the process and use a specific flag when you restart it.

First, if you used Ctrl + Z to pause, you can safely close the terminal or kill the process using Ctrl + C. wget will leave a partially downloaded file in your current directory (e.g., largefile.zip.tmp or just largefile.zip).

When you are ready to resume the download at a later date, navigate to the same folder where the partial file is saved and use the -c (or --continue) flag:

wget -c https://example.com/largefile.zip

The -c flag tells wget to look at the local file, see how much of it has already been downloaded, and ask the server to send the remaining bytes starting from that exact point.

Crucial Requirements for Resuming Downloads

While wget makes this process simple, successful resumption depends heavily on the hosting server.