Downie vs shooff — Which Mac Video Tool Fits Your Workflow?

Downie is the best-known video downloader for Mac. shooff is the newer kid on the block that tries to do more than just download. People comparing them usually want to know a simple thing: if I'm only going to install one, which one?

Short answer: they're good at different things. Downie is the best pure downloader. shooff is a downloader plus a library plus a player plus a comic reader, all encrypted. You'd pick one over the other based on what you're trying to do, not which is "better."

Here's the long version.

The real philosophical difference

Downie's bet is that you already have a library solution. Maybe your videos live in Plex, or a folder you manage in Finder, or iMovie, or — very plausibly — a Dropbox folder you back up. Downie's job is to get files into wherever that is, and then step out of the way. Nothing you save in Downie stays in Downie.

shooff's bet is the opposite. The thing that matters is the library — a place where your videos and comics live permanently, encrypted, with a player and a reader built in. The download step is table stakes; the library is the product. When you save a video in shooff, it becomes an encrypted .evid file with metadata, and you watch it through shooff's player rather than exporting to somewhere else.

Both are coherent philosophies. Which one fits you depends on whether you already have a library solution you're happy with.

Head-to-head scorecard

Where Downie is clearly better

Feel. It feels more like a Mac app.

Downie is written in Swift. Small, light, instant launch, minimal menu bar, feels completely at home on macOS. If "it feels like a Mac app" is important to you, Downie wins this easily. shooff is Electron-based, which means a larger download and a slightly heavier runtime. We've worked hard to keep it feeling native, but it's not going to fool a macOS purist.

Pure download speed on simple cases.

For a standard YouTube 1080p video, Downie's post-processing is extremely tight — segment merge, metadata write, move to output folder — measurably faster than shooff on the same test file. We're talking seconds of difference, but it adds up if you're downloading a lot.

Maintenance for edge-case sites.

Charlie Monroe watches site changes like a hawk and patches Downie's extractors often within hours. shooff rides on top of yt-dlp for most site logic, which is also updated aggressively but sometimes lags Downie's custom extractors by a day or two.

Where shooff is clearly better

Privacy and encryption.

Downie saves plain files. Your download folder has your files in it. shooff saves AES-256-CTR encrypted .evid files with a password-derived key. Even if someone gets at your drive, they see opaque blobs. For anyone who treats video storage as personal data, this is not a small difference.

Workflow, not just download.

If your use case is "I save videos I want to watch later," Downie makes you jump out of Downie to actually watch. You end up with a Downloads folder that becomes a secondary library, which is exactly the thing shooff is trying to replace. shooff downloads → saves to library → resume-capable player → bookmarks → AI subtitles on-demand. All in one app.

HLS edge cases.

Many streaming sites use HLS with AES-128 encryption where the key URL requires a session cookie. Downie handles basic HLS but struggles with cookie-authenticated key endpoints. shooff was explicitly designed around this — it fetches keys through the webview's own session, which works where curl and plain HTTP fetchers fail.

Free tier actually exists.

Downie has a trial but then costs $20. shooff has a permanent free tier — no watermarks, no time limit, no feature lockout on what you get. If you just want to test drive a downloader and use it occasionally, free is real.

Comics and manga.

This is shooff's genuinely unique angle. Downie doesn't touch comics at all. shooff treats a manga gallery download the same way it treats a video — one command to save the whole thing as an encrypted file, with a built-in reader.

Scenarios: which one should you actually pick?

"I save a few videos a month, want them in my Movies folder, manage in Finder."

→ Downie. This is exactly what it's for.

"I download a lot of videos, watch them all inside the tool, don't want Finder involvement."

→ shooff. You're effectively using the downloader as a media vault.

"Privacy matters — this is personal media I want encrypted at rest."

→ shooff. Downie doesn't encrypt.

"I read manga and watch videos on my Mac, want one app for both."

→ shooff. Downie doesn't do comics.

"I use Setapp and can get Downie at no extra cost."

→ Downie. Free is free. Install shooff too for the features Downie doesn't have.

"I'm on a Mac Mini that streams to an AppleTV — I need my downloads accessible on other devices."

→ shooff's local streaming server. Watch from phone/tablet/TV on the same Wi-Fi.

"I need 4K YouTube playlists downloaded on schedule."

→ 4K Video Downloader, honestly. Neither Downie nor shooff does scheduled downloads. (See our full ranking for that use case.)

Can you use both?

Yes. We do. Downie for one-off saves to a regular folder (sharing clips, uploading elsewhere). shooff for the library. They don't conflict and they handle subtly different cases well.

Frequently asked