Here is a small tutorial that explains how to schedule downloads in Google Chrome. This comes handy if you want to do your downloads in some off-peak time (like, during night).
I read a Lifehacker article yesterday that talked about scheduling downloads in Firefox. That got me thinking how could the same thing be accomplished in Google Chrome. I wasn’t able to find any download manager plugin for Chrome that directly provides such a download scheduling facility for Chrome. So, I thought of a way out, and it works pretty well.
We’ll combine two free software to schedule downloads in Chrome. The first software is Flashget. This is one of the most popular download managers that really speeds up downloads. Now, there are tons of download managers available out there, but we are choosing this one as this provides scheduling option. When you choose to download any file via Flashget, you can schedule it to download later at your chosen time.
The problem with Flashget is that it is not able to capture any downloads that you perform via Google Chrome. Instead, those downloads are automatically performed by built-in download manager of Google Chrome. So, to schedule downloads in Chrome via Flashget, we need a way to route downloads to Flashget. This is where we’ll need a second software.
For this, we’ll use a Chrome extension called Download Assistant. This extension comes from Google itself. This extension lets you download files using popular download managers, instead of using built-in downloader of Google Chrome. It supports many download managers, and luckily for us, it supports Flashget as well. So, once you install this extension, you can choose that your downloads should happen via Flashget.
Update (3-Sep-2012): Google seems to have removed this extension. However, another extension called Downloaders can do the same. In this case, press Ctrl +Alt + Click on the link that you want to be downloaded via an external download manager.
And that pretty much completes our setup. Now when you click on a link in Google Chrome to download a file, this extension will direct the download to Flashget. You can then choose to schedule that download for a later time in Flashget, instead of downloading it immediately.
If you do not want to use FlashGet for any reason, you can use Free Download Manager as well (Download Assistant extension supports that one too).
If you know of some other way of scheduling downloads in Google Chrome, do let us know in comments.