How To Install And Use Wget In Windows 10
The Command Prompt in Windows 10 doesn’t compare to the terminal on Linux. To make up for its shortcomings, tools like wget and Cygwin can be installed on Windows to get more out of the Command Prompt. Here’s how you can install and use wget in Windows 10.
Install Wget
Wget is a free tool but downloading the correct file is oddly tricky. It’s hard to tell just which one you should download and one of the more popular mirrors for the EXE is notorious for crashing on Windows 10. In order to install wget, (https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/files/wget/1.11.4-1/wget-1.11.4-1-setup.exe/download?use_mirror=excellmedia) download this file from Sourceforge.
Extract the file, and run the EXE inside it. The installation is pretty straightforward. Except the EULA, and don’t change anything else.
Using Wget
There are two ways to use Wget on Windows 10. This is a command line tool so it doesn’t have a GUI. You access it via the Command Prompt. To use it from the Command Prompt, you can either add it as an environment variable, or you can manually go to the directory the Wget app is in, and use it from there. The second method isn’t convenient if you intend to use this tool often but we’re going to detail both methods and you can chose whichever suits you best.
CD To Wget
This is the less convenient method. Open File Explorer and go to the following location. There will be a Wget.exe file here. You really only need the path to this file. Copy it to your clipboard.
C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin
Next, open Command Prompt and enter the following command to move to the above location.
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin
Once you’re in this folder, you can type wget and use any of its functions and switches.
Add Environment Variable
To have to move to the bin folder the Wget.exe is in every single time you want to use the tool is time consuming. If you add it as an environment variable though, you can simply type wget from any directory and use it. You will need admin rights to do this.
To add wget as an environment variable, open File Explorer and paste the following in the location bar.
Control Panel\System and Security\System
On the left column, click Advanced System Settings. In the window that opens, click Environment Variables. In the Environment Variables window, select ‘Path’ in the section at the top, and click Edit.
In the window that opens, click New, then click the browse button. Enter this location;
C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin
Click Ok on each window to exit.
Now, when you open Command Prompt, you can type wget regardless of which directory/folder you’re in and you will be able to access this app and use its commands.
It doesn’t work, tried adding it to Path environment variable. gg.
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Thank you for this useful guide. The Add Environment Variable guide details really helps a lot !!!
I’ve been looking for quite some time to try to figure this out.
Thank you so much for making this guide.
No one ever pointed out that I could just use it by going CD and going to the specific folder.
The Wget setup wizard never appeared.
Creaed a folder C:Wget and followed instructions using this path.
Open Command Prompt as Administrator
wget -help
worked!
Awesome! Thanks!