How to Use Gallery-DL to Download Images From Tumblr

This webpage contains affiliate links. For more info, see my policy here.
A super-simple guide for using the GitHub program Gallery-DL to download images from Tumblr fast! Read how in this blog post by JessicaAmber...

introduction

Want to download a bunch of images from a Tumblr webpage (or many pages), without the hassle of right clicking on every one? Well, there is a great little program on Github called Gallery-DL that will make this process easy! It’s a command line program, and I know nothing about command line stuff… but I’ve figured it out! And I’ll share with you how to install and use it, in a way that you need NO technical knowledge!
 
Oh, and these instructions will be for a Windows 10 computer. Should be basically the same for most Windows versions though.
Let’s get started!

Download the program

Download the latest version of the program from https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl.

Scroll down to where the words Standalone Executable and click the Windows link under it, to get the Windows version.

Install the EXE

As I said earlier, this is a command line program, so it’s not like a normal program where you double click it to make it run.

Instead, copy it into your C:\Windows\System32 folder.

Get Your Tumblr Keys

You need to get two unique identifying numbers from Tumblr to be able to download content from them remotely, otherwise you’ll get the error “[tumblr][error] Daily API rate limit exceeded”.

To get these numbers, we need to create an ‘Application’. To do this, log in to Tumblr and then go to https://www.tumblr.com/oauth/register

This will bring up a form. Fill in the form as follows:

  • Application Name: write anything. I just randomly wrote Jazzy Beets
  • Application website: https://example.org
  • App store URL: leave blank
  • Google play store URL: leave blank
  • Application description: write anything you want
  • Admin contact email: your Tumblr account email will auto fill here
  • Default callback URL: https://example.org
  • OAuth2 redirect URLs: leave blank
  • Flurry Project ID: leave blank

Then there’s a checkbox about OAuth2, leave that blank.
Then there’s a series of icons you could upload, leave those alone too.

Then solve the ‘I’m not a robot’ thing and click Register.

Tumblr register an Application form part 1
Tumblr Application form part 2

The application will automatically be accepted. You’ll be taken to the Applications page, where all applications wil be listed. Whatever you wrote in Application Name will be the title of it. For my example, that’s Jazzy Beets.

Tumblr screenshot of Applications screen, including one for Jazzy Beets

Copy the OAuth Consumer Key and put it somewhere safe.

Then, click the words ‘Show secret key‘ and copy that long number as well, and put it somewhere safe.

Put Key Into A Config File

Now we’re gonna make the configuration file that will tell gallery-dl to use our personal Application that we just created.

Open Notepad and paste in this text:

				
					{
    "extractor": {
        "tumblr": {
            "api-key": "WHAT",
            "api-secret": "EVER"
        }
    }
}
				
			

Replace the word WHAT with the OAuth Consumer Key that we copied before.

And replace the word EVER with the Secret Key.

Now, save this file as gallery-dl.conf and save it to the location C:\Users\Yourname

Replace Yourname with whatever your directory is on your computer. If your not sure what that is, just open the folder C:\Users and see what folders are there, and pick the one that isn’t Default or Public

 

Run the Command Line Interface

Click the Start button in the bottom left corner and, in the search box, type cmd

You’ll see a popup for Command Prompt app, click it

Then, navigate to a folder where you want the images to be saved. You navigate to a folder by typing cd [file path]

E.g. cd C:\Users\jessica\Pictures

Then hit enter.

Run the Gallery-DL program

Type in the following:

gallery-dl [URL of Tumblr webpage you want the images from]

E.g. gallery-dl https://2fingerswhiskey.tumblr.com/post/673787479440130048

It’s just a random Sims website, because I was using my Tumblr account puremorphinsims at the time. The page happens to look like this:

Tumblr blog showing a post with a photo of a Sims 2 character

Hit enter, and its done! Look in the folder you specified, and a Tumblr folder will now exist inside it! And inside that will be a folder with the name of the tumblr (in this case, 2fingerswhisky), and inside that…

Windows folder containing a photo of a Sims 2 character

The image is now on your computer! It will have a file name made of Tumblr, then the account name, then the post title (which in this case was just a string of numbers).

Now you can use this process to download many images from many Tumblr URLs!

Note, however, this limitation from Tumblr:

Newly registered applications are rate limited to 1,000 requests per hour, and 5,000 requests per day. If your application requires more requests for either of these periods, you will be able to request a rate limit removal after completing the registration process.

Conclusion

I hope these instructions were helpful to you! Good luck with your downloading!

Sources

https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl/blob/master/docs/configuration.rst#extractortumblrapi-key–api-secret

https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl#configuration

https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl/issues/845

https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl/issues/1081

https://gitter.im/gallery-dl/main

Â