Surge

Surge

Blazing fast TUI download manager built in Go for power users

Documentation • Installation • Usage • Themes • Fonts • Benchmarks • Extension • Settings • CLI Reference

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What is Surge?

Surge is designed for power users who prefer a keyboard-driven workflow. It features a beautiful Terminal User Interface (TUI), as well as a background Headless Server and a CLI tool for automation.

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Why use Surge?

Most browsers open a single connection for a download. Surge opens multiple (up to 16 by default), splits the file, and downloads chunks in parallel. But we take it a step further:

• Blazing Fast: Designed to maximize your bandwidth utilization and download files as quickly as possible.
• Multiple Mirrors: Download from multiple sources simultaneously. Surge distributes workers across all available mirrors and automatically handles failover.
• Sequential Download: Option to download files in strict order (Streaming Mode). Ideal for media files that you want to preview while downloading.
• Daemon Architecture: Surge runs a single background "engine." You can open 10 different terminal tabs and queue downloads; they all funnel into one efficient manager.
• Beautiful TUI: Built with Bubble Tea & Lipgloss, featuring customizable palettes and full theme engine support.

For a deep dive into how we make downloads faster (like work stealing and slow worker handling), check out our Optimization Guide.

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Support the Project

We are just two CS students building Surge in between classes and exams. We love working on this, but maintaining a project of this scale takes time and resources. That's where you come in!

If Surge saves you time, consider supporting the development! Donations go directly toward:

• Publishing the Extension: Paying the Chrome Web Store fee so you can finally install the extension officially (no more sideloading!).
• Dev Tools: Licenses for tools like GoReleaser Pro to help us automate our builds.
• Debrid Integration: Covering subscription costs so we can test and build native Debrid support.

☕ Buy us a coffee

Totally optional-your stars, issues, and contributions already mean the world to us! :)

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Installation

Surge is available on multiple platforms. Choose the method that works best for you.

Platform / Method	Command / Instructions	Notes
Prebuilt Binary	Download from Releases	Easiest method. Just download and run.
macOS / Linux (Install Script)	curl -fsSL https://surgedm.github.io/install | sh	Verifies the release checksum and installs to ~/.local/bin. Run again to update. Script options.
Linux AppImage	Download from Releases	Run chmod +x Surge_..._linux_x86_64.AppImage, then ./Surge_..._linux_x86_64.AppImage. Supports delta updates.
Arch Linux (AUR)	yay -S surge	Managed via AUR.
macOS / Linux (Homebrew)	brew install SurgeDM/tap/surge	Recommended for Mac/Linux users.
Nix / NixOS	nix profile install --refresh github:SurgeDM/Surge	Installs the official release and adds surge to your Nix profile. Nix instructions.
Windows	winget install surge-downloader.surgeorscoop install surgeorchoco install surge	Recommended for Windows users.
Dockerfile	See instructions	Run Surge in server mode with Docker Compose
Go Install	go install github.com/SurgeDM/Surge@latest	Requires Go 1.25+

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Usage

Surge has two main modes: TUI (Interactive) and Server (Headless).

For a full reference, see the customization guide, Settings & Configuration Guide and the CLI reference.

1. Interactive TUI Mode

Just run surge to enter the dashboard. This is where you can visualize progress, manage the queue, and see speed graphs. If you encounter any issues, press ? to open the bug reporting wizard. You can also press Shift + A or use your terminal's paste shortcut to automatically parse a copied browser 'cURL' command straight into a new download.

# Start the TUI
surge

# Start the TUI without the local HTTP API server
surge --no-server

# Start TUI with downloads queued
surge https://example.com/file1.zip https://example.com/file2.zip

# Combine URLs and batch file
surge https://example.com/file.zip --batch urls.txt

--no-server keeps the TUI fully local and skips the embedded HTTP API. CLI control commands such as surge add, surge pause, and browser-extension requests will not be able to target that instance.

The All tab (0) shows downloads in every state. The existing Queued (q), Active (w), and Done (e) tabs keep their filters. Tab/Shift+Tab cycle through all four tabs, and search, category filters, and tab pinning work in All too.

2. Server Mode (Headless)

Great for servers, Raspberry Pis, or background processes.

# Start the server
surge server

# Start the server with a download
surge server https://url.com/file.zip

# Start with explicit API token
surge server --token <token>

3. Auto-Start Service

Surge can run as a service owned by the current user. It uses the same settings, download database, category paths, and API token as that user's CLI and TUI.

# Install and immediately start the user service
surge service install

# Manage the service
surge service start
surge service stop
surge service restart
surge service status

# Uninstall the service
surge service uninstall

[!NOTE] [!IMPORTANT] Run these commands as your normal user, without sudo or an Administrator terminal. Surge refuses to install a user service as root. The service starts with your login session; see the service guide for platform details and legacy system-service migration.

4. Remote TUI

surge and surge server bind the HTTP API to 0.0.0.0 (all interfaces) by default. This means the server is accessible via localhost (127.0.0.1) as well as your local network IP. To accept connections from this machine only, run surge config Network.bind_host 127.0.0.1 and restart Surge.

The API is token-protected. Generate/read your token by running:

# Get the current user's token (the service uses the same token)
surge token

Alternatively, you can find it in the TUI under Settings > Extension.

3. Remote TUI

Connect to a running Surge daemon (local or remote).

# Connect to local server (auto-detected)
surge connect

# Connect to a remote daemon
surge connect 192.168.1.10:1700 --token <token>

# Equivalent global-flag form
surge --host 192.168.1.10:1700 --token <token>

By default, surge connect uses:

• http:// for loopback and private IP targets
• https:// for public/hostname targets

4. Global Connection Flags (CLI + TUI)

These global flags are available on all commands:

• --host <host:port>: target server for TUI and CLI operations.
• --token <token>: bearer token for authentication.

Environment variable fallbacks:

• SURGE_HOST
• SURGE_TOKEN

5. Server Mode with Docker Compose

Download the compose file and start the container:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SurgeDM/Surge/refs/heads/main/docker/compose.yml
docker compose up -d

Get the API token:

docker compose exec surge surge token

Save this token - you'll need it to authenticate API requests and connect remotely.

Check downloads/API availability:

docker compose exec surge surge ls

View logs:

docker compose logs -f surge

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Fonts

Surge ships a bundled Nerd Font for the TUI, but your terminal controls the actual font selection. See the customization guide for install steps and licensing details.

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Benchmarks

We tested Surge against standard tools. Because of our connection optimization logic, Surge significantly outperforms single-connection tools.

Tool	Time	Speed	Comparison
Surge	28.93s	35.40 MB/s	-
aria2c	40.04s	25.57 MB/s	1.38× slower
curl	57.57s	17.79 MB/s	1.99× slower
wget	61.81s	16.57 MB/s	2.14× slower

Test details: 1GB file, Windows 11, Ryzen 5 5600X, 360 Mbps Network. Results averaged over 5 runs.

We would love to see you benchmark Surge on your system!

To compare fixed and adaptive concurrency under deterministic throttling, run:

go test ./internal/strategy/concurrent -run '^$' -bench BenchmarkThrottle -benchtime=1x -count=5

The native Go benchmark runs persistent-overload and burst-recovery workloads with both policies and reports elapsed time, request amplification, throttled requests, and peak accepted concurrency.

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Browser Extension

The Surge extension intercepts browser downloads and sends them straight to your terminal. It communicates with the Surge client on port 1700 by default.

[!IMPORTANT] An Auth Token is required to connect the extension to your Surge server. This can be obtained from the TUI under Settings > Extension, or by running surge token as the user who runs Surge.

Chrome / Edge / Brave

1. Stable: Get the Extension from Chrome Web Store
2. Development:
   • Download extension-chrome.zip from the latest GitHub release.
   • Unzip it somewhere on disk.
   • Open your browser and navigate to chrome://extensions.
   • Enable "Developer mode" in the top right corner.
   • Click "Load unpacked".
   • Select the unzipped extension-chrome folder.
   • Click the Surge icon in your browser toolbar and enter your Auth Token in the settings.

Firefox

1. Stable: Get the Add-on
2. Development:
   • Download extension-firefox.zip from the latest GitHub release.
   • Navigate to about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox.
   • Click "Load Temporary Add-on...".
   • Select the zip file (or unzip and select manifest.json).
   • Click the Surge icon in your browser toolbar and enter your Auth Token in the settings.

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Acknowledgements

Huge thanks to the teams and sponsors helping us build and ship Surge:

• FOSS United for their generous grant supporting our development. We genuinely love and appreciate everything they do to build and nurture the FOSS ecosystem in India.
• Charm for the incredible terminal UI ecosystem (Bubble Tea, Lip Gloss, and more).
• GoReleaser Pro for release automation (provided free for open source).

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Community & Contributing

We love community contributions! Whether it's a bug fix, a new feature, or just cleaning up typos. PRs are always welcome. For a quick guide, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

For internal TUI visual checks, run ./scripts/visual-test.sh. The fixture uses the production TUI and is compiled only into a temporary test binary. See Visual testing.

You can check out the Discussions for any questions or ideas, or follow us on X (Twitter)!

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

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