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API Keys

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Ryszard Knop edited this page Aug 2, 2026 · 3 revisions

To download games, itch-dl uses a mix of webpage scraping and calling official itch APIs. Served web pages behave a little different when you're logged in (more details in infoboxes, less restrictions), and a valid API key is required to authenticate requests to the API to fetch available files, etc. Each key is roughly equivalent to full access to a single Itch account - do not share them with other people!

API Keys (Required)

  • You can create or look up existing API keys on itch.io.
  • Only web keys can be used by itch-dl - do not use existing desktop or wharf keys.
  • You can save your key as api_key in the configuration file for easy access.
  • You can also provide it with the --api-key argument to itch-dl.

Cookies (Optional)

Note: Game sites downloaded with a cookie may contain the logged in user's details. Downloader tries to remove some of this info in page postprocessing, but it's not guaranteed to be 100% clear.

  • Open a new private browser window and log into itch.io.
  • Open your web browser devtools (F12) and go to Storage -> Cookies. (Screenshots below.)
  • Copy the itchio cookie (NOT itchio_token, just itchio) and pass that as the --cookie argument.
  • You can save your cookie as cookie in the configuration file for easy access.

Grabbing cookies from browsers (F12/Devtools)

In all browsers, open dev tools with F12, Ctrl-Shift-I or Menu -> more Tools -> Web Developer Tools.

In Firefox:

image

In Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Helium (UI might look a little different):

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