this pacman + aria2 is awesome. had no idea that was even possible.

The only issue I had with this setup was that if a download got cancelled, it would start failing throwing package integrity errors because aria downloads directly to /var/cache/pacman/pkg/package_name.tar.xz rather than a .part file which is copied upon completion. The built-in downloader of pacman ensures this is done right.

"By far my go to app for downloading anything. aria2c [link] downloads anything"

Just to clarify, when you say "anything" do you mean things like soundcloud and youtube ?

Is this an alternative to a tool like youtube-dl ?

Probably not quite what you meant (since it still require youtube-dl), but youtube-dl has built-in support for downloading using aria2c as a backend.

    youtube-dl --external-downloader=aria2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

I now have a new alias thank you!

aria2c supports HTTP(S), FTP, SFTP and Torrent/Metalink.

Many applications (youtube-dl through --external-downloader) can use aria2c as a "downloader backend".

aria2c + https://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2 offers a very fast, portable and simple download manager.

Good question, I'd like to know too.

aria is also controllable by Python via XML-RPC - seen that in the docs, on my stack to try, could be useful.

uGet can use aria2 as its backend too

aria2c is the backend for uGet