From Vision to Reality: Charlie Monroe Discusses Downie’s Journey
Interviews • July 25, 2024
We recently had the opportunity to speak with Charlie Monroe, the developer of Downie, a powerful video downloading tool for macOS. Over ten years in the making, Downie has evolved from a simple idea to a sophisticated app that caters to a wide range of users. The developer shared insights into the app’s development journey, its unique selling points, and future plans.
TheSweetBits: First, can you walk us through the development process of Downie from concept to release?
Charlie Monroe: This is really a long time ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy – Downie 1.0 was released over 10 years ago. I was fresh out of college and I knew I wanted to build something on my own rather than to develop for someone – possibly something I wouldn’t even really care about. I remember thinking about where to start – you need to have a vision of an app to develop. And there were no decent video downloaders back then, LTE/4G was a fairly new technology, connection on the road usually sucked, so it was a good idea to take along some offline videos.
I’ve then decided to build a video downloader which was something that was missing on macOS in my opinion. It is important to think about how to make the app unique and other apps were either unnecessarily complex, or way too simple, only supporting one site. I wanted to make a simple, yet universal app that would work across many sites all over the world.
In your opinion, what is Downie’s unique selling point compared to other video downloading tools?
Downie is simple to use, yet offers advanced features, it’s frequently updated (on weekly to biweekly basis) and mainly offers easy ways to request support (me). I offer one-on-one support via email, in most cases within 24 hours, I look into the issue and do my best to help the user get the desired results.
Who do you think would benefit the most from using Downie?
The use for Downie is very broad. I know of many teachers who want to put some videos into their slideshows/teaching materials, many people use this to archive their own appearances in various videos and actually I’m aware of various news companies using Downie so that they e.g. can include an online video in their report. And then there’s, of course, e.g. the possibility of taking some videos offline so that they can be viewed on a plane or on commute to work.
How do you ensure compatibility with the ever-changing landscape of video-sharing platforms?
By everyday work. The unfortunate thing about this is that I can’t really take a vacation without taking work with me – someone needs to tend to all the support requests and changes made by the sites and it’s a neverending cycle of fixing broken integrations…
How do you balance user-requested features with your own product vision?
It’s definitely not easy. It may seem to the user that adding a checkbox for something is very easy and would “fix something”. But that is rarely the case – adding a checkbox is usually indeed very easy, but is it the optimal solution? If you add 100 checkboxes to settings, no one will ever find what they’re looking for anyway…
Another common requests are for things that I know for sure people would set up, forget about them and it would result in unexpected behavior that would be very very hard to debug. I tend to really dislike features that allow you to misconfigure an app to a state where its behavior gets erratic.
Given the recent security concerns, what steps have you taken to enhance Downie’s privacy features?
I fully understand the concerns, but there was never any danger in the first place. I admit that the “joke” was juvenile at best and regret doing so in the first place, but when it comes to privacy, I am very strict – I’ve never included analytics provided by Google or other large companies – I’ve always found them not to be trustworthy in privacy matters. All analytics that Downie uses are custom-built and contain zero personal information or even a way to tie two different events to the same user. This is described in legth within the Help book which is part of Downie and can be easily verified using e.g. Proxyman.
People often ask why to use analytics at all – well, it’s not for spying on people. Analytics are a way of understanding which features are used and which not. A developer can have a great idea, thinking how that feature will be loved by users, but it turns out it’s not – that gives the developer the opportunity to re-think it or focus on improving other features that are used by more users. That’s all the analytics are for…
Can you share any upcoming features or improvements that users can look forward to?
Downie currently carries a bit of a technological debt due to it supporting older macOS versions. Many people don’t realize that supporting an older macOS version is not just a checkbox, but it prevents you from adopting new technologies which are then required for future development.
Given that Apple’s developer tools will be dropping support for older macOS versions (per-macOS 11) in the fall, the focus will be on updating the source code, making it faster and more reliable using newer technologies. This is something that’s already partially implemented on iOS (Downie is available on iOS via Setapp Mobile which is currently in beta) and I’d like to bring a lot of this back to macOS.
How do you see emerging technologies like Web3, or AI potentially impacting the video downloading landscape?
The Internet will still be an everchanging place with content coming and going – and the going part is the critical one – it’s really hard to find something that you’ve seen a year ago – the content can easily be gone forever. But future is always very hard to predict, so let’s wait and see :)
TheSweetBits final notes
Downie continues to set the standard for video downloading on macOS, blending ease of use with advanced features. Charlie Monroe’s commitment to user support and continuous improvement ensures Downie remains a top choice. To explore all that Downie offers, you may visit their official website or check out our dedicated Downie review here.
