Glitch project bulk-downloading

[Pomax]

How to bulk-download all your pojects

With the project hosting shutdown in July, many of you have asked for a way to bulk-download your projects: this thread is for you.

We’ve created a python script that you can run that will download all your projects, and also download all your assets from the asset manager into a glitch-assets folder for each project.

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How long do I have?!

Project hosting will shut down in July, but you will continue to be able to download your projects for the entirety of 2025. So you have some time yet.

Where to get it

Download the script here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Pomax/glitch-bulk-downloader/refs/heads/main/download.py

(the script itself lives in the https://github.com/Pomax/glitch-bulk-downloader GitHub repository)

What do I need to run this?

1. You need Python 3.x

You will need Python 3 installed. If you’re on linux or macos, this will almost certainly already be the case, and you should be able to use python3 without installing anything. On Windows, you may need to go to the Windows Store, find Python, and install it first. This will add the python command (note that on Windows there is no “3” at the end). Alternatively, you can visit Python Releases for Windows | Python.org and download the installer for the current version of Python 3 that’s appropriate to your Windows version.

2. You will also want tar

In order to unpack your projects and put them in properly named subfolders, you will need the tar command to be available. If you’re on Linux or MacOS, you’re (again) already good to go, but if you’re on Windows you will need to “install” tar.

installing tar on Windows

If you use git, the easiest way to install tar is to just run the windows git installer, and tell it to install the GNU tools. After that finishes you should be able to confirm tar is available by opening a command prompt or powershell and just running tar --help.

If you don’t, you can also exclusively install tar by heading over to Tar for Windows and clicking on the binary setup link. This will take you to a Sourceforge (the place to be for open source before GitHub showed up) download page, which should automatically download the setup program.

Run the setup, and then you’ll need to update your windows PATH to include the C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin folder: you can either do this persistently (instructions are easily found on the web for that), or you can run set PATH=%PATH%;"C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin" in your command prompt or powershell before you run the download script.

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How to use the script

The script will download your regular projects into an ./active folder, and will download all your archived projects into an ./archived folder. It can do this in two “modes”:

Interactive mode

You can invoke the script by calling:

python3 download.py

(or python download.py on Windows)

Run in this way, the script will ask you to provide your Glitch user id and token. Both of these can be found by going to glitch.com, opening your dev tools, and typing:

const { id, persistentToken: token} = JSON.parse(localStorage.cachedUser);
console.log(id, token);

This will log something along the lines of 123456 '3a6f55bd-8206-43d3-a149-176f13f32c45', where the first number is your id, and the second string is your token.

Automatic mode

You can also run the script with those values directly, e.g.

python3 download.py 123456 '3a6f55bd-8206-43d3-a149-176f13f32c45'

In which case the script won’t ask for anything and will just get to downloading.

Optional runtime flags

The script supports two runtime flags, with flags needing to come after your user id and token:

1. --no_assets, which will make the script download your project, but not download the associated assets, and
2. --no-skip, which will make the script re-download any projects you already downloaded if you run it more than once.

Replacing CDN URLs in your source code

Asset URLs are not automatically replaced in any source code, mostly because that’s much harder than you’d think it’d be, so you will still need to replace CDN URLs in your code with relative links to the ./glitch-assets folder that all your project’s assets were downloaded into.

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Known issues

While this script will download your projects and their associated assets, some assets may be on a very old CDN that currently has an expired certificate, so Python will refuse to download those assets out of security concerns (note that if your project’s 8 years old, that might affect you. If not, it probably won’t).

We’re looking into updating that certificate, but if enough folks run into this we can also add a flag to the download script to bypass security for those assets for folks who think that’s an acceptable risk.

I’ve downloaded everything… now what do I do? O_o

While you can now do “whatever you want” with your projects, you probably want have a look at the Migration Guides in the help center, as well as the Project migration thread here in the forum.

Questions or comments

If you have any questions about this script, or suggestions on how to improve it, feel free to leave a reply here in the thread, or file an issue over on GitHub · Where software is built

[manthrax]

I’ve got a project that is broken in the main UI and causing the bulk download script to terminate early…

Could someone possibly nuke or fix this project so that I can keep archiving?

Glitch Code Editor ･ﾟ✧

[Pomax]

The editor state has nothing to do with this script, it simply automates the process of physically clicking the “download” button on your dashboard by calling the same URL with the same auth information. If your project is broken in the editor, please write in to [email protected]

However, if you get a specific error while running the script, put it in your post and I can see if that’s something that “makes sense” and something I can write some defensive code for.

[manthrax]

Here’s the tail of where it stalls out:

[...snip...]

Downloading 'flower-tasty-doom'...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\glitch_rescue\download.py", line 158, in <module>
    download_project(user_token, project)
  File "D:\glitch_rescue\download.py", line 84, in download_project
    result = urlretrieve(url, file)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python311\Lib\urllib\request.py", line 241, in urlretrieve
    with contextlib.closing(urlopen(url, data)) as fp:
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python311\Lib\urllib\request.py", line 216, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python311\Lib\urllib\request.py", line 525, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python311\Lib\urllib\request.py", line 634, in http_response
    response = self.parent.error(
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python311\Lib\urllib\request.py", line 563, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python311\Lib\urllib\request.py", line 496, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Python311\Lib\urllib\request.py", line 643, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.full_url, code, msg, hdrs, fp)
urllib.error.HTTPError: HTTP Error 500: Internal Server Error

The run terminated like that a couple times.. I then tried adding an empty folder by that name in the hopes it would skip trying to retrieve that project, but it didn’t help.

I’d be happy with just deleting it, but theres no delete facility, and it won’t load in the editor.
I’ll hold off on re-running it because I don’t want to hammer the servers too much.. but perhaps checking for “directory exists” before re-downloading could be an option?

[wh0]

(removing this for OP’s preference )

[Pomax]

@manthrax Cheers, I’ve added a try/catch with a console warning that the downloader was unable to get that specific project, and skip over it rather than erroring out.

[lee]

Hi, I’m having some troubles with the bulk downloader hitting an error and quitting. Would be great to have it move on to the next project rather than quitting.

Additional info:
I tried rerunning the script and this time it got further along but again quit with the same error.

Thanks for any help.

Most recent:

Unpacking...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.13/shutil.py", line 856, in move
    os.rename(src, real_dst)
    ~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: './app' -> './discord-botkit'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/void/Sites/glitch-download/download.py", line 92, in download_project
    shutil.move("./app", f"./{project_title}")
    ~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.13/shutil.py", line 876, in move
    copy_function(src, real_dst)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.13/shutil.py", line 468, in copy2
    copyfile(src, dst, follow_symlinks=follow_symlinks)
    ~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.13/shutil.py", line 260, in copyfile
    with open(src, 'rb') as fsrc:
         ~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: './app'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/void/Sites/glitch-download/download.py", line 161, in <module>
    download_project(user_token, project)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/void/Sites/glitch-download/download.py", line 96, in download_project
    except HTTPError as e:
           ^^^^^^^^^
NameError: name 'HTTPError' is not defined. Did you mean: 'TabError'?

[Pomax]

@Lee I’ve updated the script to wait for the “./app” dir that the untar should create before moving on, let me know if that fixes things for you.

[manthrax]

That’s fantastic! Thank you.. I’ll give it a shot!

[lee]

Unfortunately I’m still getting an error, and then it quits.

Unpacking...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/void/Sites/glitch-download/download.py", line 177, in <module>
    download_project(user_token, project)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/void/Sites/glitch-download/download.py", line 104, in download_project
    wait_for_dir(unpacked_dir)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/void/Sites/glitch-download/download.py", line 84, in wait_for_dir
    time.sleep(poll_interval)
    ^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'builtin_function_or_method' object has no attribute 'sleep'

[Pomax]

Okay, no, that’s just me being really dumb. I’ve updated the time imports and that should no longer happen =_=

I’ll see if I can find a bit more time to make sure the script skips already downloaded projects, unless instructed not to with a --noskip flag, because for most folks redownloading 5~10 projects isn’t a problem, but 250+ can get real annoying real fast.

[Pomax]

Added the --no-skip flag, so that the script skips projects you already downloaded unless you explicitly add that flag.

[manthrax]

Nice. The script still chokes on Internal Server Error 500, but then I can just make an empty folder of the broken projects name and restart the script.

Currently 150 downloads in and still going.. have had to manually create 2 folders so far to get them skipped.

[Pomax]

Hmm, got an error log anyway? Always nicer to catch those 500’s in the right place.

[lee]

The script worked for me this time. THank you. I had 251 projects and 237 were downloaded succesfully.

Now…anyone have a bash script to bulk rewrite asset urls to glitch-assets/filename ?

[manthrax]

Worked for me.. all 350 projects downloaded. Only had to map out 2 bad ones.

[Pomax]

The reason I didn’t bake that in is because “I have no idea which file types you need” - the proper way to do it in HTML is to DOM parse the whole thing, then querySelect for href and src that start with the CDN prefix, and replace those, but for JS/TS it’s an AST parse and then updating the fetch or XMLHttpRequest argument, as well as updating href and src attributes for anything that’s an HTMLElement instance, for Python it’s… ehhh you get the idea. It gets way too tricky to get right reliably

But: I’d recommend opening VS Code on your “top level” dir with all the projects in it and doing a find and replace there if you just want “I have too many projects, just do the thing” =P

[lee]

Ah hah. Totally makes sense that it’s a bit more complicated for JavaScript.

I’m thinking of the HTML usecase for images: jpeg, jpg, png, gif, webp and audio files mp3, wav, ogg.

I was thinking the main need is to replace in the <img src=" from glitch.com/randomnumbers-filename.png?randomstring to glitch-assets/filename.png for example.

I may need to do some regex work I guess.

[Pomax]

Yeah, for the most part, you should be able to replace https://cdn.glitch.global/a-uuid-v4-string-here/your.filename.dot.extension?v=a-number with ./glitch-assets/your.filename.dot.extension and have that work.

[chriskyfung]

Propose Downloading Archived Projects Feature

I’m happy to share that a fork of Pomax’s script now lets you download archived (inactive) Glitch projects. If you’d like to keep your archived projects, this update makes it easy to retrieve and back up all your work effortlessly.

Key Improvement:

• Archived Project Download (--archived flag)
  • Allows you to download archived Glitch projects
  • Helps preserve your work even after removal

How to Use:

To download active projects without any optional flags, simply run:

python download.py <your_user_id> <your_persistent_token>

To download archived projects, run the script with the --archived flag:

python download.py <your_user_id> <your_persistent_token> --archived

Link removed

Cheers!

Updated
This official script now also supports downloading archived projects. Please refer to @Pomax’s comment below for more details.

[Pomax]

Instead of forking, it’d probably make more sense to just get that folded in. Want to leave a comment on the gist so I can get that updated?

[jenn]

hey team - any chance you can add the tutorial for this script as a guide in the help center for folks who are going there and searching for “bulk downloading/exporting”

[ckolderup]

Pomax passed this request on to the folks who have access to update those pages this morning and we hope to get it added soon!

[jenn]

thanks! also, is there a param i can add to the get_project_list url in this script so that it’s in reverse order of creation date. the limit is 400 and i have 700+ projects i’d like to get the most recent now that i’ve downloaded my oldest 400 lol

[ckolderup]

not sure if Pomax has time to update the script itself to add an option on the command line, but if you modify the script locally to add orderDirection=DESC to the query parameters, it should switch to sorting by newest.

[Pomax]

Note that the “400” max limit was mostly based on me checking how many projects the “most projects having users” had, and only test accounts showed up as having more than 400. I’ll have to take a closer look to see what happened there! A limit that’s lower than what people actually need is not a super useful limit.

[jenn]

orderDirection did the trick, thanks buds

[Pomax]

I had a looksee and I’ve bumped the max limit to 1000, so that everyone except a number of curious accounts with far more projects than they should have should be able to download all their projects without needing to resort to ordering query args.

(I’ve also updated the gist to match)

[thetechie]

Hello Glitch Support, I’m so devastated that Glitch is ending web hosting because I’m just starting out in front end development so this is all so new. Can someone ELI5 what I am supposed to do to make sure I don’t lose all my code projects/practices? How do we migrate? And do we want to migrate all projects at once or individually? @Pomax
Easiest way please I have no idea what I’m doing

[Pomax]

If you have no idea what you’re doing then unironically the best advice I can give is “ask a friend who’s tech savvy to help you”: hosting will be shut down on July 8th, but you will be able to download your projects until the end of this year so you have some time left to figure out what to do.

I’d recommend downloading all your projects in one go using a script that both downloads your projects as well as all the assets that go with your project (because just clicking the “download” button on your dashboard will not include your project assets), the instructions for which are listed in the first entry of the thread.

[Pomax]

I’ve updated the downloader to include the changes that @chriskyfung had worked into their fork, so it now downloads both your regular and archived projects, the former being put in an ./active dir, and the latter in an ./archived dir. So you should actually get all your projects now, rather than only your active projects.

The code has also be moved to a real GitHub repo rather than a gist, over on https://github.com/Pomax/glitch-bulk-downloader

[thetechie]

By “no idea what I’m doing”, I mean I’m not sure what to do after downloading my projects. They could sit in my downloads folder but then what? is there a easy way to upload all my projects to Github or some other platform (no experience with Github but seems to be the industry standard for hosting dev stuff)
Also, would you recommend just downloading projects individually or downloading all at once? I know you mentioned downloading individually wont download the assets but that’s not much of a concern for me.

[Pomax]

In that case, have a look at the Migration Guides in the help center.

I’ll add that link to the top post, too, so folks don’t have to hunt for that.

[thetechie]

Would you recommend just downloading projects individually or downloading all at once? I know you mentioned downloading individually wont download the assets but that’s not much of a concern for me. I’m reviewing the Migration Guides and there seems to be a few options — any guidance on how to choose which platform to migrate to? Netlify or Github

[Pomax]

There’s no real recommendation I can make, but the Project migration discussion thread has a lot of folks discussing which places are good to rehost your apps, depending on what kind of hosting you’re looking for.

As for whether to download only 1 or all projects: my personal advice is to always get a full backup of things that matter to you, irrespective of what else you do. Download all your projects, so that you have all your projects.

[thetechie]

@Pomax

As for whether to download only 1 or all projects: my personal advice is to always get a full backup of things that matter to you, irrespective of what else you do. Download all your projects, so that you have all your projects.

Oh for sure, I just mean is it more logical to download all my projects individually so that it’s easier to organize and migrate to say Github OR use the script you created to bulk download all projects but no platforms support uploading/migrating bulk projects anyway so I’d still have to rehost them individually.

[thetechie]

@manthrax wow that’s a lot of projects! so how long did the download take and it now all lives in a folder on your local computer? What to do next? I’d appreciate any insight because I’m a newbie and was hoping to use Glitch to get started with my frontend journey

[Pomax]

I’m in camp “why not both”. Download your projects, and at the same time figure out what you want to do with them on an individual basis, and if that doesn’t require your downloaded project then that’s a bonus, but hosting goes away in a few weeks, which means things like git exports or using the terminal to push your “repo” up to a different platform go away too, the only thing you’ll have left is the download button and scripts, and the download button won’t also download all your assets, so you’d still need a solution for that.