Stream Detection — Automatically Find HLS, DASH & MP4 Videos

Video Downloader Plus is a stream video downloader that identifies HLS, DASH, and 16+ progressive formats as you browse — no manual URL hunting required.

Video Downloader Plus watches network traffic in the background while you browse. The moment it identifies a video stream on the page, the extension icon activates and shows you everything it found.

How detection works

1. Passive monitoring — Video Downloader Plus watches outgoing network requests in the background, looking for responses that match known video formats and media types.
2. Stream identification — Each intercepted response is analyzed to extract format, quality variants, duration, file size, and codec information.
3. Visual notification — Once a match is confirmed, the extension icon turns blue to signal that something is ready to act on.
4. User action — Open the popup to review detected streams by quality tier and decide whether to download, cast, or save them.

Detection runs locally in your browser. For sites where network interception alone isn’t sufficient, Video Downloader Plus uses a server-assisted fallback to identify streams.

Supported stream types

Adaptive streaming

Type	Format	Notes
HLS	.m3u8	Video Downloader Plus parses master playlists to enumerate every quality variant and detect separate audio renditions.
DASH	.mpd	MPD manifests are parsed to extract available resolutions, bitrates, and segment templates.

Progressive video

Video Downloader Plus detects direct video files in 16 container formats:

Format	Extensions
MP4	.mp4, .m4v
WebM	.webm
MKV	.mkv
MOV	.mov
Transport Stream	.ts, .m2ts, .mts
AVI	.avi
OGG	.ogg
MPEG	.mpg
WMV	.wmv
Flash Video	.flv
3GP	.3gp

Audio formats

Video Downloader Plus also picks up standalone audio streams: .mp3, .aac, .m4a, .flac, .wav

Platform-specific detection

Some platforms wrap their stream URLs inside API responses rather than exposing them as direct network requests. Video Downloader Plus handles these with dedicated interceptors:

• Vimeo — Intercepts the player configuration API call to extract both progressive MP4 download URLs and HLS playlists, along with accurate file sizes that aren’t available from headers alone.

Detection indicator

The Video Downloader Plus icon in your toolbar reflects the current state of the page:

• Default state — No video streams have been found on the active tab.
• Active (blue) — At least one stream has been detected and is ready to act on.

Clicking the active icon opens the stream list, organized by quality variant when multiple options exist.

Stream metadata

For each detected stream, Video Downloader Plus surfaces the following information:

• Title — Pulled from page metadata or stream manifest tags
• Thumbnail — Preview image extracted from Open Graph tags or the page’s video element
• Quality — All resolution variants available in the manifest (e.g., 480p, 1080p, 4K)
• File size — Exact size from Content-Length headers for progressive files; estimated from bitrate and duration for HLS/DASH
• Duration — Video length when present in manifest or media metadata
• Source URL — The page the stream was found on

HLS and DASH file size estimates are calculated from the stream’s declared bandwidth and total segment duration. These are close approximations — actual download sizes may vary slightly.

Quality tiers

Quality	Resolution	Free	Professional
SD	480p and below	Unlimited	Unlimited
HD	720p	Unlimited	Unlimited
Full HD	1080p	3 per day	Unlimited
QHD	1440p	—	Unlimited
2K	2048p	—	Unlimited
4K	2160p	—	Unlimited
5K	5120p	—	Unlimited
6K	6144p	—	Unlimited
8K	7680p	—	Unlimited
60fps	Any resolution	—	Unlimited

Free users get unlimited downloads up to 720p. Full HD (1080p) is available on the Free plan at 3 downloads per day. Anything above 1080p or 60fps content requires Professional.

Detection settings

Open the extension’s options page to tune how Video Downloader Plus monitors traffic:

• Format filtering — Turn detection on or off for individual video and audio format types
• Minimum file size — Skip files below a threshold to filter out ads and preview clips (presets: 10KB, 100KB, 1MB, 2MB, or enter a custom value)
• Blocked sites — Specify domains where Video Downloader Plus should not activate, using pattern matching

Reach options by right-clicking the Video Downloader Plus icon and selecting Options, or by clicking the gear icon inside the popup.

Supported sites

Video Downloader Plus works with any site that delivers video through HLS, DASH, MP4, WebM, or any of the other supported formats. This covers the overwhelming majority of video hosting platforms, media sites, and web apps built on standard streaming infrastructure.

Video Downloader Plus is intended for personal archiving and fair-use scenarios. Respect the rights of content creators and review the terms of service of any site before downloading.