Install Ladle

What you need

• A Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
• Apple silicon or Intel. Ladle runs natively on both, from the same download.

Ladle is free. There’s no account to create, no trial and no license key.

Install

1. Download the latest Ladle.dmg. This link always gets the newest version, and the file lands in your Downloads folder. To see what’s new first, read the latest release.

2. Open Ladle.dmg. In the window that appears, drag Ladle onto the Applications folder.

3. Eject the disk image: in a Finder window, click the eject button next to Ladle in the sidebar. You can move Ladle.dmg to the Trash afterwards.

4. Open Ladle from your Applications folder. The first time, macOS asks you to approve it, as described in First launch below.

Tip

Keep Ladle in your Applications folder. Ladle can only update itself from there, so don’t run it straight from the disk image.

First launch

Ladle is free, and it isn’t notarized by Apple, because notarizing takes a paid Apple developer account. So the first time you open Ladle, macOS can’t check it with Apple and asks you to approve it. You only do this once. To see which version of macOS you have, choose Apple menu › About This Mac.

macOS 15 Sequoia and later

1. Open Ladle. macOS says it can’t verify that Ladle is free of malware. Click Done.

2. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security and scroll down to Security.

3. Next to “Ladle was blocked…”, click Open Anyway.

4. macOS warns you once more. Click Open Anyway, then enter your password or use Touch ID.

Open Anyway only appears once you’ve tried to open Ladle, and goes away after about an hour. If it isn’t there, open Ladle again, then go back to step 2.

macOS 14 Sonoma

1. In your Applications folder, Control-click Ladle and choose Open.

2. macOS asks whether you’re sure you want to open it. Click Open again.

From then on, Ladle opens like any other app. Updates don’t ask again: Ladle downloads them itself and checks each one against its own update key before installing it.

Ladle’s source code is public on GitHub, and each release is built from that code by GitHub Actions.

Once Ladle is open

Ladle opens its main window with an empty list, ready for your first link. A few things happen along the way:

• The menu bar icon appears. It shows your total speed, and its menu lists what’s downloading. You can hide it with Show Ladle in the menu bar in Ladle › Settings › General.
• Ladle opens at login from now on, so it’s ready for the Tonight queue after a restart. Turn this off with Open Ladle at login in the same place.
• macOS may ask to allow notifications. Click Allow if you’d like to hear when downloads finish.

Next, set up your browser, so clicking a download in Chrome, Arc, Edge or Brave sends it straight to Ladle.

Updates

Ladle checks for updates once a day and installs them in the background, so you only need to install it once. How updates work.

Uninstall Ladle

1. Quit Ladle: choose Ladle › Quit Ladle, or press ⌘Q.

2. Drag Ladle from your Applications folder to the Trash.

3. If you added Ladle’s extension to a browser, remove it on that browser’s extensions page. If you loaded it from the Ladle-Chrome-Extension folder, move that folder to the Trash too.

Files you downloaded stay where they are. Ladle keeps your download list, resume state and settings in ~/Library/Application Support/Ladle. To remove those too, choose Go › Go to Folder in Finder, enter ~/Library/Application Support, and move the Ladle folder to the Trash.