Pause All aria2c Downloads Via Command Line on Ubuntu

This guide explains how to pause all active downloads managed by aria2c on an Ubuntu system using the command line. It covers the necessary prerequisites regarding RPC configuration and provides the specific curl command required to send the pause signal to the running aria2c instance without stopping the application entirely.

To pause downloads remotely via the command line, aria2c must be running with the JSON-RPC interface enabled. If you have not started aria2c with the --enable-rpc flag, you cannot control it externally. Assuming RPC is active on the default port 6800, you can use the curl utility to send a pause request.

Open your terminal and execute the following command to pause all active downloads:

curl http://localhost:6800/jsonrpc -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":"1","method":"aria2.pauseAll","params":["token:YOUR_SECRET"]}'

Replace YOUR_SECRET with the actual secret token defined in your aria2c configuration file using the --rpc-secret option. If you did not set a secret token, modify the params section to an empty list like this: "params":[].

Once executed, aria2c will halt all current download sessions. To resume the downloads later, you can use a similar curl command but change the method to aria2.unpauseAll. This method ensures that download progress is saved and can be continued without data loss or corruption.