**ArchiveBox takes a list of website URLs you want to archive, and creates a local, static, browsable HTML clone of the content from those websites (it saves HTML, JS, media files, PDFs, images and more).**
You can use it to preserve access to websites you care about by storing them locally offline. ArchiveBox works by rendering the pages in a headless browser, then saving all the requests and fully loaded pages in multiple redundant common formats (HTML, PDF, PNG, WARC) that will last long after the original content disappears off the internet. It also automatically extracts assets like git repositories, audio, video, subtitles, images, and PDFs into separate files using `youtube-dl`, `pywb`, and `wget`.
ArchiveBox is a CLI application written in Python, using wget, chrome, youtube-dl, and other common tools to archive URLs. It doesn't require a constantly running server or backend, instead, you just run the `./archive` command each time you want to import new links and update the static output. It can import and export JSON (among other formats), so it's easy to script or hook up to other APIs. If you run it on a schedule and import from browser history or bookmarks regularly, you can sleep soundly knowing that the slice of the internet you care about will be automatically preserved in multiple, durable long-term formats that will be accessible for decades (or longer).
ArchiveBox has [3 main dependencies](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Install#dependencies) beyond `python3`: `wget`, `chromium`, and `youtube-dl`.
To get started, you can [install them manually](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Install) using your system's package manager, you can use the [automated helper script](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Quickstart), or you can use the official [Docker](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Docker) container. All three dependencies are optional if [disabled](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration#archive-method-toggles) in settings.
For more information, see the [full Quickstart guide](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Quickstart), [Usage](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage), and [Configuration](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration) docs.
*(`pip install archivebox` will be available in the near future, follow our [Roadmap](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Roadmap) for progress)*
ArchiveBox imports a list of URLs from stdin, remote URL, or file, then adds the pages to a local archive folder using wget to create a browsable HTML clone, youtube-dl to extract media, and a full instance of Chrome headless for PDF, Screenshot, and DOM dumps, and more...
Using multiple methods and the market-dominant browser to execute JS ensures we can save even the most complex, finicky websites in at least a few high-quality, long-term data formats.
By default it does everything but you can disable or tweak [individual options](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration) via environment variables or config file.
The archiving is additive so you can schedule `./archive` to [run regularly](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Scheduled-Archiving) and pull new links into the index.
Vast treasure troves of knowledge are lost every day on the internet to link rot. As a society, we have an imperative to preserve some important parts of that treasure, just like we preserve our books, paintings, and music in physical libraries long after the originals go out of print or fade into obscurity.
The balance between the permanence and ephemeral nature of content on the internet is part of what makes it beautiful.
I don't think everything should be preserved in an automated fashion, making all content permanent and never removable, but I do think people should be able to decide for themselves and effectively archive specific content that they care about.
<imgsrc="https://i.imgur.com/4nkFjdv.png"width="10%"align="left"/> The aim of ArchiveBox is to go beyond what the Wayback Machine and other public archiving services can do, by adding a headless browser to replay sessions accurately, and by automatically extracting all the content in multiple redundant formats that will survive being passed down to historians and archivists through many generations.
ArchiveBox differentiates itself from [similar projects](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Web-Archiving-Community#Web-Archiving-Projects) by trying to be a simple, robust, way for the average tech-savvy user to save sizable portions of the content they view and care about locally. Unlike crawler software that starts from a seed URL and works outwards, or public tools like Archive.org designed for users to manually submit links from the public internet, ArchiveBox tries to be a set-and-forget archiver suitable for archiving your browsing history, RSS feeds, or bookmarks, including private/authenticated content that you wouldn't want to share with a centralized service.
Whether you want learn which organizations are the big players in the web archiving space, want to find a specific open source tool for your web archiving need, or just want to see where archivists hang out online, our Community Wiki page serves as an index of the broader web archiving community. Check it out to learn about some of the coolest web archiving projects and communities on the web!
*A collection of the most active internet archiving communities and initiatives.*
- Check out the ArchiveBox [Roadmap](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Roadmap) and [Changelog](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/wiki/Changelog)
- Learn why archiving the internet is important by reading the "[On the Importance of Web Archiving](https://parameters.ssrc.org/2018/09/on-the-importance-of-web-archiving/)" blog post.
- Or reach out to me for questions and comments via [@theSquashSH](https://twitter.com/thesquashSH) on Twitter.
<sub><i>This project is maintained mostly in <ahref="https://nicksweeting.com/blog#About">my spare time</a> with the help from generous contributors.</i></sub>
