How to Show the wget Progress Bar Only in Linux?

Remote management of UNIX/Linux/BSD servers via SSH session is a common practice. For installation, you might need to download software or other files. While Linux has several graphical download managers, the wget command-line tool is preferred for non-interactive downloads. The wget command supports various Internet protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP.

Basic Wget Usage

The simplest use of wget is downloading a single file to your current directory. Type wget followed by the file URL

$ wget https://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm

--2022-12-26 10:18:13--  https://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm
Resolving www.tutorialspoint.com (www.tutorialspoint.com)... 192.229.221.69
Connecting to www.tutorialspoint.com (www.tutorialspoint.com)|192.229.221.69|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 127735 (125K) [text/html]
Saving to: 'index.htm'

index.htm     0%[                    ]       0  --.-KB/s               
index.htm   100%[===================>] 124.74K  --.-KB/s    in 0.009s  

2022-12-26 10:18:14 (12.9 MB/s) - 'index.htm' saved [127735/127735]

By default, wget displays verbose output including connection details, file size, and download progress. Sometimes you only want to see the progress bar without the extra information.

Showing Progress Bar Only

Method 1: Using --show-progress Option

For wget versions 1.16 and later, combine the -q (quiet) option with --show-progress to display only the progress bar while hiding all other output

$ wget https://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm -q --show-progress

index.htm   100%[===================>] 124.74K  --.-KB/s    in 0.03s   

Method 2: Using grep Filter

For older wget versions (before 1.16) where --show-progress is not available, filter the output using grep to show only lines containing the percentage symbol

$ wget https://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm 2>&1 | grep '%'

  0K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 40%  125M 0s
 50K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 80% 6.45M 0s
100K .......... .......... ....                            100%  206M=0.008s

Comparison of Methods

Additional Options

You can combine progress-only display with other useful wget options

• -O filename Specify output filename

• -c Continue partial downloads

• --limit-rate=200k Limit download speed

$ wget -q --show-progress -c --limit-rate=200k https://example.com/largefile.zip

Conclusion

The wget command provides flexible options for displaying download progress. Modern wget versions (1.16+) offer the --show-progress option for clean progress bars, while older versions can use grep filtering. These methods help create cleaner, more focused output for automated scripts and interactive use.