Pinterest Downloader GUI

A desktop GUI for scraping Pinterest media from a URL, built on top of the pinterest-dl API.

Warning

This project is independent and not affiliated with Pinterest. It is designed solely for educational purposes. Automating the scraping of websites might conflict with their Terms of Service. The repository owner disclaims any liability for misuse of this tool. Use it responsibly and at your own legal risk.

Features

• Three modes - Scrape media from a pin/board URL, Search by keyword, or Download from a saved metadata cache.
• Video support - Fetch HLS video segments and mux them to MP4 via FFmpeg.
• Resolution filtering - Discard assets smaller than a minimum width/height.
• Metadata export - Save accompanying alt text/captions, with an optional strict mode that drops assets lacking valid captions.
• Metadata cache - Write scraped records to a JSON file for reuse in Download mode without re-scraping.
• Native desktop window - Runs as a standalone app (pywebview), no browser tab required.

Download

Grab the latest precompiled Windows binary (built with Nuitka) from the releases page. No Python installation required:

Download the latest release

Install from source

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/sean1832/pinterest-dl-gui.git
   cd pinterest-dl-gui

2. Install dependencies

   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Build the frontend and start the app

   python build.py && python app.py

Build a release

Building an executable additionally requires Nuitka, declared in requirements-build.txt:

pip install -r requirements-build.txt
python build.py --release --version 1.0.0

--release produces a standalone folder under dist/app.dist/. This is the recommended build: it runs in place and starts fast.

From that standalone folder you can produce two distribution artifacts:

python build.py --zip --version 1.0.0        # dist/pinterest-dl-gui_1.0.0_x64.zip
python build.py --installer --version 1.0.0  # dist/pinterest-dl-gui_1.0.0_x64_setup.exe

• --zip packs the folder into a portable, grab-and-run archive.
• --installer wraps it in a Windows installer (Start Menu shortcut + uninstaller). This requires Inno Setup 6 or 7; the build invokes its ISCC.exe compiler with the script in installer.iss.

Both flags imply --release and can be combined (--zip --installer).

For a single portable exe instead, pass --onefile:

python build.py --onefile --version 1.0.0  # dist/pinterest-dl-gui_1.0.0_x64_portable.exe

The onefile build is one self-contained exe, but it unpacks to a temp directory on every launch, so startup is slower than the standalone folder.

To produce every artifact at once, combine the flags:

python build.py --onefile --zip --installer --version 1.0.0

The onefile and standalone builds need separate Nuitka compiles (a onefile build's app.dist holds a DLL payload, not a runnable exe), but the second compile reuses Nuitka's C build cache, so it is much cheaper than a cold build.

Tech stack

The app is a Python backend driving a Svelte frontend rendered in a native desktop window - no browser, no local web server.

• pywebview hosts the UI in the OS-native webview and bridges Python and JavaScript.
• pinterest-dl does the actual scraping and downloading; the GUI is a frontend over its API.
• Svelte 5 + TypeScript with Vite build the frontend, which build.py compiles to static files that pywebview loads from disk.
• Tailwind CSS + shadcn-svelte (bits-ui primitives, Lucide icons) provide the styling and components.
• Nuitka compiles everything into a standalone Windows binary for release.

Support