Long downloads are harder to supervise when Wget runs quietly or its output is captured. A forced progress bar keeps the transfer visible if stderr is not discarded.

GNU Wget normally uses a bar on an interactive terminal and switches to dot output when the output is not a TTY. Forcing the bar style keeps the gauge in captured output, although a capture may retain separate redraws instead of updating one line.

The progress bar is display only. It does not change the saved filename, retry policy, exit status, or integrity of the downloaded file.

Related: How to log wget output to a file
Related: How to configure default options in ~/.wgetrc
Tool: Wget Command Generator

Steps to show a download progress bar in Wget:

  1. Run the quiet download with a forced, non-scrolling progress bar. 
    $ wget --show-progress --quiet --progress=bar:force:noscroll \
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.25.0.tar.gz
wget-1.25.0.tar.gz    0%[                    ]       0  --.-KB/s
##### snipped #####
wget-1.25.0.tar.gz  100%[===================>]   5.02M   542KB/s    in 11s

    --quiet suppresses the normal request and save messages, while --show-progress keeps progress visible. bar:force overrides the non-TTY fallback to dots, and noscroll prevents long filenames from sliding across the gauge. The URL downloads the Wget source archive; a different file URL can be used in its place.

    Wget writes progress to standard error (stderr), so 2>/dev/null or >/dev/null 2>&1 hides the bar.

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