PatchDL

A standalone PlayStation 5 ELF payload that downloads and installs official game patches on your terms. It serves its own dark-mode web UI and runs without etaHEN.

PatchDL is built for setups where nanoDNS blocks Sony's servers for the whole console. It resolves the Sony patch CDN on its own DNS path, so the rest of the system stays offline and only the patches you pick get fetched.

by Knutwurst

What it does

Scans installed titles and classifies each: genuine install, ShadowMountPlus mount, preinstall, or unknown.
Reads the title name, installed version, and Sony version.xml URL from the PS5 app database.
Fetches each title's version.xml past nanoDNS (a raw DNS query to 1.1.1.1) and verifies TLS against the pinned SCEI DNAS root.
Picks the newest patch compatible with the current firmware (system_ver <= firmware), so an update never forces a firmware upgrade.
Downloads the patch from Sony's manifest pieces into one local .pkg, then installs it through Sony's AppInstUtil service.

Downloading

PatchDL pulls each patch over a pool of connections instead of one stream, which lifts the ~7 MB/s per-connection ceiling on the Sony CDN. Set the connection count (1 to 16) in Settings with the stepper; the change applies live, with no payload restart. One patch downloads at a time and further requests queue.

Downloads survive interruptions:

Resume across a reboot. PatchDL records progress per manifest piece in a sidecar beside the .pkg, written after every completed piece, so a reboot or relaunch continues where it stopped.
Pause, Resume, Cancel. Pause keeps the partial file, Resume continues it, Cancel deletes it. All three work at any point in a download.
Verification. Turn on "Verify downloaded pieces (SHA-256)" to check each piece against its manifest hash while downloading. After a download you can also verify the assembled package on-device against Sony's per-piece hashes (GET /api/pkgverify/<title_id>).

Patches download to /data/patchdl on the internal SSD. Large retail updates run tens of GB.

Safety model

Deny-by-default. A patch installs only for a genuine install, and only when the patch metadata targets the installed game:

Source	Check	Download	Install
official	yes	yes	yes
shadowmount	yes	yes	no
preinstall / unknown	yes	no	no

Two guards stop the wrong target being installed: the patch target id (from version.xml / manifest_url) must match the installed game, and the install call receives the installed game's content id from app.db. PatchDL refuses a true target-title mismatch rather than installing a phantom title.

All writes stay under /data/patchdl. PatchDL never writes to the system partition and never touches firmware.

Settings

Settings persist to /data/patchdl/config.json and survive a restart:

Default policy (allow or deny) and a per-game enable toggle.
Install after download, as a global default with a per-game override.
Delete the PKG after a successful install.
Verify downloaded pieces (SHA-256).
Parallel download connections (1 to 16), applied live.

Build

Requires ps5-payload-dev/sdk. The network and install features need the prebuilt libcurl + OpenSSL from ps5-payload-dev/pacbrew-repo in the SDK sysroot (target/user/homebrew); scripts/build_ps5.sh enables them when present. libmicrohttpd is vendored under vendor/etahen, SQLite under vendor/sqlite.

scripts/build_ps5.sh        # produces patchdl-ps5.elf

Deploy

This console uses the BD-JB autoloader with itsPLK's Payload Manager on port 8084 (not a 9021 elfldr). scripts/deploy_ps5.sh uploads the version-named ELF and launches it; the payload replaces any running instance.

PS5_HOST=<console-ip> scripts/deploy_ps5.sh

On start it shows an on-screen notification with the URL. Open the web UI at:

http://<console-ip>:12880/

Status

Verified on firmware 11.60: title scan, source classification, version resolution past the nanoDNS block, firmware-compatibility filtering, the parallel download pool, reboot-safe resume, and on-device SHA-256 verification. A full Dead Island 2 update (61.6 GB) downloaded and verified byte-perfect across several reboots.

Install works for same-region patches, where Sony stores the patch bytes under the installed game's own title id. PatchDL now mirrors etaHEN's native DirectPKGInstaller call shape for that path: it passes an empty MetaInfo.content_id, lets AppInstUtil bind the signed package metadata, keeps the returned content id, and exposes /api/installstatus for installer progress when sceAppInstUtilGetInstallStatus is exported.

Cross-region patches are a known limitation. Sony sometimes packages a regional patch under a different (master) storage title and ships it as a debug-magic container. PatchDL downloads such a patch and verifies it against Sony's hashes, but refuses to install it from the standalone ELF because InstallByPackage does not retarget signed package metadata on 11.60, and the homebrew alternative (BGFT register) returns "not supported" outside the system process. Installing that class of patch needs Sony's authenticated updater, which nanoDNS blocks. Disc games need the disc inserted for their patch to apply, which is a normal Sony requirement.

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