A simple web-based video downloader that accepts URLs via a minimal web interface and uses yt-dlp to download videos.

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lesolas20/yt-downloader

• git
• yq
• Podman
• Python

• Get a cookiefile for yt-dlp to use (see yt-dlp wiki) and save it in the service directory (yt-downloader/cookies.txt).

cd yt-downloader
./deploy

The deployment script will build and run the container.

After making changes to any configuration files, the container has to be rebuilt for the changes to take effect. For that, before running ./deploy, run this:

podman stop yt-downloader
podman rm yt-downloader
podman rmi yt-downloader

Configuration can be changed by editing config.yaml.

• server.port — port on the host machine on which the web interface will be available
• paths.log — file where the logs will be written to
• paths.cookies — file to read cookies from
• paths.output — directory where downloaded videos will be saved to
• yt_dlp — yt-dlp configuration options. See yt-dlp documentation for available options

• server.port: 9320

• paths.log: server.log

• paths.cookies: cookies.txt

• paths.output: ~/Videos

• yt_dlp:

  • Format: best quality 1080p video, lower resolution if 1080p is unavailable
  • Output file name:
    • title - channel - date [YT ID] for individual videos
    • playlist/# - title - channel - date [YT ID] for playlists
  • SponsorBlock: remove sponsored segments
  • Rate limits to reduce the risk of getting banned

The cli_to_yaml.py script translates yt-dlp CLI arguments to a YAML configuration used in yt_dlp block in config.yaml. To use the script, ensure that Python is installed.

# Create a virtual environment and install required libraries for running the script
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

python3 cli_to_yaml.py --live-from-start --format 'bestvideo[height<=1080]+bestaudio/best[height<=1080]' --limit-rate 20M

yt_dlp:
  format: bestvideo[height<=1080]+bestaudio/best[height<=1080]
  ignoreerrors: only_download
  ratelimit: 20971520
  retries: 10
  fragment_retries: 10
  extract_flat: discard_in_playlist
  live_from_start: true
  postprocessors:
  - key: FFmpegConcat
    only_multi_video: true
    when: playlist
  warn_when_outdated: true

# Remove old container and image
podman stop yt-downloader
podman rm yt-downloader
podman rmi yt-downloader

# Pull updates
git pull

# Remove container and images
podman stop yt-downloader
podman rm yt-downloader
podman rmi yt-downloader
podman rmi yt-downloader-base

cd ..

# Remove service files
rm -rfI ./yt-downloader