4 ms·

I'm curious what is the reason for a GUI for such a simple utility? The command line for this kind of tool seems like the perfect interface. Just copy a URL, pa

by jb1991 5y ago

I'm curious what is the reason for a GUI for such a simple utility? The command line for this kind of tool seems like the perfect interface. Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter. No buttons to press, etc.

__warlord__ 5y ago
People have different workflows, for some is easier to have visual aid of how the tool works and what options are available.
Nux 5y ago
It's handy for people who are not comfortable with the command line, no matter how simple it is. In addition it allows one to convert to mp3 etc. The number of people who might want to download something from Youtube & co is significantly larger than that of people comfortable with the cli.
- schoen 5y ago
  I won't criticize someone for making more interfaces for this software, but I like the prospect that more people have been and will be motivated to learn about command line interfaces in order to use powerful software like youtube-dl.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    > I won't criticize > but please stop gatekeeping > motivated to learn about command line interfaces in order to use powerful software many people never get basic tech literacy. i think we’d benefit from not simply assuming others have (or could have) access to the same resources, time and patience that we had. i think you probably mean well but your statement, which sort of implies that people say “I am choosing not to learn the important skill of using the command line!”, just comes across as ignorant and naive to me
    - suction 5y ago
      Tech literacy would help a great deal saving our democracies. Nobody needs to know command line, but to be able to tell if you're on a Russian disinfo website or a legit source of information is also (but not only) a matter of tech literacy, so I think OP is on to something here.
      - filmgirlcw 5y ago
        Tech literacy isn’t using a CLI. Get over yourself.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        > Nobody needs to know command line You're replying to a tangential “continuing the conversation”-type comment as though it were a rebuttal in an argument. It already agrees with you.
        Nicksil 5y ago
        >Tech literacy isn’t using a CLI. Get over yourself. Unnecessarily hostile. We need less of this.
        msla 5y ago
        Hint: Being a jerk to people online using a random account makes you look like an asshole.
        filmgirlcw 5y ago
        Wasn’t a random account. When I’m an asshole, it’s under my own name, thanks.
  - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    I love the command line just as much as the next guy, but I could appreciate a gui program onto which I would drag and drop links from the url bar as i’m watching a video, and where there would be zones like “save as video”, “save and convert to mp3”, etc. And it would also take care of queueing things up. I couldn’t care less how those zones are defined and configured, could be a configuration file for all i care, but the end result would be much more potent than copying and pasting into terminal and then making sure it’s quoted or escaped properly.
  - rat9988 5y ago
    Most people have no idea about how to use command line and it's fine.
  - filmgirlcw 5y ago
    OK, but if someone needs something like this for work (believe it or not, this stuff is faster than the official YouTube tools for downloading videos), expecting them to learn the CLI, install the libraries, figure out the settings, is a lot to expect. Especially if a Frontend exists. And on Mac, installing it isn’t a big deal (tho for CLI averse people it is) but it is more complicated in Windows (especially for people who don’t use a shell everyday). I’m a huge fan of good CLIs. I’m also a huge fan of GUIs. Why require people to learn something just to use a video downloader?
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    GUIs were invented for a reason. They allow an intuitive and spatial understanding of software, and while they create limitations in some areas, they remove limitations in others. For example, I think the benefits are obvious of offering a native save dialog for where to download the video, rather than requiring the user to specify a hand-typed or copy-pasted path. Even for people who know how to use the command line, most of us still spend the day in a graphical desktop environment, and having a program that integrates with that environment is very valuable.
mnl 5y ago
I always have to look up the switches, there's quite a few. If you paste an URL it does one thing, it can do many others.
andreareina 5y ago
An interactive UI allows for more fluent authentication, choice of resolution to download, filename, etc. Default values can be modified instead of being specified from scratch (filename again). Other benefits I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.
dspillett 5y ago
> Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter. Unless you have reason to want something other than the default format that it will pick (perhaps for compatibility with an old set-top media box), or need other options like turning off SSL verification for some sites (it does much more than youtube) that have this misconfigured, options for playlist, ..., ... For the simplest and most common use case it is just copy+paste, but for others there are a lot of options. I prefer the CLI and manpage myself, but some are far more comfortable with a GUI, finding the options more discoverable that way. (though having had a quick look at the project page it looks like this doesn't offer options beyond format selection, but for some users that is useful enough to warrant a GUI)
slightwinder 5y ago
> I'm curious what is the reason for a GUI for such a simple utility? From the screenshots alone some benefits are quite obvious. Namely the ability to handle multiple URLs at once, as also the Download-Manager with it's progress bar. I have a bunch of scripts myself for downloading videos, but interfaces for such things is not really a strength of the command line. I already thought about making some job-manager for myself because of those reasons. So I can totally understand people making a GUI and releasing it. > The command line for this kind of tool seems like the perfect interface. Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter. That's only if you have no other requirements. youtube-dl is a monster of parameters. You can setup any little crap and do many more things than just download a youtube-url. On the screenshot I see some config-buttons and some kind of profile? This quite matches with any mildly complex usecase for this tool. Having a GUI supporting you in setting up what other would do with scripts is beneficial, especially for those not breathing in shell-commands.
jwilk 5y ago
Unless the URL contains shell meta characters, such as "&"…
- donio 5y ago
  Modern shells have easy ways to deal with this, for example bracketed-paste-magic that ships with zsh. The URL of this comment pastes like this, ready to be passed to commands: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit\?id\=29069520
  - jwilk 5y ago
    Interesting, thanks. So apparently you're supposed to add autoload -Uz url-quote-magic zle -N self-insert url-quote-magic autoload -Uz bracketed-paste-magic zle -N bracketed-paste bracketed-paste-magic to your zshrc to enable it. It doesn't seem to escape $ (e.g. in <https://example.org/$PATH https://example.org/$PATH>), which doesn't inspire confidence… Are there any equivalents for bash?
    - donio 5y ago
      You can configure what gets quoted using url-metas: zstyle ':url-quote-magic:*' url-metas '*?[]^()~#{}=$' Not sure about bash, I thought I remembered seeing something similar for it but a quick google doesn't turn up anything.
tssva 5y ago
youtube-dl has 139 option flags some which require specifying an option along with the flag such as bitrate or file format.

by jb1991 5y ago

__warlord__ 5y ago

People have different workflows, for some is easier to have visual aid of how the tool works and what options are available.

Nux 5y ago

It's handy for people who are not comfortable with the command line, no matter how simple it is. In addition it allows one to convert to mp3 etc. The number of people who might want to download something from Youtube & co is significantly larger than that of people comfortable with the cli.

schoen 5y ago
I won't criticize someone for making more interfaces for this software, but I like the prospect that more people have been and will be motivated to learn about command line interfaces in order to use powerful software like youtube-dl.
- beckman466 5y ago
  > I won't criticize > but please stop gatekeeping > motivated to learn about command line interfaces in order to use powerful software many people never get basic tech literacy. i think we’d benefit from not simply assuming others have (or could have) access to the same resources, time and patience that we had. i think you probably mean well but your statement, which sort of implies that people say “I am choosing not to learn the important skill of using the command line!”, just comes across as ignorant and naive to me
  - suction 5y ago
    Tech literacy would help a great deal saving our democracies. Nobody needs to know command line, but to be able to tell if you're on a Russian disinfo website or a legit source of information is also (but not only) a matter of tech literacy, so I think OP is on to something here.
    - filmgirlcw 5y ago
      Tech literacy isn’t using a CLI. Get over yourself.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        > Nobody needs to know command line You're replying to a tangential “continuing the conversation”-type comment as though it were a rebuttal in an argument. It already agrees with you.
      - Nicksil 5y ago
        >Tech literacy isn’t using a CLI. Get over yourself. Unnecessarily hostile. We need less of this.
      - msla 5y ago
        Hint: Being a jerk to people online using a random account makes you look like an asshole.
        filmgirlcw 5y ago
        Wasn’t a random account. When I’m an asshole, it’s under my own name, thanks.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  I love the command line just as much as the next guy, but I could appreciate a gui program onto which I would drag and drop links from the url bar as i’m watching a video, and where there would be zones like “save as video”, “save and convert to mp3”, etc. And it would also take care of queueing things up. I couldn’t care less how those zones are defined and configured, could be a configuration file for all i care, but the end result would be much more potent than copying and pasting into terminal and then making sure it’s quoted or escaped properly.
- rat9988 5y ago
  Most people have no idea about how to use command line and it's fine.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  OK, but if someone needs something like this for work (believe it or not, this stuff is faster than the official YouTube tools for downloading videos), expecting them to learn the CLI, install the libraries, figure out the settings, is a lot to expect. Especially if a Frontend exists. And on Mac, installing it isn’t a big deal (tho for CLI averse people it is) but it is more complicated in Windows (especially for people who don’t use a shell everyday). I’m a huge fan of good CLIs. I’m also a huge fan of GUIs. Why require people to learn something just to use a video downloader?
- marcellus23 5y ago
  GUIs were invented for a reason. They allow an intuitive and spatial understanding of software, and while they create limitations in some areas, they remove limitations in others. For example, I think the benefits are obvious of offering a native save dialog for where to download the video, rather than requiring the user to specify a hand-typed or copy-pasted path. Even for people who know how to use the command line, most of us still spend the day in a graphical desktop environment, and having a program that integrates with that environment is very valuable.

mnl 5y ago

I always have to look up the switches, there's quite a few. If you paste an URL it does one thing, it can do many others.

andreareina 5y ago

An interactive UI allows for more fluent authentication, choice of resolution to download, filename, etc. Default values can be modified instead of being specified from scratch (filename again). Other benefits I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.

dspillett 5y ago

> Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter. Unless you have reason to want something other than the default format that it will pick (perhaps for compatibility with an old set-top media box), or need other options like turning off SSL verification for some sites (it does much more than youtube) that have this misconfigured, options for playlist, ..., ... For the simplest and most common use case it is just copy+paste, but for others there are a lot of options. I prefer the CLI and manpage myself, but some are far more comfortable with a GUI, finding the options more discoverable that way. (though having had a quick look at the project page it looks like this doesn't offer options beyond format selection, but for some users that is useful enough to warrant a GUI)

slightwinder 5y ago

> I'm curious what is the reason for a GUI for such a simple utility? From the screenshots alone some benefits are quite obvious. Namely the ability to handle multiple URLs at once, as also the Download-Manager with it's progress bar. I have a bunch of scripts myself for downloading videos, but interfaces for such things is not really a strength of the command line. I already thought about making some job-manager for myself because of those reasons. So I can totally understand people making a GUI and releasing it. > The command line for this kind of tool seems like the perfect interface. Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter. That's only if you have no other requirements. youtube-dl is a monster of parameters. You can setup any little crap and do many more things than just download a youtube-url. On the screenshot I see some config-buttons and some kind of profile? This quite matches with any mildly complex usecase for this tool. Having a GUI supporting you in setting up what other would do with scripts is beneficial, especially for those not breathing in shell-commands.

jwilk 5y ago

Unless the URL contains shell meta characters, such as "&"…

donio 5y ago
Modern shells have easy ways to deal with this, for example bracketed-paste-magic that ships with zsh. The URL of this comment pastes like this, ready to be passed to commands: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit\?id\=29069520
- jwilk 5y ago
  Interesting, thanks. So apparently you're supposed to add autoload -Uz url-quote-magic zle -N self-insert url-quote-magic autoload -Uz bracketed-paste-magic zle -N bracketed-paste bracketed-paste-magic to your zshrc to enable it. It doesn't seem to escape $ (e.g. in <https://example.org/$PATH https://example.org/$PATH>), which doesn't inspire confidence… Are there any equivalents for bash?
  - donio 5y ago
    You can configure what gets quoted using url-metas: zstyle ':url-quote-magic:*' url-metas '*?[]^()~#{}=$' Not sure about bash, I thought I remembered seeing something similar for it but a quick google doesn't turn up anything.

tssva 5y ago

youtube-dl has 139 option flags some which require specifying an option along with the flag such as bitrate or file format.