23 ms·

The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

579 points by Leftium 1y ago

nalinidash 1y ago
TIL about stacher!Thank you.
- Leftium 1y ago
  Yeah! Stacher was one of the reasons I shared this on HN. Also interesting take on why downloaders are ethical; Google tacitly allows and actually needs them.
superkuh 1y ago
Youtube is a youtube downloader. Everything is a downloader. It's literally impossible to interact with a thing without downloading it and having the data. The difference is that the data is usually deleted later (a silly practice done to trick the lawyers into believing the world is like they think it is, hiding actual reality that would confuse and enrage them).
- SoKamil 1y ago
  Unless it’s protected by DRM.
  - presbyterian 1y ago
    Even with DRM, if you can see it, it's decoded somewhere along the line. There will always be a way to get the raw video out of it if you're committed enough.
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      That's actually an important distinction. You can recapture the DRM protected (and then decoded) video pretty much always indeed, but then you degrade the quality by having to encode it again. Well, not important to some, but for enthusiasts and people looking to actually archive things, it is very important. Case in point, hilariously, the last time I used YouTube's video download feature bundled with their Premium offering, I got a way worse quality output than with yt-dlp, which actually ripped the original stream without reencoding it. I think I saw an idempotent h264 encoder at some point, where you wouldn't suffer generational loss if you matched the encoder settings exactly from run to run. But then you might need the people mastering the content (in this case YouTube) to adopt that same encoder, which they're not going to be "interested" in.
      - kuschku 1y ago
        Even with DRM video you can fetch it losslessly. At some point, some part of your system requires access to the raw, decrypted video stream. As long as that's the case, you can get bit-perfect netflix rips.
        Marsymars 1y ago
        The problem is that if you have the raw data, you’ve lost the original compression information, so you can’t get it back to a sensible size without double compressing. e.g. Think about what you get when you save a jpeg as a bitmap.
        kuschku 1y ago
        You can get the original compressed h264/h265/etc stream back out, that's the entire point. Even DRM media is using regular accelerated video decode.
        perching_aix 1y ago
        The "entire point" of contemporary lossy-media DRM [0] is to prevent you from doing that. You can only do so if the DRM scheme is circumvented or unsound [1]. That is not what we're talking about - the working assumption here is that the DRM scheme is sound and effective. In which case your only possible but also guaranteed stage of recapture is at the analog hole, by which point the media encoding is already undone, incurring a generational loss. [0] I consider presently existing and historical DRM implementations deeply flawed and misguided; they severely overstep their boundaries implied by the name "DRM", in certain cases quite disgustingly - hence the many added adjectives for clarification [1] puzzlingly, any access control will actually get you in the same legal situation, regardless of whether the access control mechanism is effective or sound, so this is actually a design decision; but it's pretty universally taken afaik.
        kuschku 1y ago
        > That is not what we're talking about - the working assumption here is that the DRM scheme is sound and effective. Lol. That is not possible. If I'm able to watch something, my device must be able to decrypt the DRM. If my device can decrypt the DRM, I can take my device apart and figure out how it does this, and do it myself. The most DRM encumbered format is DCP, used my cinemas. Each projector has a unique key burnt into it, the decryption, decoding and watermarking happen on the same piece of silicon, and the entire device is built like an HSM, opening it wipes the keys. There are bit-perfect DCP rips on the high seas, with the original compressed data. HDCP is meant to prevent me from copying HDMI signals. Every conference center and lecture hall has cheap Chinese devices that remove it. Regarding the analog hole, with a properly calibrated professional video camera recording in RAW, with both camera and monitor genlocked and color calibrated, and the proper postprocessing, you can capure the original pixel values exactly. I've done that part more often than I'd like... And worst case, you can then brute force which parameters the original encode used to re-encode your data without generation loss.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      circumventing the DRM is what will land you in legal hot water. storing the DRM encrypted media isn't the same offense
- miloignis 1y ago
  Agreed, more or less, but I would argue you could make a distinction for a "streaming" situation where say no more than 10% of the data is on your computer at any one point in time, vs "downloading" where the data exists in its entirety at once. You could encode these terms in a contract or something about allowed usage of a service, I believe.
  - superkuh 1y ago
    You could. But youtube's website itself would fail this "only 10% at once" test.
    - littlestymaar 1y ago
      Why? IIRC you can flush the SourceBuffer in Media Source Extention and only keep a small part of the video in the browser's RAM at all time. (It won't work for Youtube shorts though, because 10% of a 30s video just isn't enough for reliable smooth playback)
      - superkuh 1y ago
        I understand now that I was talking about how youtube currently works and you two were talking about how youtube could be contrived to work. Yes, it could. It'd only just waste more bandwidth having to redownload and cause more pauses. But people who buy things (the important ones to advertise to) have fast connections and everyone's locked in so google can focus more on advertiser issues over the lower end network user experience.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  Downloading videos is a premium feature of YouTube and doesn't delete the data.
  - skinnymuch 1y ago
    Can you access those downloads?
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      Yes, there is a downloads button in the app to see your downloaded videos. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11977233 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11977233
      - nativeit 1y ago
        I'm pretty sure they meant, can the videos be accessed as files in the filesystem, which to my knowledge they cannot.
        dzhiurgis 1y ago
        [flagged]
        lucb1e 1y ago
        Shit? Illegal? It's literally your right on videos like <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSEJApMIrLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSEJApMIrLU>. Expand the description and see at the bottom: license is set to creative commons. The copyright holder permits everyone to remix the video but youtube still does not show a button for you to actually make use of that You need to breach the terms of service (use a downloader) to exercise the rights of the content license that youtube supports
      - skinnymuch 1y ago
        As the other sister comment said. I was replying to you saying YouTube has downloading in a thread about file access. I use the YouTube premium offline access, it’s nice but I only have premium for mobile background.
- tshaddox 1y ago
  The word "download" is used in two senses. The first is the broader sense you're referring to, where it means "to receive data." The second sense means to collect all the data from a particular file or dataset and store it locally, as opposed to "streaming." That second sense is the one clearly being used when referring to "YouTube downloaders."
  - superkuh 1y ago
    If you view the entire file they are the same thing. And they're always being collected and stored locally even if it's hidden from you. And a static mp4 file encoded with ffmpeg -movflags +faststart -start_at_zero can be seeked within in any browser from any static webserver and viewed at any seeking time without downloading the rest. Is this streaming too? Given the first example of fully watching and the second implementation of streaming with a simple static file you can see the streaming/file download distinction you make is much thinner than it first appears. At least from a technical perspective. In lawyer-ese you are making a valid semantic point which I do acknowledge. "Streaming" in lawyer-ese means a corporation is doing it so there's: 1. legal liability 2. lots of abstraction layers involved so they don't get upset and 3. the local files are hidden from view of the user. Unlike the simple streaming example with a properly encoded .mp4 file.
phoobahr 1y ago
“The best downloaded for iOS/ipados” is yt-dlp. Install in ashell, view with VLC.
xnx 1y ago
ytarchive is also great for downloading livestreams. Unfortunately, it's not as up-to-date as yt-dlp so it can be fragile against blocks. I'm hoping that yt-dlp adds some functionality for downloading portions of a livestream (i.e. not downloading from the start, 120 hours ago).
- scottiebarnes 1y ago
  Not sure if this applies to livestreams but look into the --download-sections arg? yt-dlp --download-sections "*05:00-05:10" <YouTube URL>
  - schlarpc 1y ago
    Doesn’t work for livestreams as far as I know. There’s an open PR: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/6498 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/6498
- KwanEsq 1y ago
  Huh, last/only time I used yt-dlp on a livestream it downloaded exactly from when I ran it, didn't get anything in the past at all (which was a shame for me personally at the time, as I would have liked the earlier stuff too). Maybe that was a difference in the stream itself though, since I've experienced both past-seekable and live-only live streams on YouTube.
  - jabroni_salad 1y ago
    turning off the DVR is just a UI change. ytarchive can still grab the past parts of the broadcast just fine. What's really funny is it will even download censored segments which sometimes happens in music broadcasts like A State Of Trance or Group Therapy. You can also force enable seeking with a userscript if you wish. The problem with this DVR feature is that if your connection is stuttering it will buffer you backwards a bit. Streamers like to disable this because they want to keep the time to deliver as low as possible so chat is more interactive and engaging, especially on youtube where your viewership might not qualify for the CCV metrics if the stream is not in a foreground tab. Best to leave it off if that is important for you. https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/485020-ytbetter-enable-rewind-dvr https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/485020-ytbetter-enable-rew...
Animats 1y ago
It's interesting that YouTube not only does not block pirated movies on ok.ru, they give them high rankings in search. Hm.
tantalor 1y ago
> Google has now covered its tracks better -- there’s nothing about “Google Product Abuse” in its current AdSense policies. In other (less biased) words: These old rules were rescinded haven't been enforced since 2012 (last example cited). This article was written in 2025 and still complaining about something that isn't happening anymore.
- whycome 1y ago
  Yeah! The also took out “don’t be evil”!
- loehnsberg 1y ago
  It‘s still a stark abuse of power and borderline extortion by Google to use a private sentencing mechanism rather than dragging the purpetrator to public court over advertising and/or encouraging criminal activity, which may or may not have happened if Google Ads and Youtube were not part of the same monopolistic entity.
batisteo 1y ago
> The best YouTube downloader for Android is NewPipe. You should have a look at Tubular, a fork.
- RattlesnakeJake 1y ago
  I just started using Tubular. The built-in SponsorBlock integration is really nice
- anotherevan 1y ago
  Link for Tubular: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular You should also look at PipePipe, also available on F-Droid and with similar enhancements (e.g., Sponsorblock) over NewPipe. https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe
Wowfunhappy 1y ago
> Google needs YouTube downloaders. They perform a valuable role: If it were impossible to download YouTube videos, many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility. Or they’d need to host a separate download link and put it in their YouTube descriptions. But organizations don’t need to jump through hoops -- they just let people use YouTube downloaders. I don't think I believe this, as much as I'd like to. How many organizations would really consider this a critical need? My guess is, not enough for Google to care.
- adocomplete 1y ago
  Also, if you upload a video to YouTube you can download it from YouTube Studio at any time, so that doesn't add up at all. YouTube just doesn't make this available via API, but you've always been able to manually from YouTube Studio download your uploaded videos.
  - ThunderSizzle 1y ago
    That sounds brutal if you have 5 years of daily uploads or something like that. At some point, if you want your entire catalog, that becomes a very sucky process.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      Just use Google Takeout. It will create a series of archive files for you to download.
  - yason 1y ago
    Surely you would have the originals locally and not rely on youtube to archive yours uploads?
    - sneak 1y ago
      People who do this are a minority. The vast majority have the masters only available on YouTube. I hope your “surely” was in jest.
molticrystal 1y ago
The claim that Google secretly wants YouTube downloaders to work doesn't hold up. Their focus is on delivering videos across a vast range of devices without breaking playback(and even that is blurring[0]), not enabling downloads. If you dive into the yt-dlp source code, you see the insane complexity of calculations needed to download a video. There is code to handle nsig checks, internal YouTube API quirks, and constant obfuscation that makes it a nightmare(and the maintainers heroes) to keep up. Google frequently rejects download attempts, blocks certain devices or access methods, and breaks techniques that yt-dlp relies on. Half the battle is working around attempts by Google to make ads unblockable, and the other half is working around their attempts to shut down downloaders. The idea of a "gray market ecosystem" they tacitly approve ignores how aggressively they tweak their systems to make downloading as unreliable as possible. If Google wanted downloaders to thrive, they wouldn't make developers jump through these hoops. Just look at the yt-dlp issue tracker overflowing with reports of broken functionality. There are no secret nods, handshakes, or other winks, as Google begins to care less and less about compatibility, the doors will close. For example, there is already a secret header used for authenticating that you are using the Google version of Chrome browser [1] [2] that will probably be expanded. [0] Ask HN: Does anyone else notice YouTube causing 100% CPU usage and stattering? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45301499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45301499 [1] Chrome's hidden X-Browser-Validation header reverse engineered https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527739 [2] https://github.com/dsekz/chrome-x-browser-validation-header https://github.com/dsekz/chrome-x-browser-validation-header
- ameliaquining 1y ago
  The argument the article is making is that if they really wanted YouTube downloaders to stop working, they'd switch to Encrypted Media Extensions. Do you think that's not plausible?
  - molticrystal 1y ago
    Many smart devices that have youtube functionality(tvs, refrigerators, consoles, cable boxes, etc), have limited or no ability to support that functionality in hardware, or even if they do, it might not be exposed. Once those devices get phased out, it is very likely they will move to Encrypted Media Extensions or something similar, I believe I saw an issue ticket on yt-dlp's repo indicating they are already experimenting with such, as certain formats are DRM protected. Lookup all the stuff going on with SABR which if I remember right is either related to DRM or what they may use to support DRM.
rahimnathwani 1y ago
Is Stacher open source? Last time I searched 'stacher open source' on Google, I found a Reddit thread discussing when it might become open source. EDIT: The reason I ask is that the article says Stacher is open source, and that is news to me.
- uhx 1y ago
  Same here. Couldn't find any source code
- 1gn15 1y ago
  I couldn't find any source code either. Cobalt also isn't really libre; their backend is AGPL, which is great, but their frontend is CC BY-NC-SA, which is not so great (and definitely not open-source). I'd advise against downloading via someone else's servers anyway, as can be seen by their instance being blocked by Google. Hopefully some day someone manages to port yt-dlp to WASM, then it can be run locally in the browser without needing a download. Fun fact: yt-dlp is public domain! That's really generous of them and I'm really thankful for their work.
- fao_ 1y ago
  For Android I use Seal (https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ and https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal), which is absolutely wonderful and has just the right amount of resolution of the options-space. For Linux... youtube-dl I guess, because there's still no really nice alternative to it. It doesn't seem like Stacher supports non-debian systems, or non-gnu libc systems, either.
- photon_lines 1y ago
  To answer your question: it is not open source.
mrandish 1y ago
The article doesn't include Android TV based devices like Chrome/Fire sticks. Android mobile apps tend not to work with remote controls. The best Android TV app is: https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ https://smarttubeapp.github.io/
nitwit005 1y ago
This seems to be starting with the assumption that it's possible to prevent people from downloading the videos. That is a false assumption. You can, after all, just play the video and record it. Even if the entire machine playing the content is flawlessly locked down, you can just record the output. The efforts at DRM done by companies like Netflix is done because the companies that licensed the content demand it. That doesn't mean the DRM works. You can find torrents of all those shows.
- grugagag 1y ago
  Yeah, you can capture HDMI stream with a cheap card so basically everything is ultimately copyable, however that brings in some friction. Some people prefer the easiest option, even if that showers them in advertisments and distupts their attention.
  - beeflet 1y ago
    It only takes one guy to copy it and upload it to bittorrent or something. All these trusted computing schemes are dependent on the weakest link never breaking, where the weakest link is a piece of hardware that the attacker always has access to.
  - eek2121 1y ago
    Not if you want the highest quality, and they could absolutely stop even that if desired. The only reason why those methods work is due to legacy support. If they only supported the latest versions of HDMI and DRM, it would be very hard to get decent quality video/audio. As it is, even with things currently as they are, we still don't have the high quality feeds that are sent to TVs and dedicated hardware.
    - Liftyee 1y ago
      I wonder if it would be possible to use e.g. an FPGA to intercept the "last-leg" MIPI signals going between a TV/monitor's control board and the physical display panel itself. Surely there can't be any DRM at that level, because there is not much more "compute" down the line? Granted, you would have to deal with whatever your display does to the raw video signal - preferable to pointing a camcorder at the display but a little worse than the original file.
mikey_p 1y ago
Want I really want is an *arr style app that I can give a list of Youtube channels I want archived, and it would just keep the archive up to date indefinitely.
- bilegeek 1y ago
  Somebody made a script that automatically downloads from YouTube using RSS feeds - assuming I don't jinx it by mentioning they still have those... https://github.com/Jocomol/newsboat_video_downloader https://github.com/Jocomol/newsboat_video_downloader
- lucb1e 1y ago
  What's an *arr style app?
  - entropy47 1y ago
    Sonarr and Radarr are the big ones. Tracks new content (in these cases, TV shows and movies) and auto downloads as they become available.
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      Arr, Matey, where's me booty?
- sdht0 1y ago
  Just found out about https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr today.
- phito 1y ago
  https://www.tubearchivist.com/ https://www.tubearchivist.com/ There's even a good Jellyfin integration
mongol 1y ago
There is also a program called streamlink. I have found it good to find Live streams at Youtube, since those often changes. For example, if a TV channel has a live stream at a certain Youtube URL, a few weeks later, it may be at a different URL. But streamlink can sometimes find it, just by looking at the Youtube channel
pentagrama 1y ago
Didn't know about https://stacher.io/ https://stacher.io/, will take a look. On my favorites YouTube downloaders with UI, I have: - Varia https://giantpinkrobots.github.io/varia/ https://giantpinkrobots.github.io/varia/ - Media Downloader https://github.com/mhogomchungu/media-downloader/ https://github.com/mhogomchungu/media-downloader/
- eek2121 1y ago
  FreeTube lets you not only view videos (sans ads, and you can block sponsors, if desired), but download them as well, and it is cross platform.
  - yborg 1y ago
    Firefox extension to right-click YT links directly to Freetube https://github.com/MStankiewiczOfficial/RedirectTube https://github.com/MStankiewiczOfficial/RedirectTube.
IOUnix 1y ago
I surprised they didn't even mention jdownloader on the list. It's great for most sites.
- gblargg 1y ago
  Seconded on jDownloader. Still works on an ancient system with Java 1.8.0_66, and able to install the latest updates. Covers so many platforms, not just YouTube.
eahm 1y ago
>The best YouTube downloaders for Windows (and beyond) Didn't even mention https://3dyd.com https://3dyd.com
- belter 1y ago
  Let me download this random .exe from this conspicuous clean random page in the internet, and run it on my machine...What could go wrong?
  - eahm 1y ago
    Ah, I can see how it looks, it's just a GUI wrapper for ffmpeg and he's a trusted dev especially in the foobar2000 community. I've been using his sw on and off for 10+ years together with yt-dlp but again, I get your point.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
My city posts bodycam video on YouTube private links. Being able to download them is necessary to preserve evidence. Nice bonus that you get a machine transcript as well.
- senorrib 1y ago
  I’ve been looking for these. Any pointers on where I can find them?
jlaternman 1y ago
“If it were impossible to download YouTube videos, many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility.” Seems like a bit of a presumptuous proposition. If it were impossible, the web just might be a bit more shit, and the video monopoly would roll on regardless. Most might just come to take for granted videos of personal significance (I downloaded one of my grandpa in WW2 footage, for example, and there was no other version available except the YouTube one) are dependent on YouTube continuing to host them. Some would, of course, use alternative platforms that offer proper download links, but it's hard to think that would be most, easy to think that would be well under 5% of those uploading videos that should in ways be a kind of permanent archive, or that this loss would really amount to anything to Google, commercially. Maybe not something to poke the bear on?
- relaxing 1y ago
  Try working in a large corporation and proposing a new feature that will reduce revenue by 5%.
est 1y ago
> many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility Well it's about tie organizations also upload their videos to peertube!
peteforde 1y ago
One of the things that drives me crazy about YouTube is that if a video gets taken down, it shows up as a "This video is no longer available" with no further metadata. I am far, far more uptight about no knowing which video was removed than I am about the fact that it is no longer available. I have put serious thought into creating a tool that would automatically yt-dlp every video I open to a giant hard drive and append a simple index with the title, channel, thumbnail and date. In general, I think people are way too casual about media of all kinds silently disappearing when you're not looking.
- pzmarzly 1y ago
  I had a Bash script that parsed my browser history, and for every YouTube video it would run yt-dlp with "--write-info-json --write-subtitles --download-archive=already-downloaded.db" flags. Creating it was the easy part, but keeping it running has presented some challenges. For example, Google started rate limiting my IP quickly, so I had to offload this process to a NAS, where it could keep running for hours overnight, persistently downloading stuff at near dialup speeds. Then I was running out of storage quickly, so I had to add video filtering, and I planned to add basic garbage collection. And of course I had to have youtube-dl (and later yt-dlp) updated at all times. In the end, I decided it is not worth it. In the scenario you described, I would take the video link/ID and paste it into Bing and Yandex. There is large chance they still have that page cached in their index. FWIW if you are going to create your own tool, my advice will be to make it a browser extension, and try to pull the video straight from YouTube's <video> element.
- youniverse 1y ago
  Agreed, I can't describe the sadness that some of my most treasured nostalgic videos were lost before I knew about yt-dlp, and I can't find out what their titles even were. For example on spotify when music gets removed, if it's in your playlist it just shows it greyed out and unplayable. Someone at google please give us the ability to see titles!
  - shaky-carrousel 1y ago
    Off the top of my head, did you try to access the URLs via archive.org? That way, at least you'll get the titles.
Shellban 1y ago
The author makes the case that EULAs are "toothless." However, what about federal law? In the U.S., at least, it is illegal to make copies of other people's work. This is not an offense against YouTube (who does not inherently own the media they present), but the publishers, the creators, etc. Somehow, I doubt that Alan Becker would approve people downloading and sharing his videos willy-nilly.
- littlecranky67 1y ago
  I don't know about US law, but I would assume the "copying" in a legal sense involves distributing to a third party. Maybe I am too old, but I remember a time where the broad population recorded radio shows on Tape and video shows on VHS, and no one was asking any copyright questions. And yes, recording a TV show in your home VHS recorder and selling/giving it to third parties, was illegal in most jurisdictions and the same laws apply probably still today. But recording something for your own archive and watch it home (possibly with family members) is probably also still perfectly legal (as long as no DRM bypass was used).
  - Shellban 1y ago
    VHS recordings of live TV are a bit different. According to Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., this practice is known as Time Shifting, which is simply making the recording available for later use. The ad money has already exchanged hands, and the work was already available for public use. The court rules 5-4 that this time shifting fell under fair use. YouTube ad money works a bit differently, and downloading the video tends to bypass that process. Also, Streaming is by its nature on-demand, so there are a lot fewer benefits for downloading the video. Furthermore, U.S. copyright law has changed since the previously cited case, so there are some extra restrictions to contend with that the Sony case did not.
MrJagil 1y ago
MediaHuman has a bunch of amazing tools in this space: https://www.mediahuman.com/en23/ https://www.mediahuman.com/en23/
casey2 1y ago
Can I just rant about how absolutely ridiculous it is that google, a company that has made it's fortune off the back of the web and public internet infrastructure blocks downloads. Maybe when it started this was a necessary compromise. In 95' it cost between a hundredth ~ a tenth of a cent to serve the average webpage, it costs google much less than that to serve a video, literally 0 if the users ISP already cached it (think about how unfair that is for a moment a AI generate short evicting some live saving medical document from your ISPs cache so that when you request it the owner of that resources pays again and the user is delayed in their request for potentially live saving information. GROSS!). The part that is so infuriating is that they try to turn around and capture that value would should rightly be owned by the public by offering downloads for premium members, especially when that we KNOW the only reason YouTube isn't totally financially ruined is that the ISPs are legally required to price worthless youtube's (literally AI generated) spam traffic the same as useful services. (Net Neutrality) And the are using these ill gotten gains to create their own backbone for yet more profit. Entirely pointless exercise when you realize the government is eventually going to break these companies up and will of course nationalize the one that owns all the infrastructure. Corporations are simply not the correct tool for managing infrastructure that the public relies on. I'm sure anybody whose tried to run a business on top of a google service can attest that's it's a bad strategy and is guaranteed to fail in the long term.
- arccy 1y ago
  If you ever tried hosting video at scale, you'll quite quickly learn that "0" cost x many users is a pretty big number. And your ideas on ISP caches are from the prehistoric ages, everything is over HTTPS, the only caches for youtube are dedicated servers given to the ISP by google.
renegat0x0 1y ago
Microsoft new about piracy, and used it to become popular. YouTube plays a game with downloaders to be and stay popular, supported even by niche devices. On the other hand they will use vague license statements to strike opponents. Even RSS YouTube is accessible to bots, but block d by robots. They can always claim you are doing something wrong of they wanted.
roer 1y ago
For the android spot I'd like to recommend Seal: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ It's "just" a yt-dlp frontend with a nice UI, meaning it works with sites other than youtube as well. It also adds a quick-download option to the android sharing menu when sharing a link, which I've found incredibly convenient.
- 1gn15 1y ago
  I'd like to recommend YTDLnis for Android: https://github.com/deniscerri/ytdlnis https://github.com/deniscerri/ytdlnis Been using it as a replacement for YouTube. I don't stream nowadays, only download.
- merryocha 1y ago
  This is what I use and it works great. I mainly use it to download things like 3-hour music playlists ahead of long drives to avoid wasting mobile bandwidth.
rdrworld 1y ago
Any good lists of applications for downloading / hosting a local service also? https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr and https://github.com/Jocomol/newsboat_video_downloader https://github.com/Jocomol/newsboat_video_downloader were already mentioned in the comments, I think there's a few different apps that support playback, but I've never tried any of them.
CM30 1y ago
I think there's definitely an argument to be made that Google needs YouTube downloaders to work in some capacity, since a lot of their biggest and most profitable creators rely on them. Think news outlets/streamers/YouTubers that analyse video game/film/TV show trailers, reaction channels, drama YouTubers and celebrity YouTubers, essay channels in general, etc. Very few of those can afford to record all their own footage for their videos, simply due to how much time and effort it'd take. They rely on things like longplay channels and official company channels posting trailers for material, and bring Google a ton of traffic in return. So there's probably at least some calculation where they have to decide how much effort they're putting into cracking down on these things, simply because on the one hand they don't want to anger Hollywood and music labels, and on the other hand they don't want to kill off 3/4 of media analysis content on the platform. There's also the fact a lot of creators will deliberately turn a blind eye to people reusing their video footage so long as they credited in return. For a lot of them, it's less work to just let people figure out how to get the footage from their channels than to set up a third party hosting service where you can officially download them. Interesting to hear about the terms of service provision though. Wonder how well it would hold up now given that a lot of modern outlets use donations or paid subscriptions for financing rather than ads? I can see an outlet like 404 Media covering YouTube downloaders at some point because of that.
bambax 1y ago
Happy user of yt-dlp for years. It's not just an app, it's mainly a Python library, so it can be scripted from a larger Python app, which is super useful. Had never heard of Statcher, but it seems to just be a gui front for yt-dlp. In my experience, New Pipe has never worked properly.
Zak 1y ago
I didn't realize Google had gone evil way back in 2012. I don't have a problem with Youtube trying to make downloads difficult, but using its advertising monopoly to bully publications into not discussing software Google doesn't like is outrageous.
n3xus_ 1y ago
I might be out of the loop, but doesn't YouTube already allow downloading videos? I don't understand the purpose of these tools
- hollerith 1y ago
  Youtube's iPad app allows you to download videos, but there is no way to extract them from the app (for use for example in a different app or to edit or to upload to a different video-sharing site).
BrtByte 1y ago
It's not incompetence, it's strategy. They want a gray zone so they can maintain dominance without giving users too much official power
itz_karan2008 1y ago
yt-dlp has been the only one that consistently works for me. Most others break way too often
dartharva 1y ago
Internet Download Manager on Windows (https://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/ https://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/) allows downloading all kinds of videos from your browser, not just Youtube.

579 points by Leftium 1y ago

nalinidash 1y ago

TIL about stacher!Thank you.

Leftium 1y ago
Yeah! Stacher was one of the reasons I shared this on HN. Also interesting take on why downloaders are ethical; Google tacitly allows and actually needs them.

superkuh 1y ago

Youtube is a youtube downloader. Everything is a downloader. It's literally impossible to interact with a thing without downloading it and having the data. The difference is that the data is usually deleted later (a silly practice done to trick the lawyers into believing the world is like they think it is, hiding actual reality that would confuse and enrage them).

SoKamil 1y ago
Unless it’s protected by DRM.
- presbyterian 1y ago
  Even with DRM, if you can see it, it's decoded somewhere along the line. There will always be a way to get the raw video out of it if you're committed enough.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    That's actually an important distinction. You can recapture the DRM protected (and then decoded) video pretty much always indeed, but then you degrade the quality by having to encode it again. Well, not important to some, but for enthusiasts and people looking to actually archive things, it is very important. Case in point, hilariously, the last time I used YouTube's video download feature bundled with their Premium offering, I got a way worse quality output than with yt-dlp, which actually ripped the original stream without reencoding it. I think I saw an idempotent h264 encoder at some point, where you wouldn't suffer generational loss if you matched the encoder settings exactly from run to run. But then you might need the people mastering the content (in this case YouTube) to adopt that same encoder, which they're not going to be "interested" in.
    - kuschku 1y ago
      Even with DRM video you can fetch it losslessly. At some point, some part of your system requires access to the raw, decrypted video stream. As long as that's the case, you can get bit-perfect netflix rips.
      - Marsymars 1y ago
        The problem is that if you have the raw data, you’ve lost the original compression information, so you can’t get it back to a sensible size without double compressing. e.g. Think about what you get when you save a jpeg as a bitmap.
        kuschku 1y ago
        You can get the original compressed h264/h265/etc stream back out, that's the entire point. Even DRM media is using regular accelerated video decode.
        perching_aix 1y ago
        The "entire point" of contemporary lossy-media DRM [0] is to prevent you from doing that. You can only do so if the DRM scheme is circumvented or unsound [1]. That is not what we're talking about - the working assumption here is that the DRM scheme is sound and effective. In which case your only possible but also guaranteed stage of recapture is at the analog hole, by which point the media encoding is already undone, incurring a generational loss. [0] I consider presently existing and historical DRM implementations deeply flawed and misguided; they severely overstep their boundaries implied by the name "DRM", in certain cases quite disgustingly - hence the many added adjectives for clarification [1] puzzlingly, any access control will actually get you in the same legal situation, regardless of whether the access control mechanism is effective or sound, so this is actually a design decision; but it's pretty universally taken afaik.
        kuschku 1y ago
        > That is not what we're talking about - the working assumption here is that the DRM scheme is sound and effective. Lol. That is not possible. If I'm able to watch something, my device must be able to decrypt the DRM. If my device can decrypt the DRM, I can take my device apart and figure out how it does this, and do it myself. The most DRM encumbered format is DCP, used my cinemas. Each projector has a unique key burnt into it, the decryption, decoding and watermarking happen on the same piece of silicon, and the entire device is built like an HSM, opening it wipes the keys. There are bit-perfect DCP rips on the high seas, with the original compressed data. HDCP is meant to prevent me from copying HDMI signals. Every conference center and lecture hall has cheap Chinese devices that remove it. Regarding the analog hole, with a properly calibrated professional video camera recording in RAW, with both camera and monitor genlocked and color calibrated, and the proper postprocessing, you can capure the original pixel values exactly. I've done that part more often than I'd like... And worst case, you can then brute force which parameters the original encode used to re-encode your data without generation loss.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    circumventing the DRM is what will land you in legal hot water. storing the DRM encrypted media isn't the same offense
miloignis 1y ago
Agreed, more or less, but I would argue you could make a distinction for a "streaming" situation where say no more than 10% of the data is on your computer at any one point in time, vs "downloading" where the data exists in its entirety at once. You could encode these terms in a contract or something about allowed usage of a service, I believe.
- superkuh 1y ago
  You could. But youtube's website itself would fail this "only 10% at once" test.
  - littlestymaar 1y ago
    Why? IIRC you can flush the SourceBuffer in Media Source Extention and only keep a small part of the video in the browser's RAM at all time. (It won't work for Youtube shorts though, because 10% of a 30s video just isn't enough for reliable smooth playback)
    - superkuh 1y ago
      I understand now that I was talking about how youtube currently works and you two were talking about how youtube could be contrived to work. Yes, it could. It'd only just waste more bandwidth having to redownload and cause more pauses. But people who buy things (the important ones to advertise to) have fast connections and everyone's locked in so google can focus more on advertiser issues over the lower end network user experience.
charcircuit 1y ago
Downloading videos is a premium feature of YouTube and doesn't delete the data.
- skinnymuch 1y ago
  Can you access those downloads?
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    Yes, there is a downloads button in the app to see your downloaded videos. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11977233 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11977233
    - nativeit 1y ago
      I'm pretty sure they meant, can the videos be accessed as files in the filesystem, which to my knowledge they cannot.
      - dzhiurgis 1y ago
        [flagged]
        lucb1e 1y ago
        Shit? Illegal? It's literally your right on videos like <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSEJApMIrLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSEJApMIrLU>. Expand the description and see at the bottom: license is set to creative commons. The copyright holder permits everyone to remix the video but youtube still does not show a button for you to actually make use of that You need to breach the terms of service (use a downloader) to exercise the rights of the content license that youtube supports
    - skinnymuch 1y ago
      As the other sister comment said. I was replying to you saying YouTube has downloading in a thread about file access. I use the YouTube premium offline access, it’s nice but I only have premium for mobile background.
tshaddox 1y ago
The word "download" is used in two senses. The first is the broader sense you're referring to, where it means "to receive data." The second sense means to collect all the data from a particular file or dataset and store it locally, as opposed to "streaming." That second sense is the one clearly being used when referring to "YouTube downloaders."
- superkuh 1y ago
  If you view the entire file they are the same thing. And they're always being collected and stored locally even if it's hidden from you. And a static mp4 file encoded with ffmpeg -movflags +faststart -start_at_zero can be seeked within in any browser from any static webserver and viewed at any seeking time without downloading the rest. Is this streaming too? Given the first example of fully watching and the second implementation of streaming with a simple static file you can see the streaming/file download distinction you make is much thinner than it first appears. At least from a technical perspective. In lawyer-ese you are making a valid semantic point which I do acknowledge. "Streaming" in lawyer-ese means a corporation is doing it so there's: 1. legal liability 2. lots of abstraction layers involved so they don't get upset and 3. the local files are hidden from view of the user. Unlike the simple streaming example with a properly encoded .mp4 file.

phoobahr 1y ago

“The best downloaded for iOS/ipados” is yt-dlp. Install in ashell, view with VLC.

xnx 1y ago

ytarchive is also great for downloading livestreams. Unfortunately, it's not as up-to-date as yt-dlp so it can be fragile against blocks. I'm hoping that yt-dlp adds some functionality for downloading portions of a livestream (i.e. not downloading from the start, 120 hours ago).

scottiebarnes 1y ago
Not sure if this applies to livestreams but look into the --download-sections arg? yt-dlp --download-sections "*05:00-05:10" <YouTube URL>
- schlarpc 1y ago
  Doesn’t work for livestreams as far as I know. There’s an open PR: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/6498 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/6498
KwanEsq 1y ago
Huh, last/only time I used yt-dlp on a livestream it downloaded exactly from when I ran it, didn't get anything in the past at all (which was a shame for me personally at the time, as I would have liked the earlier stuff too). Maybe that was a difference in the stream itself though, since I've experienced both past-seekable and live-only live streams on YouTube.
- jabroni_salad 1y ago
  turning off the DVR is just a UI change. ytarchive can still grab the past parts of the broadcast just fine. What's really funny is it will even download censored segments which sometimes happens in music broadcasts like A State Of Trance or Group Therapy. You can also force enable seeking with a userscript if you wish. The problem with this DVR feature is that if your connection is stuttering it will buffer you backwards a bit. Streamers like to disable this because they want to keep the time to deliver as low as possible so chat is more interactive and engaging, especially on youtube where your viewership might not qualify for the CCV metrics if the stream is not in a foreground tab. Best to leave it off if that is important for you. https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/485020-ytbetter-enable-rewind-dvr https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/485020-ytbetter-enable-rew...

Animats 1y ago

It's interesting that YouTube not only does not block pirated movies on ok.ru, they give them high rankings in search. Hm.

tantalor 1y ago

> Google has now covered its tracks better -- there’s nothing about “Google Product Abuse” in its current AdSense policies. In other (less biased) words: These old rules were rescinded haven't been enforced since 2012 (last example cited). This article was written in 2025 and still complaining about something that isn't happening anymore.

whycome 1y ago
Yeah! The also took out “don’t be evil”!
loehnsberg 1y ago
It‘s still a stark abuse of power and borderline extortion by Google to use a private sentencing mechanism rather than dragging the purpetrator to public court over advertising and/or encouraging criminal activity, which may or may not have happened if Google Ads and Youtube were not part of the same monopolistic entity.

batisteo 1y ago

> The best YouTube downloader for Android is NewPipe. You should have a look at Tubular, a fork.

RattlesnakeJake 1y ago
I just started using Tubular. The built-in SponsorBlock integration is really nice
anotherevan 1y ago
Link for Tubular: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular You should also look at PipePipe, also available on F-Droid and with similar enhancements (e.g., Sponsorblock) over NewPipe. https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe

Wowfunhappy 1y ago

> Google needs YouTube downloaders. They perform a valuable role: If it were impossible to download YouTube videos, many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility. Or they’d need to host a separate download link and put it in their YouTube descriptions. But organizations don’t need to jump through hoops -- they just let people use YouTube downloaders. I don't think I believe this, as much as I'd like to. How many organizations would really consider this a critical need? My guess is, not enough for Google to care.

adocomplete 1y ago
Also, if you upload a video to YouTube you can download it from YouTube Studio at any time, so that doesn't add up at all. YouTube just doesn't make this available via API, but you've always been able to manually from YouTube Studio download your uploaded videos.
- ThunderSizzle 1y ago
  That sounds brutal if you have 5 years of daily uploads or something like that. At some point, if you want your entire catalog, that becomes a very sucky process.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    Just use Google Takeout. It will create a series of archive files for you to download.
- yason 1y ago
  Surely you would have the originals locally and not rely on youtube to archive yours uploads?
  - sneak 1y ago
    People who do this are a minority. The vast majority have the masters only available on YouTube. I hope your “surely” was in jest.

molticrystal 1y ago

The claim that Google secretly wants YouTube downloaders to work doesn't hold up. Their focus is on delivering videos across a vast range of devices without breaking playback(and even that is blurring[0]), not enabling downloads. If you dive into the yt-dlp source code, you see the insane complexity of calculations needed to download a video. There is code to handle nsig checks, internal YouTube API quirks, and constant obfuscation that makes it a nightmare(and the maintainers heroes) to keep up. Google frequently rejects download attempts, blocks certain devices or access methods, and breaks techniques that yt-dlp relies on. Half the battle is working around attempts by Google to make ads unblockable, and the other half is working around their attempts to shut down downloaders. The idea of a "gray market ecosystem" they tacitly approve ignores how aggressively they tweak their systems to make downloading as unreliable as possible. If Google wanted downloaders to thrive, they wouldn't make developers jump through these hoops. Just look at the yt-dlp issue tracker overflowing with reports of broken functionality. There are no secret nods, handshakes, or other winks, as Google begins to care less and less about compatibility, the doors will close. For example, there is already a secret header used for authenticating that you are using the Google version of Chrome browser [1] [2] that will probably be expanded. [0] Ask HN: Does anyone else notice YouTube causing 100% CPU usage and stattering? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45301499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45301499 [1] Chrome's hidden X-Browser-Validation header reverse engineered https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527739 [2] https://github.com/dsekz/chrome-x-browser-validation-header https://github.com/dsekz/chrome-x-browser-validation-header

ameliaquining 1y ago
The argument the article is making is that if they really wanted YouTube downloaders to stop working, they'd switch to Encrypted Media Extensions. Do you think that's not plausible?
- molticrystal 1y ago
  Many smart devices that have youtube functionality(tvs, refrigerators, consoles, cable boxes, etc), have limited or no ability to support that functionality in hardware, or even if they do, it might not be exposed. Once those devices get phased out, it is very likely they will move to Encrypted Media Extensions or something similar, I believe I saw an issue ticket on yt-dlp's repo indicating they are already experimenting with such, as certain formats are DRM protected. Lookup all the stuff going on with SABR which if I remember right is either related to DRM or what they may use to support DRM.

rahimnathwani 1y ago

Is Stacher open source? Last time I searched 'stacher open source' on Google, I found a Reddit thread discussing when it might become open source. EDIT: The reason I ask is that the article says Stacher is open source, and that is news to me.

uhx 1y ago
Same here. Couldn't find any source code
1gn15 1y ago
I couldn't find any source code either. Cobalt also isn't really libre; their backend is AGPL, which is great, but their frontend is CC BY-NC-SA, which is not so great (and definitely not open-source). I'd advise against downloading via someone else's servers anyway, as can be seen by their instance being blocked by Google. Hopefully some day someone manages to port yt-dlp to WASM, then it can be run locally in the browser without needing a download. Fun fact: yt-dlp is public domain! That's really generous of them and I'm really thankful for their work.
fao_ 1y ago
For Android I use Seal (https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ and https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal), which is absolutely wonderful and has just the right amount of resolution of the options-space. For Linux... youtube-dl I guess, because there's still no really nice alternative to it. It doesn't seem like Stacher supports non-debian systems, or non-gnu libc systems, either.
photon_lines 1y ago
To answer your question: it is not open source.

mrandish 1y ago

The article doesn't include Android TV based devices like Chrome/Fire sticks. Android mobile apps tend not to work with remote controls. The best Android TV app is: https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ https://smarttubeapp.github.io/

nitwit005 1y ago

This seems to be starting with the assumption that it's possible to prevent people from downloading the videos. That is a false assumption. You can, after all, just play the video and record it. Even if the entire machine playing the content is flawlessly locked down, you can just record the output. The efforts at DRM done by companies like Netflix is done because the companies that licensed the content demand it. That doesn't mean the DRM works. You can find torrents of all those shows.

grugagag 1y ago
Yeah, you can capture HDMI stream with a cheap card so basically everything is ultimately copyable, however that brings in some friction. Some people prefer the easiest option, even if that showers them in advertisments and distupts their attention.
- beeflet 1y ago
  It only takes one guy to copy it and upload it to bittorrent or something. All these trusted computing schemes are dependent on the weakest link never breaking, where the weakest link is a piece of hardware that the attacker always has access to.
- eek2121 1y ago
  Not if you want the highest quality, and they could absolutely stop even that if desired. The only reason why those methods work is due to legacy support. If they only supported the latest versions of HDMI and DRM, it would be very hard to get decent quality video/audio. As it is, even with things currently as they are, we still don't have the high quality feeds that are sent to TVs and dedicated hardware.
  - Liftyee 1y ago
    I wonder if it would be possible to use e.g. an FPGA to intercept the "last-leg" MIPI signals going between a TV/monitor's control board and the physical display panel itself. Surely there can't be any DRM at that level, because there is not much more "compute" down the line? Granted, you would have to deal with whatever your display does to the raw video signal - preferable to pointing a camcorder at the display but a little worse than the original file.

mikey_p 1y ago

Want I really want is an *arr style app that I can give a list of Youtube channels I want archived, and it would just keep the archive up to date indefinitely.

bilegeek 1y ago
Somebody made a script that automatically downloads from YouTube using RSS feeds - assuming I don't jinx it by mentioning they still have those... https://github.com/Jocomol/newsboat_video_downloader https://github.com/Jocomol/newsboat_video_downloader
lucb1e 1y ago
What's an *arr style app?
- entropy47 1y ago
  Sonarr and Radarr are the big ones. Tracks new content (in these cases, TV shows and movies) and auto downloads as they become available.
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    Arr, Matey, where's me booty?
sdht0 1y ago
Just found out about https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr today.
phito 1y ago
https://www.tubearchivist.com/ https://www.tubearchivist.com/ There's even a good Jellyfin integration

mongol 1y ago

There is also a program called streamlink. I have found it good to find Live streams at Youtube, since those often changes. For example, if a TV channel has a live stream at a certain Youtube URL, a few weeks later, it may be at a different URL. But streamlink can sometimes find it, just by looking at the Youtube channel

pentagrama 1y ago

Didn't know about https://stacher.io/ https://stacher.io/, will take a look. On my favorites YouTube downloaders with UI, I have: - Varia https://giantpinkrobots.github.io/varia/ https://giantpinkrobots.github.io/varia/ - Media Downloader https://github.com/mhogomchungu/media-downloader/ https://github.com/mhogomchungu/media-downloader/

eek2121 1y ago
FreeTube lets you not only view videos (sans ads, and you can block sponsors, if desired), but download them as well, and it is cross platform.
- yborg 1y ago
  Firefox extension to right-click YT links directly to Freetube https://github.com/MStankiewiczOfficial/RedirectTube https://github.com/MStankiewiczOfficial/RedirectTube.

IOUnix 1y ago

I surprised they didn't even mention jdownloader on the list. It's great for most sites.

gblargg 1y ago
Seconded on jDownloader. Still works on an ancient system with Java 1.8.0_66, and able to install the latest updates. Covers so many platforms, not just YouTube.

eahm 1y ago

>The best YouTube downloaders for Windows (and beyond) Didn't even mention https://3dyd.com https://3dyd.com

belter 1y ago
Let me download this random .exe from this conspicuous clean random page in the internet, and run it on my machine...What could go wrong?
- eahm 1y ago
  Ah, I can see how it looks, it's just a GUI wrapper for ffmpeg and he's a trusted dev especially in the foobar2000 community. I've been using his sw on and off for 10+ years together with yt-dlp but again, I get your point.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

My city posts bodycam video on YouTube private links. Being able to download them is necessary to preserve evidence. Nice bonus that you get a machine transcript as well.

senorrib 1y ago
I’ve been looking for these. Any pointers on where I can find them?

jlaternman 1y ago

“If it were impossible to download YouTube videos, many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility.” Seems like a bit of a presumptuous proposition. If it were impossible, the web just might be a bit more shit, and the video monopoly would roll on regardless. Most might just come to take for granted videos of personal significance (I downloaded one of my grandpa in WW2 footage, for example, and there was no other version available except the YouTube one) are dependent on YouTube continuing to host them. Some would, of course, use alternative platforms that offer proper download links, but it's hard to think that would be most, easy to think that would be well under 5% of those uploading videos that should in ways be a kind of permanent archive, or that this loss would really amount to anything to Google, commercially. Maybe not something to poke the bear on?

relaxing 1y ago
Try working in a large corporation and proposing a new feature that will reduce revenue by 5%.

est 1y ago

> many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility Well it's about tie organizations also upload their videos to peertube!

peteforde 1y ago

One of the things that drives me crazy about YouTube is that if a video gets taken down, it shows up as a "This video is no longer available" with no further metadata. I am far, far more uptight about no knowing which video was removed than I am about the fact that it is no longer available. I have put serious thought into creating a tool that would automatically yt-dlp every video I open to a giant hard drive and append a simple index with the title, channel, thumbnail and date. In general, I think people are way too casual about media of all kinds silently disappearing when you're not looking.

pzmarzly 1y ago
I had a Bash script that parsed my browser history, and for every YouTube video it would run yt-dlp with "--write-info-json --write-subtitles --download-archive=already-downloaded.db" flags. Creating it was the easy part, but keeping it running has presented some challenges. For example, Google started rate limiting my IP quickly, so I had to offload this process to a NAS, where it could keep running for hours overnight, persistently downloading stuff at near dialup speeds. Then I was running out of storage quickly, so I had to add video filtering, and I planned to add basic garbage collection. And of course I had to have youtube-dl (and later yt-dlp) updated at all times. In the end, I decided it is not worth it. In the scenario you described, I would take the video link/ID and paste it into Bing and Yandex. There is large chance they still have that page cached in their index. FWIW if you are going to create your own tool, my advice will be to make it a browser extension, and try to pull the video straight from YouTube's <video> element.
youniverse 1y ago
Agreed, I can't describe the sadness that some of my most treasured nostalgic videos were lost before I knew about yt-dlp, and I can't find out what their titles even were. For example on spotify when music gets removed, if it's in your playlist it just shows it greyed out and unplayable. Someone at google please give us the ability to see titles!
- shaky-carrousel 1y ago
  Off the top of my head, did you try to access the URLs via archive.org? That way, at least you'll get the titles.

Shellban 1y ago

The author makes the case that EULAs are "toothless." However, what about federal law? In the U.S., at least, it is illegal to make copies of other people's work. This is not an offense against YouTube (who does not inherently own the media they present), but the publishers, the creators, etc. Somehow, I doubt that Alan Becker would approve people downloading and sharing his videos willy-nilly.

littlecranky67 1y ago
I don't know about US law, but I would assume the "copying" in a legal sense involves distributing to a third party. Maybe I am too old, but I remember a time where the broad population recorded radio shows on Tape and video shows on VHS, and no one was asking any copyright questions. And yes, recording a TV show in your home VHS recorder and selling/giving it to third parties, was illegal in most jurisdictions and the same laws apply probably still today. But recording something for your own archive and watch it home (possibly with family members) is probably also still perfectly legal (as long as no DRM bypass was used).
- Shellban 1y ago
  VHS recordings of live TV are a bit different. According to Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., this practice is known as Time Shifting, which is simply making the recording available for later use. The ad money has already exchanged hands, and the work was already available for public use. The court rules 5-4 that this time shifting fell under fair use. YouTube ad money works a bit differently, and downloading the video tends to bypass that process. Also, Streaming is by its nature on-demand, so there are a lot fewer benefits for downloading the video. Furthermore, U.S. copyright law has changed since the previously cited case, so there are some extra restrictions to contend with that the Sony case did not.

MrJagil 1y ago

MediaHuman has a bunch of amazing tools in this space: https://www.mediahuman.com/en23/ https://www.mediahuman.com/en23/

casey2 1y ago

Can I just rant about how absolutely ridiculous it is that google, a company that has made it's fortune off the back of the web and public internet infrastructure blocks downloads. Maybe when it started this was a necessary compromise. In 95' it cost between a hundredth ~ a tenth of a cent to serve the average webpage, it costs google much less than that to serve a video, literally 0 if the users ISP already cached it (think about how unfair that is for a moment a AI generate short evicting some live saving medical document from your ISPs cache so that when you request it the owner of that resources pays again and the user is delayed in their request for potentially live saving information. GROSS!). The part that is so infuriating is that they try to turn around and capture that value would should rightly be owned by the public by offering downloads for premium members, especially when that we KNOW the only reason YouTube isn't totally financially ruined is that the ISPs are legally required to price worthless youtube's (literally AI generated) spam traffic the same as useful services. (Net Neutrality) And the are using these ill gotten gains to create their own backbone for yet more profit. Entirely pointless exercise when you realize the government is eventually going to break these companies up and will of course nationalize the one that owns all the infrastructure. Corporations are simply not the correct tool for managing infrastructure that the public relies on. I'm sure anybody whose tried to run a business on top of a google service can attest that's it's a bad strategy and is guaranteed to fail in the long term.

arccy 1y ago
If you ever tried hosting video at scale, you'll quite quickly learn that "0" cost x many users is a pretty big number. And your ideas on ISP caches are from the prehistoric ages, everything is over HTTPS, the only caches for youtube are dedicated servers given to the ISP by google.

renegat0x0 1y ago

Microsoft new about piracy, and used it to become popular. YouTube plays a game with downloaders to be and stay popular, supported even by niche devices. On the other hand they will use vague license statements to strike opponents. Even RSS YouTube is accessible to bots, but block d by robots. They can always claim you are doing something wrong of they wanted.

roer 1y ago

For the android spot I'd like to recommend Seal: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/ It's "just" a yt-dlp frontend with a nice UI, meaning it works with sites other than youtube as well. It also adds a quick-download option to the android sharing menu when sharing a link, which I've found incredibly convenient.

1gn15 1y ago
I'd like to recommend YTDLnis for Android: https://github.com/deniscerri/ytdlnis https://github.com/deniscerri/ytdlnis Been using it as a replacement for YouTube. I don't stream nowadays, only download.
merryocha 1y ago
This is what I use and it works great. I mainly use it to download things like 3-hour music playlists ahead of long drives to avoid wasting mobile bandwidth.

rdrworld 1y ago

Any good lists of applications for downloading / hosting a local service also? https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr and https://github.com/Jocomol/newsboat_video_downloader https://github.com/Jocomol/newsboat_video_downloader were already mentioned in the comments, I think there's a few different apps that support playback, but I've never tried any of them.

CM30 1y ago

I think there's definitely an argument to be made that Google needs YouTube downloaders to work in some capacity, since a lot of their biggest and most profitable creators rely on them. Think news outlets/streamers/YouTubers that analyse video game/film/TV show trailers, reaction channels, drama YouTubers and celebrity YouTubers, essay channels in general, etc. Very few of those can afford to record all their own footage for their videos, simply due to how much time and effort it'd take. They rely on things like longplay channels and official company channels posting trailers for material, and bring Google a ton of traffic in return. So there's probably at least some calculation where they have to decide how much effort they're putting into cracking down on these things, simply because on the one hand they don't want to anger Hollywood and music labels, and on the other hand they don't want to kill off 3/4 of media analysis content on the platform. There's also the fact a lot of creators will deliberately turn a blind eye to people reusing their video footage so long as they credited in return. For a lot of them, it's less work to just let people figure out how to get the footage from their channels than to set up a third party hosting service where you can officially download them. Interesting to hear about the terms of service provision though. Wonder how well it would hold up now given that a lot of modern outlets use donations or paid subscriptions for financing rather than ads? I can see an outlet like 404 Media covering YouTube downloaders at some point because of that.

bambax 1y ago

Happy user of yt-dlp for years. It's not just an app, it's mainly a Python library, so it can be scripted from a larger Python app, which is super useful. Had never heard of Statcher, but it seems to just be a gui front for yt-dlp. In my experience, New Pipe has never worked properly.

Zak 1y ago

I didn't realize Google had gone evil way back in 2012. I don't have a problem with Youtube trying to make downloads difficult, but using its advertising monopoly to bully publications into not discussing software Google doesn't like is outrageous.

n3xus_ 1y ago

I might be out of the loop, but doesn't YouTube already allow downloading videos? I don't understand the purpose of these tools

hollerith 1y ago
Youtube's iPad app allows you to download videos, but there is no way to extract them from the app (for use for example in a different app or to edit or to upload to a different video-sharing site).

BrtByte 1y ago

It's not incompetence, it's strategy. They want a gray zone so they can maintain dominance without giving users too much official power

itz_karan2008 1y ago

yt-dlp has been the only one that consistently works for me. Most others break way too often

dartharva 1y ago

Internet Download Manager on Windows (https://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/ https://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/) allows downloading all kinds of videos from your browser, not just Youtube.