[HN Gopher] Show HN: A personal YouTube frontend based on yt-dlp
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       Show HN: A personal YouTube frontend based on yt-dlp
        
       Author : modmodmod
       Score  : 169 points
       Date   : 2025-03-15 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | phdelightful wrote:
       | I basically have an even simpler version of something like this
       | for my own personal use too. I found it pretty easy to write in
       | Go and my area of expertise is decidedly not web
       | frontend/backend. I'd recommend it as a fun little project if
       | you're looking for something to do.
       | 
       | For mine, I paste in a video or playlist URL and it downloads the
       | video and creates a lower resolution transcoded version suitable
       | for streaming to my phone. It also extracts an audio-only version
       | in case that's more appropriate.
        
         | atomicnumber3 wrote:
         | I have one too, it's honestly a very fun area to program
         | around, and I'm not going to be surprised if this thread is
         | full of me-toos.
         | 
         | Mine is specifically meant to help get videos onto plex in
         | exactly the way we want - with particular emphasis on
         | playlists, taking the numbering and putting it in plex format,
         | and transcoding any codecs (detected via ffprobe) i know
         | certain shitty players (smart TVs) will have issues with. Along
         | with putting it in the right spot on the filesystem with the
         | right permissions and user+group set so it serves correctly
         | over samba too (for management from windows / via GUI).
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | Have a repo you can share?
        
             | atomicnumber3 wrote:
             | No unfortunately, not only is it too tangled (not
             | irredeemably, but I've never made an effort t try to make
             | it cleanly ploppable) with the rest of my home-rails-server
             | monolith, but the code is all also ridiculously bad,
             | written in 2000 separate 5 minute scraps of time, all while
             | standing up and holding at least one baby.
             | 
             | I call it "dadware".
        
           | egeozcan wrote:
           | I have something similar as a simple PHP script on a shared
           | hosting service. I can't PHP well anymore so it's probably
           | the worst and most insecure code I've produced by a big
           | margin. Does it do the job? Yes.
        
           | gdulli wrote:
           | Plex is the destination for my setup, too. I have a
           | bookmarklet I can click when I'm on any Youtube (or other
           | video) page that sends the URL to a local Flask app that's
           | just a wrapper for calling yt-dlp with the right args and
           | post-processing.
        
         | thinkingemote wrote:
         | Interesting! How do you stream it to your phone? I imagine its
         | on the local network?
        
       | yoyohello13 wrote:
       | Shhh! We are going to have to fork it again if too many people
       | find out.
        
         | Joel_Mckay wrote:
         | Indeed, those with ridiculously slow broadband networks won't
         | ever get 4k content again.
         | 
         | DRM was.. and still is dumb... as it collectively punishes
         | paying customers. While ContentID is sometimes abused by brazen
         | scammers, it is a better solution given the majority of content
         | is still served off the YT platform. =3
        
           | tredre3 wrote:
           | > DRM was.. and still is dumb... as it collectively punishes
           | paying customers.
           | 
           | Maybe it's true in other contexts, but users of such frontend
           | likely are not paying for youtube and they're also not paying
           | with their eyes (ads) so the DRM here is working as
           | intended...
           | 
           | Also paying customers are already allowed to download youtube
           | videos (granted they can't watch it outside of youtube but it
           | still counters your broadband claim).
        
             | Joel_Mckay wrote:
             | "already allowed to download youtube videos"
             | 
             | Sure, but it is not users that ultimately make that policy
             | choice, and may be rescinded at any time. Thus, still seems
             | lame...
             | 
             | Most streaming platforms have fragile resolution fail-back
             | thresholds, and rightfully discourage camping on CDN host
             | connections for 10 times longer than most of the users.
             | 
             | These days the amount of media data people consume in a
             | year will be disproportionately larger than the capacity of
             | any information appliance. i.e. not paying for the service
             | would still mean a fortune in offline storage devices.
             | 
             | DRM still sucks, ask any library or historian. But I do
             | respect your opinion, as it could seem true for some. =3
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | Hmm nice. I already have my own search frontend (SearXNG), my own
       | chat frontend (Matrix+Element), LLM (OpenWebUI), and this would
       | now be a good addition.
       | 
       | It's sad that it's necessary but the internet has become so
       | enshittified.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | thanks, and totally agree on the enshittification of the web
         | (and not only).
         | 
         | this is the very reason why I wanted to dig deeper into my-yt
         | and trying to build a custom solution for my needs
        
       | zaruvi wrote:
       | As a user of a Firefox-based browser, YouTube's performance
       | really is hit or miss. Sometimes it's ok, other times it's barely
       | useable.
       | 
       | These days I simply queue up videos in mpv. It is much lighter on
       | the resources, and also provides a nice cache that makes seeking
       | through videos a breeze. I can open a link straight in mpv using
       | a very nice system[1]. Once I have an mpv instance open I simply
       | drag links on top of it to enqueue them. (shift+drag if you
       | haven't set the following option in your config: drag-and-
       | drop=append)
       | 
       | It works so well I find myself doing it for other online sources
       | of videos too (e.g. Twitter/X, local TV websites, ...)
       | 
       | [1]: https://github.com/Baldomo/open-in-mpv
        
         | folmar wrote:
         | I use h264ify plugin and didn't see performance issues for
         | playback. The UI depends on test group you go into, but only
         | the first load is really terrible.
        
         | nickthegreek wrote:
         | I never have yt issues in FF. Do you have addons that are yt
         | related?
        
       | unhappy_meaning wrote:
       | Interesting project and great to see other projects as well.
       | Everyone has their own wants, wishes, and requirements for their
       | YT feed so its awesome to see what people have come up with.
       | 
       | This post has actually inspired me to create something of my own
       | because I am the worst YT addict of all time.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | awesome, thanks!
        
       | samstave wrote:
       | Wonderful!
       | 
       |  _(Also, to all the other posters who have done the same for
       | themselves)_
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | I have been mentally building a UX I want out of YT over the last
       | few weeks. What I want to do is have it go through all my history
       | and categorize it and give me a local page and sqlite3 of my
       | browsing hist with various meta-data..
       | 
       | My YT experience has gotten so poor, that even browsing which
       | channels I am sub'd to and finding newer vids in them is a
       | nightmare of a dark pattern...
       | 
       | I thought I wouldnt be able to pull off my vision - but this
       | gives me new hope - and I had told myself that this week I would
       | make an attempt.
       | 
       | One thing I want to do is include VoidTools 'Everything' Search
       | into some MCP tools for Cursor -- and this inspiration ties it
       | all into a more formulated vision for what I want out of a YT ux.
       | 
       | I look forward to trying this out and seeing if it fills the void
       | - or still build my own thing.
       | 
       | (There was an HN SHOW: that was "what if YT channels were like a
       | TV some time ago and that always pops into my head)
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | EDIT: With the postings of GH repos and such, and my comment on
       | categorizing and searching hist -- I also want to be able to have
       | a dashboard of GH repos that I click on, and then have that click
       | in hist be sent to my history categorizer automatically and give
       | me a summary of the thing and category. maybe even from which
       | site I found the repo -- so much like broawsing a YT hist of vids
       | - being able to see all the repos I have been interested in.
       | 
       | Anyone build anything like that for themselves?
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | thanks!
        
         | zeroq wrote:
         | I remember a project from some 20 years ago that acted as a
         | proxy and kept a local copy of every single page you visited. I
         | don't remember any details other that you could access that app
         | and search through the history based on time, urls, page titles
         | and content separately.
         | 
         | I believe this is one area where current AI could really shine.
         | 
         | For instance I have a large collection of links about the stuff
         | I care or one I use as one-line answers to different questions
         | (e.g. a friend is taking part in a hackathon and needs a color
         | palette to display some statistical data - in my collection I
         | exactly that along with 20 page long explanation on why these
         | particular colors were chosen if one wish to know).
         | 
         | I keep them in a long markdown file I can somehow navigate by
         | using tags, hierarchy and short descriptions but it gets
         | clunky. Having youtube links doesn't help.
         | 
         | Would be nice to have a tool that would be able to get
         | transcription, distil it to a short summary and maybe you could
         | even ask direct questions about the contents.
        
       | bitbasher wrote:
       | Missed opportunity. Should have called it MyTube?
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | haha who cares :) the missed opportunity would have been if I
         | kept it for myself instead of releasing it
        
       | swyx wrote:
       | qq on tech choice - why lmstudio over ollama?
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | currently into lmstudio, but had it working before with ollama.
         | it's compatible with both, since it uses the standard
         | /chat/completions endpoint.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | It _should_ work out of the box by just changing the server
         | port of the llm service you're contacting
         | 
         | LMStudio 1234 ollama 11434
        
       | nickthegreek wrote:
       | Just got done setting up Pinchflat this morning as I need
       | jellyfin and sponsorblock integration but it's always great to
       | see a nice gui around yt-dlp with some new niche features.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | thanks!
        
       | PaulKeeble wrote:
       | Can you make either a hub.docker or ghcr.io premade image so that
       | people can just pull the image and run it and automate the
       | updates? Its pretty standard practice in the self hosting world
       | and if you don't do it a lot of people will not install it.
       | People have 40-50 odd services installed, managing it via git
       | updates just isn't going to happen.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | will do, thanks for the suggestion
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | Done
        
       | greggyb wrote:
       | A question for the author or anyone else who has experience in
       | similar solutions.
       | 
       | Is there any good solution for discovering new content? Much of
       | the time, I want to stick to my subscriptions, but I do enjoy
       | content surfaced by the algorithm at least once weekly, sometimes
       | more often. My concern in taking my viewing off-platform is
       | twofold: 1) going to YouTube will prompt me with all the stuff
       | I've already watched off platform, and 2) any changes to my
       | viewing habits won't be reflected in algorithmic suggestions.
       | 
       | Am I making any bad assumptions or missing anything that would be
       | useful?
       | 
       | As an example, I usually get conference presentations surfaced
       | for me, but I don't track conferences to know when I should go
       | looking for presentations. YouTube is good at surfacing these for
       | me.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | good question. I don't think I have a definitive answer but
         | I'll try:
         | 
         | - pure luck. sometimes I discover a channel/creator/blog by
         | pure accident, I'm an avid rss reader and HN adept so content
         | comes to me naturally, so to speak.
         | 
         | - following a feed (be it a website's rss feed, reddit/YouTube)
         | sometimes made me discover related feeds, simply because
         | someone wrote about a cool project a peer made and links their
         | YouTube/github/blog
        
         | tmpz22 wrote:
         | I view Discovery as a social problem where the content you want
         | is almost always clustered between a relatively small number of
         | creators, regions, etc.
         | 
         | Technically it then becomes less of an indexing everything
         | problem and more of a find a few cornerstone creators, say Khan
         | academy, and occasionally branching out.
         | 
         | So to answer your question I don't thing the cost/benefit for
         | automating discovery is much better then spending 20 minutes
         | and finding enough cornerstones to fill you for 100+ hours of
         | content. Or similarly finding a social group like an rss feed,
         | say in ios development it would be fatbobman, and sourcing it
         | from there.
         | 
         | Time to source content isn't the bottleneck worthy of software
         | solutions, yet for monetization reasons discovery is the vice
         | grip of social media and made to be the most important thing.
        
           | siavosh wrote:
           | There's a lot of truth to this but one of the most powerful
           | elements of a discovery algorithm is finding things you
           | completely did not look for, ie Christopher Columbus and the
           | western continents. Like your cornerstones are iOS and recipe
           | videos but you discover the right dance video and it changes
           | your whole life.
        
             | Unearned5161 wrote:
             | I owe many interests in my life to the little
             | recommendation tab next to a currently playing video on
             | youtube
        
             | tmpz22 wrote:
             | > you discover the right dance video and it changes your
             | whole life
             | 
             | You're going to have to explain this one, how would a dance
             | video change my life? Being exposed to something new that
             | becomes profoundly life changing seems like a romanticized
             | notion and not a realistic one especially within a
             | monetized environment.
             | 
             | We're exposed to new stuff everyday, just because .0001% is
             | truly impactful doesn't justify watching 100_000 short
             | reels of ads, even if Google and Facebook REALLY want us
             | to.
        
         | siavosh wrote:
         | I looked into this as well since I find the YouTube algorithm
         | terrible, but couldn't find any API for exploration. Which
         | makes sense they want to control what you watch and hence
         | monetize. In a perfect world you could just pick an open source
         | recommendation algorithm from a marketplace and YouTube would
         | just be a wrapper around s3 buckets and some index.
        
           | bluebarbet wrote:
           | An even more perfect world would not have S3 buckets.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | You have to store bits somewhere, and an S3 compatible
             | target optimizes for flexibility and optionality. It can be
             | local (Minio), it can be remote, the client does not care
             | where it is. Even the Internet Archive's API is S3-ish.
        
         | atum47 wrote:
         | I've been using a third party app to watch the videos and the
         | official app to discover content.
         | 
         | Instead of just clicking the video I click share and watch on
         | the unofficial with no ads.
        
         | prophesi wrote:
         | I've been using Unhook[0] for years that it's almost a
         | jumpscare for me to see a recommended video or the Youtube
         | homepage. Your social circles and natural serendipity should be
         | plenty for finding new creators. And in general, avoiding
         | algorithmic feeds will help with ADHD and mindless scrolling.
         | 
         | [0] https://unhook.app/
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | If you were to have something local build you an algorithm,
         | what signal would you want it to consume and how far from the
         | median would you want it to deviate? Would you want it to use
         | signal from online socials?
        
           | creer wrote:
           | This is a good idea. One signal would be HN mentions. Second
           | might be reddit mentions, but with a lot of qualifications.
           | 
           | As a first step, a page showing recent youtube links from HN
           | would be nice!
        
           | charcircuit wrote:
           | Why limit it to local? You could use the API for the YouTube
           | recommendations. You already are using the YouTube API for
           | the videos themselves.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | Certainly, ingest all the signal you'd like, and then emit
             | a feed for clients to consume (or to be republished). Could
             | run locally, could run in a container, could run on an AT
             | protocol PDS. It is an algorithm/discovery/recommendation
             | sovereignty play.
        
         | marxisttemp wrote:
         | Check out the Vinegar extension if you use Safari. Same old
         | YouTube but all the videos are replaced with HTML5 <video>s.
        
         | BlueGh0st wrote:
         | I use a Firefox profile to watch specific videos while logged-
         | out just for the focused recommendations.
         | 
         | I've also noticed that I getting more recommendations for small
         | creators with little to no views/subs when I'm browsing from a
         | smaller, developing country.
        
         | creer wrote:
         | I readily follow youtube links offered on HN discussions. If
         | anything, I could use more of these.
         | 
         | But otherwise I agree with your concern. Video recommendations
         | on youtube was far from perfect (very repetitive in my
         | experience), but was uncovering useful stuff.
        
       | samstave wrote:
       | Another thought: Can it do this:
       | 
       |  _" give me a list of the latest podcasts about/from
       | [subject/channel] {{from the already subscribed channels}}"_
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | Or a crontab of schedule "play the latest X at Y time" (so you
       | can tell it to put on your bedtime playlist starting at 9pm)
       | 
       | sort of thing?
        
       | tangotaylor wrote:
       | This is awesome and it's one of the countermeasures that the book
       | Chokepoint Capitalism proposed against enshittification.
       | 
       | Imagine seeing Twitch, Nebula, Youtube, etc all in one aggregator
       | app, then the switching cost of leaving one platform to another
       | goes way down. If a content creator wanted to move from one
       | platform to another to get a better deal, the users would hardly
       | notice.
       | 
       | Unfortunately I think DRM + DMCA makes this illegal, e.g.
       | removing DRM from a Netflix stream to use a third-party app is
       | illegal even if there is no copyright infringement. This needs to
       | be fixed.
        
         | pests wrote:
         | This already kinda exists in the TV sticks like Google TV in
         | that all recently watched / continue watching is a mix of
         | different services that open the correct app when launched.
         | Also has the "Live" tab which shows a combined TV guide of all
         | app's that share it (pluto, tubi, prime, etc)
         | 
         | Of course this still locks you into the end app for playback
         | but the concepts are there.
        
       | erwaen98 wrote:
       | Hi Chris, do you know how to handle issues with cookies in
       | production? It seems yt-dlp works fine, but once put in a cloud
       | runner, it doesn't work. Coincidentally, I was also working with
       | yt-dlp this week for another reason.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | the project currently supports cookies (never use your own
         | though, of your google profile), just place them in cookies.txt
         | in the root of the project. but it didn't seem to work well on
         | my server, on a residential IP it works well
        
       | maxglute wrote:
       | How does yt-dlp work with sponsorblock? Does it download the
       | video can snip out segments?
       | 
       | I wish PLEX still had youtube plugin. Right now I have a
       | googlesheet script that adds latest videos of channels into
       | various playlists on my premium account. Keeps things simple
       | bouncing between devices / chromecast.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | Just recently I stumbled upon these options of yt-dlp, but
         | haven't had the chance to dig deeper (sorry in advance for the
         | formatting):                 SponsorBlock Options:         Make
         | chapter entries for, or remove various segments (sponsor,
         | introductions, etc.) from downloaded YouTube videos using the
         | SponsorBlock API (https://sponsor.ajay.app)
         | --sponsorblock-mark CATS
         | SponsorBlock categories to create chapters for, separated by
         | commas. Available categories are sponsor, intro, outro,
         | selfpromo, preview, filler, interaction, music_offtopic,
         | poi_highlight, chapter, all and default (=all). You can prefix
         | the
         | category with a "-" to exclude it. See [1] for descriptions of
         | the categories. E.g. --sponsorblock-mark all,-preview [1]
         | https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Segment_Categories
         | --sponsorblock-remove CATS
         | SponsorBlock categories to be removed from the video file,
         | separated by commas. If a category is present in both mark and
         | remove, remove takes precedence. The syntax and available
         | categories are the same as for --sponsorblock-mark except that
         | "default" refers to "all,-filler" and poi_highlight, chapter
         | are not available         --sponsorblock-chapter-title TEMPLATE
         | An output template for the title of the SponsorBlock chapters
         | created by --sponsorblock-mark. The only available fields are
         | start_time, end_time, category, categories, name,
         | category_names. Defaults to "[SponsorBlock]:
         | %(category_names)l"         --no-sponsorblock
         | Disable both --sponsorblock-mark and --sponsorblock-remove
         | --sponsorblock-api URL
         | SponsorBlock API location, defaults to https://sponsor.ajay.app
        
       | agumonkey wrote:
       | I wonder how many front/proxies exists:
       | 
       | - invidious
       | 
       | what else ?
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | a lot for sure.
         | 
         | but the more the better, right?
        
         | nyanpasu64 wrote:
         | There's Piped but that keeps running into "IOS player response
         | is not valid" error. (I don't know if my Invidious instance
         | works either, I shut it down because of errors.)
        
       | huydotnet wrote:
       | I built the same thing a few years back [0], and used the YouTube
       | API for searching. It was fun on the building part.
       | 
       | For hosting, though, I picked Heroku, and they kept removing my
       | deployment because I downloaded ytdlp on it! I ended up deploying
       | it on my own server to make it work.
       | 
       | [0]: https://github.com/huytd/xaudio
        
       | new_user_final wrote:
       | tip: Disable YouTube history and go to subscription page for
       | chronological ordered videos. No more "algorithmically curated"
       | videos in YouTube home page.
        
         | freehorse wrote:
         | Why disable youtube history? I have it enabled, and my
         | subscription page works fine.
        
       | ss64 wrote:
       | "wanted to get back my chronological feed, instead of a
       | "algorithmically curated" one"
       | 
       | The 'Subscriptions' link at the top left of the Youtube home page
       | only shows the things you subscribed to, just bookmark that.
        
         | nickthegreek wrote:
         | Along with so many shorts. So many. Going from Smarttube back
         | to the official app and it just plain sucks.
        
           | freehorse wrote:
           | I use the "unhook" extension which let's you remove
           | recommendations, set your youtube home page to your
           | subscriptions (chronologically ordered videos), block shorts
           | and more (you can cherrypick the features you want). Highly
           | recommended. I would have paid for youtube premium if I was
           | given these options, honestly.
        
             | nickthegreek wrote:
             | I have premium and that's what hurts the most! My issue is
             | mostly on tv connected devices.
        
       | TZubiri wrote:
       | I wonder if it will be taken down.
        
       | notepad0x90 wrote:
       | What I've wanted for a while now is a browser extension that adds
       | a button on youtube video pages, where you click on it and it
       | does yt-dlp downloading but saves it to something like ipfs and
       | posts it to some free video site for indexing.
       | 
       | Basically, there should be a video indexing/search/discovery
       | protocol (don't care if it's still http) where random people can
       | submit metadata and a link to a distributed content-addressable
       | system like ipfs. Alternatives to youtube,tiktok,etc.. even
       | platforms like Bluesky can make use of this. Popular videos get
       | more "seeds"/"mirrors" this way. The biggest problem is getting
       | enough interesting content, so the browser extension helps with
       | that, you just click "share in <insert platform name>" and you
       | have it locally available as well as available on any of your
       | other devices, and now others can see the content without having
       | to use yt.
        
         | idle_zealot wrote:
         | What you're describing is a piracy platform. That makes it
         | pretty tricky to get off the ground, with regards to funding
         | and outreach.
        
           | notepad0x90 wrote:
           | it's piracy when you share it with others, it can default to
           | act as your personal cloud. It is dropbox/onedrive/gdrive
           | except optionally searchable/shared/indexable by the public
           | or a group of people (those legit services already allow
           | public sharing of arbitrary data).
        
         | ivanjermakov wrote:
         | Write a script to call yt-dlp command with url in clipboard on
         | ipfs server
        
       | tasuki wrote:
       | Ahaha, I _love_ the  "vi/vim" pronouns on Christian's GitHub
       | profile[0]. How have I never seen this before?
       | 
       | [0]: https://github.com/christian-fei
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | copied it from someone else, can't remember who :)
        
         | johnisgood wrote:
         | Maybe mine are mg/emacs.
        
         | Thorrez wrote:
         | I don't see it. Has it been removed?
        
       | tracerbulletx wrote:
       | I kind of wish people would stop making yt-dlp more accessible
       | and increasing Google's desire to shut it down.
        
         | yimby2001 wrote:
         | do you feel the same about ad blockers?
        
           | freehorse wrote:
           | Ad blockers are basically about blocking ads. Yt-dlp has also
           | uses whose main purpose is not about blocking ads.
        
             | ivoputzer wrote:
             | it's a nice side-effect though.
        
         | jjulius wrote:
         | I'd say it's less people's fault and more Google's for driving
         | people to want something like it.
        
           | Gigachad wrote:
           | Yes, people prefer to get stuff for free rather than paying
           | for it. That's not a very interesting insight.
        
             | freehorse wrote:
             | There is no way to pay google to get features like these or
             | like what yt-dlp offers. If there was I would have gladly
             | paid.
        
               | Arainach wrote:
               | You can pay for YouTube Premium and get no ads.
        
               | freehorse wrote:
               | I am not talking about ads (specifically), but about all
               | the control that these tools offer.
        
               | moron4hire wrote:
               | That's not true, there are still lots of ads that you'll
               | have to sit through. They're just not out there by
               | Google, they're out their by the video creator.
               | 
               | Which, I get it, YouTube isn't paying them enough and
               | they gotta eat. So, it kind of feels like YouTube letting
               | them post their own ads is an intentional choice on
               | YouTube's part to not give me the service I'm paying for.
        
         | zozbot234 wrote:
         | If they shut down yt-dlp for good, a _lot_ of power users and
         | creators would find the YouTube platform useless for themselves
         | and abandon it en masse for its nearest competitor. A tool like
         | yt-dlp is very much required if you want to engage
         | professionally with that kind of community. Even something as
         | trivial as making a well-produced  "video reaction" relies on
         | it.
         | 
         | Yes, YT has good monetization, but it still pays peanuts to the
         | _average_ creator. So the competitive threat is very real -
         | superstars alone wouldn 't be enough to make for a really
         | compelling platform.
        
           | aucisson_masque wrote:
           | > lot of power users and creators would find the YouTube
           | platform useless for themselves and abandon it en masse for
           | its nearest competitor.
           | 
           | Not so sure, since everything is monetized nowadays (YouTuber
           | make video to earn money) and the audience is there, i don't
           | see how they could move anywhere.
        
             | zozbot234 wrote:
             | The interesting question is whether YT as a platform pays
             | enough to make this a relevant factor. Which I very much
             | doubt is the case for most creators.
        
               | mafuy wrote:
               | Afaik others do not pay more, so an exodus is just
               | wishful thinking detached from reality.
        
             | Konnstann wrote:
             | YouTube is mostly there as an advertisement tool nowadays,
             | once you get any amount of an audience youtube revenue
             | becomes a small piece of your income compared to things
             | like Patreon, live streaming elsewhere, and even
             | alternative hosting sources like floatplane or Nebula where
             | creators will host exclusive content.
        
         | Gigachad wrote:
         | Agreed. Youtube downloaders are essential for backup purposes
         | and for getting clips to put in your own videos as fair use.
         | But people turning them in to fully user facing ad free
         | frontends are driving the crackdown on the tools so we will end
         | up with no way at all to download videos..
         | 
         | Would be nice if Youtube just let premium users download the
         | actual video files. What I find interesting is how so many of
         | the Chinese social media platforms just let you download videos
         | while western tech companies pretty much universally block it.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | I don't think they can ever kill it. Something else will rise.
         | There is too much demand for it.
        
         | krystofee wrote:
         | My take is: its either there with all of its features and
         | popularity or its not. The argument that it will be taken down
         | if its more popular seems to me fundamenally wrong.
        
         | modmodmod wrote:
         | so, essentially, what you are saying is that yt-dlp should have
         | never been open-sourced/published and _ever_ posted on HN (so
         | that not even you would have found out about it)?
        
           | codetrotter wrote:
           | No no. He's saying that only people with his exact amount of
           | technical skill and prowess _deserves_ yt-dlp. If you for
           | some reason are not knowledgable about cli tools, then that
           | is the exact, natural, universal, god given reason that you
           | do not deserve yt-dlp.
           | 
           | In order to ensure that not too many people learn about yt-
           | dlp, we should also work to remove all access to knowledge
           | about the magical super big brain requiring, mytical command
           | line.
           | 
           | In fact to ensure that Google does not kill yt-dlp, everyone
           | in the world except tracerbulletx should be force fed
           | chemical powder that makes them stupid.
           | 
           | That way, only tracerbulletx will understand yt-dlp, and he
           | can heroically guard this super secret tool that only those
           | worthy deserves to know.
        
       | jv22222 wrote:
       | This is monetizable for parents (or at least, highly needed).
       | YouTube is terrible for child behavior as there are so many
       | pranks and people screaming etc (in kids content) but there are a
       | select few YouTubers who are really good for kids. For example
       | our 10yo does well with: ZebraGamer, Half Asleep Chris, Mark
       | Rober, Brick Experiment Channel, Ants Canada, etc. We have it
       | locked down via safe app but it would be great to have this for
       | the full home network with channels buttoned down.
        
         | samtheDamned wrote:
         | Monetizing this would put YT-DLP in danger of having legal
         | action taken against it, or at least being shut down.
        
         | jdpedrie wrote:
         | What is "safe app"? Too generic to be googleable.
        
           | jv22222 wrote:
           | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/safe-vision-kids-for-
           | youtube/i...
        
       | aucisson_masque wrote:
       | Freetube is great alternative.
       | 
       | Personally I don't even use it to watch the video and instead
       | open them in browser, but it allows to monitor the channel you
       | want and only that with a 'feed' that consist of their video in
       | chronological order.
       | 
       | It doesn't require self hosting, no YouTube account, has the
       | thing to skip promotional video and setting to automatically
       | change clickbait thumbnail.
        
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