Yt-dlp is what I see mostly
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
121 points (99.2% liked)
Selfhosted
57630 readers
1483 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
-
No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Make sure you update often though. Youtube/Google/Alphabet are playing whackamole.
You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the release binaries
If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program
If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program
Simply running pip install yt-dlp doesn't update though, right? You need to add an upgrade flag, so either:
pip install yt-dlp --upgradepip install yt-dlp -U
EDIT: Maybe I should actually read this documentation that I am commenting about. Their steps to initially install it with PIP mention to use the -U flag anyway. That flag is meant for updating, but it won't make the package install wrong if used during initial installation of the package or anything, so no reason not to.
I just did uv tool install yt-dlp[default] --with mutagen. Updates are handled automatically.
I put it in a container that has a build process every week.
Yt-dlp is the way. J-Downloader is okay too if you need a good interface but dlp is just too damn powerful to not use
Yup, don't need anything else.
Most kids today don't know how to use a computer, but old farts like me use yt-dlp.
As others have already said, yt-dlp is absolutely the gold standard. It even works in Termux. As for a dedicated Android app, there are apps like Seal which are effectively just wrappers for yt-dlp. Then the open source YouTube clients like Tubular, which are primarily for browsing/watching videos, have a download button on every video.
yt-dlp is great for cli, and if you want a web gui, you can run metube in docker
I don't think docker is a good solution for people who need a gui
There is portainer. CLI until you install portainer then everything is GUI based.
The whole concept of running containers might be too much for most people. Ideally it would just be an app that you download.
If I wanted a web UI I would just make a script that ran yt-dlp $1 and then use php shell_exec(script URL);
I use jdownloader2.
Paste a YouTube link and it will download the thumbnail, the video, a separate audio, and the transcript.
It will also download from a lot of video hosting sites if you know what I mean 😜
Stacher already dines the one off things like that for me. I’m more looking at automated runs.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I use GUI wrappers for yt-dlp - Parabolic on Fedora GNOME and Seal on Android
I use newpipe on phone but metube isn't too hard to install with docker
yt-dlp rules
I've downloaded many videos with PipePipe on my Android.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.
[Thread #93 for this comm, first seen 14th Feb 2026, 14:01] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot.
Parabolic
I use the Parabolic flatpak and it works well (apart from when the mouse gets caught for a few days in the cat and mouse game that is YouTube downloading).
Metube is a nice UI with yt-dlp as a background that is updated regularly.
On Android I use Seal. Aside from an occasional hiccup it’s awesome and does a phenomenal job 99% of the time. If I ever can’t get one item to work and there’s no alternative, I use one of the ones on my Linux machine. I’ll post the name when I’m home and can check.
TubeArchivist rules
I’m not really looking to do this with apps since google is pretty close to the regime so anything good could be taken down at any time. I want something to copies it down and I pull in with my existing stack like Pinchflat did, but cleaner.
Part of this is I’m still on apple. I’m looking at fleeing, but certainly not to google. Until I finally get off my ass and get a Linux phone, let’s just assume this has to work from a webUI
You're painting yourself into a corner by avoiding degoogled Android operating systems. I guess my suggestion for you would probably have to be to install yt-dlp on your server, and then use an SSH app when you need to download a video. Maybe someone more familiar with Apple can offer a better suggestion.
I was looking at a pixel running graphene this last upgrade cycle but google taking a swing a third party roms chased me back to apple for now.
Ah yes, Apple is notorious for the freedom of app installations...
I have been using a docker container - ytdl-sub, which uses yt-dlp to download YouTube videos with metadata for jellyfin
thanks for mentioning ytdl-sub!
can it selectively download videos or does it auto download all videos of a subscription?
By default it auto downloads everything, but you can set rules and filters to avoid videos you don't want.
You also have to explicitly download shorts, as they won't download by default.
I still use Pinchflat. It doesn’t exactly do as I like, but I’m mostly just downloading two channels, so it’s okay enough for me.
Just use Jdownloader to download whatever you want from the internet.
That's what I use a well, Specifically jdownloader2. I have run into a few YouTube videos it can't get. Typically they are music.
Yt.dlp. I wrote a small pyrhon script to give me a gui. Works really well.
I use Tubular
I use metube on the server and made mobile integration with Android using "HTTP Shortcuts" to easily submit links to metube via its API. Just a simple Android share click and it's done.
NewPipe
@muusemuuse There are many comment but only a few links so check it out :
For PC, yt-dlp is by far the best ( https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp)
There are many wrapper/UIs you can install, like https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp.
For Android, I've seen people mention NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
But personally I think Seal is the best as it allows to download entire playlists. https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal
On Android, I use ytdlnis, which is a wrapper around yt-dlp. You can "share" a video from to YouTube app to ytdlnis and it'll add it to the download queue.
I always recommend Seal just because I can never remember the name of this app. Has anyone made use of both and has an opinion on which is better?
Is there anything that works for Vimeo?
I use metube and Pinchflat.
Metube is great for one-off video downloads and works for many sites including social media. This comes in handy a lot when I want to send a short reel to friends without linking to Facebook, etc.
Pinchflat automatically downloads my favorites playlists and a couple other channels that I follow. These videos go into specific folders that are linked to Plex libraries.
yt-dlp, but most of the time you'll use some form of front end. All the "youtube downloaders", even the shady websites, are using yt-dlp. For selfhosted purposes, I like MeTube for individual downloads and Tubesync for keeping up with channels.
view more: next ›