Simple Web and REST interface for downloading youtube videos onto a server. starlette + yt-dlp / youtube-dl

Forked from manbearwiz/youtube-dl-server.

For easier deployment, a docker image is available on dockerhub:

• nbr23/youtube-dl-server:yt-dlp or simply nbr23/youtube-dl-server to use yt-dlp
• nbr23/youtube-dl-server:youtube-dl to use youtube-dl. Note that the latest release of youtube-dl is pretty outdated.

This example uses the docker run command to create the container to run the app. Note the -v argument to specify the volume and its binding on the host. This directory will be used to output the resulting videos.

docker run -d --name youtube-dl -p 8080:8080 -v $HOME/youtube-dl:/youtube-dl nbr23/youtube-dl-server:latest

OR for yt-dlp:

docker run -d --name youtube-dl -p 8080:8080 -v $HOME/youtube-dl:/youtube-dl nbr23/youtube-dl-server:yt-dlp

This is an example service definition that could be put in docker-compose.yml.

  youtube-dl:
    image: "nbr23/youtube-dl-server:latest"
    volumes:
      - $HOME/youtube-dl:/youtube-dl
      - ./config.yml:/app_config/config.yml:ro # Overwrite the container's config file with your own configuration
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    restart: always

Configuration is done through the config.yml file at the root of the project.

An alternate configuration path or file path can be forced by setting the environment variable YDL_CONFIG_PATH:

export YDL_CONFIG_PATH=/var/local/youtube-dl-server/config.yml

In the above case, if /var/local/youtube-dl-server/config.yml does not exist, it will be created with the default options.

export YDL_CONFIG_PATH=/var/local/youtube-dl-server/

In the above case, if /var/local/youtube-dl-server/config.yml does not exist, it will be created with the default options as well.

Minimum required configuration:

ydl_server:
  port: 8080
  host: 0.0.0.0
  metadata_db_path: '/youtube-dl/.ydl-metadata.db'

ydl_options:
  output: '/youtube-dl/%(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s'
  cache-dir: '/youtube-dl/.cache'

Additional yt-dlp/youtube-dl parameters can be set in the ydl_options section. Add parameters by removing the leading -- from the flag name.

For example, to write subtitles in spanish, the yt-dlp command would be:

yt-dlp --write-sub --sub-lang es URL

Which translates to:

ydl_options:
  output: '/youtube-dl/%(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s'
  cache-dir: '/youtube-dl/.cache'
  write-sub: True
  sub-lang: es

Profiles are named configuration sets selectable in the UI. Each profile can override any ydl_options.

profiles:
  podcast:
      name: 'Audio Podcasts'
      ydl_options:
        output: '/youtube-dl/Podcast/%(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s'
        format: bestaudio/best
        write-thumbnail: True
        embed-thumbnail: True
        add-metadata: True
        audio-quality: 0
        extract-audio: True
        audio-format: mp3
  philosophy_lectures:
      name: 'Philosophy Lectures'
      ydl_options:
        output: '/youtube-dl/Lectures/Philosophy/%(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s'
        write-thumbnail: True
        embed-thumbnail: True
        add-metadata: True
        verbose: True

Requires Python ^3.8.

Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Build the frontend:

cd front && npm install && npm run build

Run the server:

python3 -u ./youtube-dl-server.py

To force a specific yt-dlp/youtube-dl fork, set the YOUTUBE_DL environment variable:

YOUTUBE_DL=yt-dlp python3 -u ./youtube-dl-server.py

The following environment variables are used for version display in the UI:

Navigate to http://{{host}}:8080/ and enter the URL to download.

curl -X POST \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-raw '{"url": "{{URL}}", "format": "video/best"}' \
  http://{{host}}:8080/api/downloads

Accepted body fields:

Available format values:

curl http://{{host}}:8080/api/downloads

Query parameters:

curl http://{{host}}:8080/api/downloads/stats

Removes completed and failed entries beyond max_log_entries:

curl -X POST http://{{host}}:8080/api/downloads/clean

curl -X DELETE http://{{host}}:8080/api/downloads

curl -X POST \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-raw '{"url": "{{URL}}"}' \
  http://{{host}}:8080/api/metadata

curl -X POST http://{{host}}:8080/api/jobs/{{job_id}}/stop

curl -X POST http://{{host}}:8080/api/jobs/{{job_id}}/retry

curl -X DELETE http://{{host}}:8080/api/jobs/{{job_id}}

curl http://{{host}}:8080/api/finished

curl -X DELETE http://{{host}}:8080/api/finished/{{filename}}

curl http://{{host}}:8080/api/info

curl http://{{host}}:8080/api/formats

curl http://{{host}}:8080/api/extractors

Add the following bookmarklet to your bookmark bar to send the current page URL to your youtube-dl-server instance.

If your youtube-dl-server is served through HTTPS (behind a reverse proxy handling HTTPS for example), you can use the following bookmarklet:

javascript:fetch("https://${host}/api/downloads",{body:JSON.stringify({url:window.location.href,format:"video/best"}),method:"POST",headers:{'Content-Type':'application/json'}});

If you are hosting it without HTTPS, the previous bookmarklet will likely be blocked by your browser (mixed content when used on HTTPS sites).

Instead, you can use the following bookmarklet:

javascript:(function(){document.body.innerHTML += '<form name="ydl_form" method="POST" action="http://${host}/api/downloads"><input name="url" type="url" value="'+window.location.href+'"/></form>';document.ydl_form.submit()})();

ffmpeg is required for format conversion and audio extraction in some scenarios.

• ansible-role-youtubedl-server
• ytdl-k8s - youtube-dl-server Helm chart (uses youtube-dl-server image for kubernetes deployment)
• starlette
• youtube-dl
• yt-dlp