Electron video (youtube) downloader

An app that quickly downloads video from youtube, and corresponding human or automated captions.

The app is built in electron for osx, and uses youtube-dl under the hood, which means there is a long list of supported sites.

Key features

• Download video form youtube and other sites
• Download captions from youtube vtt
• Option to convert youtube capitons into plain text on download
• Option to download youtube automated captions
• Option to download "youtube human proofread captions" when available
• Option to load a comprensive list of languages for captions files
• Works on osx desktop

Usage

• Download latest app from release section
  • For mac, download the .dmg file
  • open it, and drag the app in the application folder
  • in the application folder, the first time, right click to the app to open it
  • from then on after the first time you can just double click
• Add youtube url from youtube share functionality
• chose app preferences, see screenshot below.
• click Download
• retrieve downloaed files in Movie folder
• done :)

Development

git clone repo, cd into folder, npm install, npm start.

Build

To package for OSX as dmg

npm run build:mac

OR to package for OSX as zip file

npm run pack:mac

See package.json scripts section for details on packaging for other platforms.

"pack": "build --dir",
"pack:mac": "build --dir --mac --x64",
"pack:linux": "build --dir --linux --x64",
"pack:win": "build --dir --win --x64",
"build": "build",
"build:mac": "build --mac --x64",
"build:mac_app_store": "echo 'Mac App Store Option Not currently implemented'",
"build:win": "build --win nsis-web --x64",
"build:linux": "build --linux  --x64"

Possible todo to extend the app:

• add check box option for downloading associated subtitles.

• support languages other then english when downloading captions.

• if url is of playlist, then download playlist

• show list of extractors in app half implemented, but vimeo not working

• optional a video preview for select url.

• figure out a way to support direct url to video, eg not from supported extractors.

• Add CSS styling (needs checking if youtube-dl works cross platform).

• Package app and make release.

• Check if app works on osx,

• Check if app works windows,

• Check if app works linux.

• add a logo.

• refactor yotube downloader as separate component.

• add possibility for user to set default destination folder, as opposed to Movie in home folder on osx.

• change var destDownloadFolder = app.getPath("videos"); to be a default, corresponds to Movie folder.

  • with a promt to change dest folder to prefered one,
  • and rember choice, eg in local storage?

• Add human vs automated label to text file of captions to distinguish is downloading both one after the other.

• escape emoji, sometimes emojis are in the title, and that's hard to parse/read/save.

Contributors

• Pietro