🎞⬇ Cube YouTube Downloader - youtube-dl-wpf

WPF GUI for youtube-dl and yt-dlp.

Features

• Follow 🎨 system color mode, or choose between 🌃 dark mode and 🔆 light mode.
• Update youtube-dl/yt-dlp on startup.
• List all available formats.
• Override video, audio formats and output container.
• Embed metadata into downloaded file.
• Download and embed thumbnails.
• Download whole playlists.
• Select items from playlist to download.
• Select types of subtitles (default, all languages, auto-generated) to download and embed.
• Specify custom output template.
• Specify custom download path.
• Specify custom FFmpeg path.
• Specify custom proxy.
• Specify custom command-line arguments.

Usage

1. Download the pre-built binary or build it from source.
2. Download yt-dlp or youtube-dl.
3. It's optional but highly recommended to also download FFmpeg. Otherwise you won't be able to merge separate video and audio tracks.
4. The framework-dependent binary requires an installed .NET Runtime to run. Alternatively, download the self-contained binary that bundles the runtime.
5. Run youtube-dl-wpf.exe. Go to Settings. Set the path to youtube-dl/yt-dlp and FFmpeg.
6. Go back to the home tab. Paste a video URL and start downloading! 🚀

FAQ

1. Q: The Download button is grayed out and I can't click it!

   A: youtube-dl-wpf is a simple GUI wrapper. It doesn't bundle any downloader with it. You have to download youtube-dl or yt-dlp for it to work. FFmpeg is required by youtube-dl and yt-dlp when merging separate video and audio tracks, which is the case for most formats on YouTube.

2. Q: How can I use a proxy to download?

   A: Leave the proxy field empty to use system proxy settings. Otherwise the format is similar to how curl accepts proxy strings (e.g. socks5://localhost:1080/, http://localhost:8080/). Currently the upstream doesn't accept socks5h protocol and treat socks5 as socks5h by always resolving the hostname using the proxy. This is tracked in this issue.

3. Q: Downloading the whole playlist doesn't work!

   A: It's an upstream bug, just like many other issues you might discover. There's nothing I can do. Just report the bug to yt-dlp or youtube-dl, whichever you use.

4. Q: youtube-dl and yt-dlp behave differently!

   A: In some cases, yes, and youtube-dl-wpf tries to align their behavior by sending different options and arguments for different backends. See the backends documentation for more information.

Known Issues

• 🎉 No known issues!

To-Do

• v2.0 - The Parallel Update: download management and download queue for parallel downloads.

Build

Prerequisites: .NET 9 SDK

Note for packagers: The application by default uses executable directory as config directory. To use user's config directory, define the constant PACKAGED when building.

Build with Release configuration

dotnet build -c Release

Publish as framework-dependent

dotnet publish YoutubeDl.Wpf -c Release

Publish as self-contained for Windows x64

dotnet publish YoutubeDl.Wpf -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained

Publish as self-contained for packaging on Windows x64

dotnet publish YoutubeDl.Wpf -c Release -p:DefineConstants=PACKAGED -r win-x64 --self-contained

License

• This project is licensed under GPLv3.
• The icons are from Material Design Icons and are licensed under the Pictogrammers Free License.
• youtube-dl and yt-dlp are licensed under The Unlicense.
• Material Design Themes is licensed under MIT.
• Roboto Mono is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
• ReactiveUI and its dependencies are licensed under MIT.

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