YTPTube

Web GUI for yt-dlp with playlist & channel support. Allows you to download videos from YouTube and dozens of other sites.

YTPTube started as a fork of meTube project by alexta69. Since then it went under heavy changes, and it supports many new features.

YTPTube Features compared to meTube.

• A built in video player that can play any video file regardless of the format.
• New /add_batch endpoint that allow multiple links to be sent.
• Re-Imagined the frontend and re-wrote the code in VueJS.
• Switched out of binary file storage in favor of SQLite.
• Handle live streams.
• Support per link, yt-dlp config and cookies.

Tips

Your yt-dlp config should include the following options for optimal working conditions.

{
    "windowsfilenames": true,
    "continue_dl": true,
    "live_from_start": true,
    "format_sort": [
        "codec:avc:m4a"
    ]
}

• Note, the format_sort, forces YouTube to use x264 instead of vp9 codec, you can ignore it if you want. i prefer the media in x264.

Run using Docker

docker run -d --name ytptube -p 8081:8081 -v ./config:/config:rw -v ./downloads:/downloads:rw ghcr.io/arabcoders/ytptube

Run using docker-compose

version: "3"
services:
  ytptube:
    user: "1000:1000"
    image: ghcr.io/arabcoders/ytptube
    container_name: ytptube
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8081:8081"
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - ./downloads:/downloads

Configuration via environment variables

Certain values can be set via environment variables, using the -e parameter on the docker command line, or the environment: section in docker-compose.

• UMASK: umask value used by YTPTube. Defaults to 022.
• YTP_CONFIG_PATH: path to where the queue persistence files will be saved. Defaults to /config in the docker image, and ./var/config otherwise.
• YTP_DOWNLOAD_PATH: path to where the downloads will be saved. Defaults to /downloads in the docker image, and ./var/downloads otherwise.
• YTP_TEMP_PATH: path where intermediary download files will be saved. Defaults to /downloads in the docker image, and ./var/tmp otherwise. Set this to an SSD or RAM filesystem (e.g., tmpfs) for better performance Note: Using a RAM filesystem may prevent downloads from being resumed.
• YTP_URL_PREFIX: base path for the web server (for use when hosting behind a reverse proxy). Defaults to /.
• YTP_OUTPUT_TEMPLATE: the template for the filenames of the downloaded videos, formatted according to this spec. Defaults to %(title)s.%(ext)s.
• YTP_YTDL_OPTIONS: Additional options to pass to yt-dlp, in JSON format. See available options here. They roughly correspond to command-line options, though some do not have exact equivalents here, for example --recode-video has to be specified via postprocessors. Also note that dashes are replaced with underscores.
• YTP_YTDL_OPTIONS_FILE: A path to a JSON file that will be loaded and used for populating YTDL_OPTIONS above.
• YTP_KEEP_ARCHIVE: Boolean. Whether to keep history of downloaded videos to prevent downloading same file multiple times.

The following example value for YTDL_OPTIONS embeds English subtitles and chapter markers (for videos that have them), and also changes the permissions on the downloaded video and sets the file modification timestamp to the date of when it was downloaded:

    environment:
      - 'YTP_YTDL_OPTIONS={"writesubtitles":true,"subtitleslangs":["en","-live_chat"],"updatetime":false,"postprocessors":[{"key":"Exec","exec_cmd":"chmod 0664","when":"after_move"},{"key":"FFmpegEmbedSubtitle","already_have_subtitle":false},{"key":"FFmpegMetadata","add_chapters":true}]}'

The following example value for OUTPUT_TEMPLATE sets:

• playlist name and author, if present
• playlist number and count, if present (zero-padded, if needed)
• video author, title and release date in YYYY-MM-DD format, falling back to UNKNOWN_... if missing
• sanitizes everything for valid UNIX filename

    environment:
      - 'OUTPUT_TEMPLATE=%(playlist_title&Playlist |)S%(playlist_title|)S%(playlist_uploader& by |)S%(playlist_uploader|)S%(playlist_autonumber& - |)S%(playlist_autonumber|)S%(playlist_count& of |)S%(playlist_count|)S%(playlist_autonumber& - |)S%(uploader,creator|UNKNOWN_AUTHOR)S - %(title|UNKNOWN_TITLE)S - %(release_date>%Y-%m-%d,upload_date>%Y-%m-%d|UNKNOWN_DATE)S.%(ext)s'

Running behind a reverse proxy

It's advisable to run YTPTube behind a reverse proxy, if authentication and/or HTTPS support are required.

When running behind a reverse proxy which remaps the URL (i.e. serves YTPTube under a subdirectory and not under root), don't forget to set the YTP_URL_PREFIX environment variable to the correct value.

NGINX

location /ytptube/ {
        proxy_pass http://ytptube:8081;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
}

Note: the extra proxy_set_header directives are there to make WebSocket work.

Caddy

The following example Caddyfile gets a reverse proxy going behind caddy.

example.com {
  route /ytptube/* {
    uri strip_prefix ytptube
    reverse_proxy ytptube:8081
  }
}

Updating yt-dlp

The engine which powers the actual video downloads in YTPTube is yt-dlp. Since video sites regularly change their layouts, frequent updates of yt-dlp are required to keep up.

There's an automatic nightly build of YTPTube which looks for a new version of yt-dlp, and if one exists, the build pulls it and publishes an updated docker image. Therefore, in order to keep up with the changes, it's recommended that you update your YTPTube container regularly with the latest image.

I recommend installing and setting up watchtower for this purpose.

Troubleshooting and submitting issues

Before asking a question or submitting an issue for YTPTube, please remember that YTPTube is only a UI for yt-dlp. Any issues you might be experiencing with authentication to video websites, postprocessing, permissions, other YTDL_OPTIONS configurations which seem not to work, or anything else that concerns the workings of the underlying yt-dlp library, need not be opened on the YTPTube project. In order to debug and troubleshoot them, it's advised to try using the yt-dlp binary directly first, bypassing the UI, and once that is working, importing the options that worked for you into YTDL_OPTIONS.

In order to test with the yt-dlp command directly, you can either download it and run it locally, or for a better simulation of its actual conditions, you can run it within the YTPTube container itself. Assuming your YTPTube container is called YTPTube, run the following on your Docker host to get a shell inside the container:

docker exec -ti ytptube sh
cd /downloads

Once there, you can use the yt-dlp command freely.

Building and running locally

Make sure you have node.js and Python 3.8 installed.

cd ytptube/frontend
# install Vue and build the UI
npm install
npm run build
# install python dependencies
cd ..
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip3 install pipenv
pipenv install
# run
python app/main.py

A Docker image can be built locally (it will build the UI too):

docker build -t ytptube .