yet is a minimalist YouTube video, playlist downloader.
Engineering design constraints lead to a simple application and code base. yet is built on top of github.com/boggydigital/yet_urls, similarly compact module, that provides low-level helpers to get and work with YouTube data.
yet can be run as a Docker service.
The recommended way to install yet is with docker-compose:
- create
compose.ymlfile (this minimal example omits common settings like network, restart, etc):
version: '3'
services:
yet:
container_name: yet
image: ghcr.io/boggydigital/yet:latest
volumes:
# backups
- /docker/yet/backups:/usr/share/yet/backups
# input
- /docker/yet/input:/usr/share/yet/input
# metadata
- /docker/yet/metadata:/usr/share/yet/metadata
# videos
- /docker/yet/videos:/usr/share/yet/videos
# posters
- /docker/yet/posters:/usr/share/yet/posters
# captions
- /docker/yet/captions:/usr/share/yet/captions
# players
- /docker/yet/players:/usr/share/yet/players
# sharing timezone from the host
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro - (move it to location of your choice, e.g. /docker/yet or remote server or anywhere else)
- while in the directory with that config - pull the image with
docker compose pull - run yet with
docker compose run yet yet download <video-id>to download a video tovideosdirectory
yet Docker service is a work in progress and will be improved in the future to add more functionality.
All advanced scenarios are detailed below.
Some YouTube videos require users to sign in - e.g. paid-membership only videos.
yet uses coost to persist session cookies and it's possible to reuse existing browser YouTube cookies to get access to videos that require authentication.
Please refer to the coost README for the step by step guide on copying YouTube session cookies.
For yet you need to create or edit cookies.txt file in the yet input directory and add youtube.com host sessions cookies. It should look like this:
youtube.com
cookie-header=<paste-youtube-session-cookie-header-from-your-browser-here>
yet can be enhanced with several improvements when used in an environment with ffmpeg, node or deno - better video and audio quality, faster downloads, etc.
yet Docker image contains ffmpeg and deno and provides the best quality and fastest downloads out of the box - no other action needed.
yet CLI usage needs external binaries available and it's recommended to test the dependencies before attempting to setup them. yet provides a command for that:
yet test-dependenciesThis will output something like this:
testing dependencies...
ffmpeg /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg
node /usr/local/bin/node
deno not found
yet Docker image should include ffmpeg, so this section will help you setting up (or not) ffmpeg for CLI tool usage.
Please note that ffmpeg is NOT required for yet to function - yet was designed to function without any external dependencies out of the box. When yet cannot locate a working ffmpeg binary, it'll download a mobile version of the video that'll contain video and audio in one file. Typically that means 720p videos / medium quality sound and is a YouTube limitation, not yet.
However, if an external dependency is not a problem for your use-case - you can progressively enhance yet with ffmpeg. By default, yet will attempt to locate ffmpeg binary on the system. In most cases that's sufficient and assuming you have ffmpeg installed - you don't need to do anything special to get better quality video/audio.
If you'd prefer to specify ffmpeg binary location manually, set YET_FFMPEG_CMD environment variable to the full path of ffmpeg binary (e.g. /opt/homebrew/bin/ffmpeg for Homebrew installation on macOS).
YouTube implements measures to restrict download speed, unless download client passes a challenge. This issue goes into more details - check it out if you want to know more about that restriction.
In order to unlock faster downloads yet can extract decoding code from YouTube video page and run it for you. This but requires a JavaScript engine (Node.js or Deno) that would run that decoding code.
Below you will find details on how to enable each option depending on your needs and available software. There is of course a third option - do nothing and live with slower yet download speeds.
If an external dependency is not a problem for your use-case or you already have Node.js installed - you can progressively enhance yet with node or deno. By default, yet will attempt to locate node and deno binaries on the system. In most cases that's sufficient and assuming you have Node.js or Deno installed - you don't need to do anything special to unlock faster download speed.
If you'd prefer to specify node or deno binary location manually, set YET_NODE_CMD environment variable for node or YET_DENO_CMD for deno to the full path of the binary (e.g. /usr/local/bin/node for default Node.js installation on macOS).
However you specify location of the node or deno binary - upon encountering an encoded parameter, yet will download decoding code and create decoder.js file in the working directory and use an available JavaScript runtime binary to run it and get the decoded value - this is completely automatic and doesn't require user input.
Go allows you to build binary for another OS like this (using Linux and AMD64 as an example):
env GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o yetyet doesn't collect any data whatsoever. Whatever you do with yet stays on your machine.
Your Internet connection is only used to download YouTube metadata and videos and nothing is ever uploaded anywhere.
If you've provided any youtube.com cookies - they're transmitted as part of requests to get YouTube data, exactly the same way your browser would send them. You can delete cookies.txt that you've created at any point with no impact to ability to download publicly available videos (you won't be able to download any YouTube videos that require authorization).