Youtube-dl-ui NPM

Overview

Installation

$ npm install -g youtube-dl-ui

Usage

You can now start the server like you would any binary.

$ youtube-dl-ui
v1.4.0

Options

Usage: youtube-dl-ui [options]

Options:
  -V, --version             output the version number
  -p, --port <port>         the port for the http server
  -v, --video-path <path>   path to directory where videos should be saved
  -a, --audio-path <path>   path to directory where audio should be saved
  -y, --youtube-dl <path>   file path to the youtube-dl binary (so you can set
                            it to yt-dlp)
  -s, --socket-path <path>  url path the socket should connect to (useful when
                            proxying the server)
  -d, --debug               enable debug mode
  -h, --help                display help for command

Config

Environment variables & command-line flags

The following environment variables can be set, to control youtube-dl-ui:

Environment variable	Type	Command-line equivalent
PORT	number (e.g. 8080)	--port 8080
VIDEO_PATH	string (e.g. ~/Downloads/videos)	--video-path ~/Downloads/videos
AUDIO_PATH	string (e.g. ~/Downloads/audio)	--video-path ~/Downloads/audio
YOUTUBE_DL	string (e.g. /usr/bin/yt-dlp)	--youtube-dl /usr/bin/yt-dlp
SOCKET_PATH	string (e.g. /socket.io)	--socket-path /socket.io
DEBUG	boolean	--debug

Config file

RC is used to look for config files and can be used in the following ways:

if you passed an option --config file then from that file
$HOME/.youtube-dl-ui/config
$HOME/.config/youtube-dl-ui
$HOME/.config/youtube-dl-ui/config
/etc/youtube-dl-ui/config

Settings from this file will be overridden, if you also set options using environment variables or command line arguments.

Transparent mode

You can append the query parameter ?transparent=1 to the UI URL. This will remove the colored background and move the content to the left.

This is used in @capevace/mission-control to embed the download UI in an iFrame.

Example:

https://example.com/youtube-dl-ui?transparent=1

Swapping out `youtube-dl`

There are multiple forks of youtube-dl like yt-dlp which have a compatible API and can be used instead of stock youtube-dl.

You can do this by either setting the YOUTUBE_DL=/usr/bin/yt-dlp environment variable or by passing the --youtube-dl /usr/bin/yt-dlp CLI flag. To find out your yt-dlp path, run $ which yt-dlp in your shell.

Example:

youtube-dl-ui --youtube-dl /usr/bin/yt-dlp

# or

YOUTUBE_DL=/usr/bin/yt-dlp youtube-dl-ui

Changelog

Version 1.4.0

Added YOUTUBE_DL environment variable (and CLI option --youtube-dl) to set the youtube-dl binary This lets you replace youtube-dl with forks like yt-dlp.
Added empty queue view