Why yt-dlp GUI?

yt-dlp is powerful, but its command-line interface can be intimidating. yt-dlp GUI wraps it in a clean, native desktop app — no terminal needed.

• Zero config to start — paste a link, pick a quality, click download
• Native & lightweight — built with Tauri 2 + Rust, ~10 MB installer, low memory usage
• Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, and Linux
• Multilingual — 7 languages with auto-detection

Features

Core

• Paste a video URL and instantly preview title, thumbnail, duration, and available formats
• Choose video quality, audio-only, or video-only downloads
• Download queue with pause / resume / cancel controls
• Real-time progress with speed and ETA display
• Playlist support — download all or selected items
• Configurable concurrent downloads and fragment threading

Toolbox

• Thumbnail Downloader — browse and save all available cover images in any resolution
• Subtitle Extractor — download subtitles in SRT / VTT / ASS / LRC, with bilingual merge support
• Live Chat Archiver — extract YouTube live chat replay, filter with regex, export as JSON / CSV
• Plugin Manager — install yt-dlp plugins (e.g. ChromeCookieUnlock) with one click
• Browser Extension — companion Chrome / Edge extension that sends the page URL and required cookies to the app with one click (details)

Advanced

• Custom filename templates with rich variables (title, author, date, resolution, etc.)
• Time-based clip trimming — download only a segment of the video
• Re-encode to MP4 / MKV / WebM / MP3 / AAC / FLAC and more
• Embed subtitles, thumbnails, metadata, and chapters into the output file
• SponsorBlock integration — automatically skip sponsored segments
• Cookie authentication for age-restricted or members-only content
• Proxy support (HTTP / SOCKS)
• Download speed limiter
• Light / Dark / Auto theme
• Download completion notifications (in-app and/or system)

Screenshots

| Home (Dark) | Home (Light) | |:-:|:-:| | | |

| Download Options | Extra Options | |:-:|:-:| | | |

| Downloading | Tools | |:-:|:-:| | | |

Getting Started

Download

Grab the latest release for your platform from Releases:

| Platform | File | |----------|------| | Windows | .exe installer | | macOS | .dmg | | Linux | .AppImage / .deb |

First Launch

• Open the app and go to Settings
• Click Download next to yt-dlp — the binary is fetched automatically
• (Optional) Install Deno runtime for full YouTube format support
• Set your download directory
• Go back to the home page, paste a URL, and start downloading

[!TIP]

If you encounter login-required videos, configure Cookie in settings using Netscape format text or a cookie file.

Browser Extension

A companion YDL GUI Helper browser extension lives in browser-extension/. It sends the current tab's URL and required cookies straight to the desktop app via a local protocol handler (ytdlp-gui://) — no copy-paste, no extra cookie export.

Highlights

• One-click send from the popup, or right-click context menu (Send page to YDL GUI / Download link with YDL GUI / Send selected URL to YDL GUI)
• Action badge lights up automatically on supported video sites
• Auto light / dark theme that follows your system
• Cookies are processed locally — passed straight to the app via the local protocol, never uploaded anywhere

Install (Chrome / Edge / Brave / Vivaldi etc.)

The extension is bundled with the app — no separate download required.

• In the app, open Toolbox → Browser Extension and click Open extension folder.
• Open chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions) and turn on Developer mode in the top-right.
• Click Load unpacked and select the folder revealed in step 1.
• Pin the YDL GUI Helper icon next to the address bar.

Use

• Open a supported video page (YouTube, Bilibili, Twitch, Vimeo, Twitter/X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, SoundCloud, etc.).
• Click the YDL GUI icon, or right-click the page / a video link and choose Send to YDL GUI.
• The desktop app comes to the front automatically with the URL and cookies pre-filled.

[!NOTE]

Make sure the YDL GUI desktop app is installed and running for the protocol handler to fire.

Tech Stack

| Layer | Technology | |-------|-----------| | Backend | Tauri 2 + Rust | | Frontend | Vue 3 + TypeScript | | UI | Naive UI | | State | Pinia with persistence | | Build | Vite | | i18n | Vue I18n — zh-CN, zh-TW, en-US, ja-JP, ko-KR, es-ES, ru-RU |

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 22
• pnpm
• Rust

Setup

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/imsyy/yt-dlp-gui.git
cd yt-dlp-gui
Install dependencies
pnpm install
Run in development mode (Vite + Tauri)
pnpm tauri:dev
Build for production
pnpm tauri:build

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

MIT © imsyy