I had Pinchflat set up on my server and never got around to putting it back in after I nuked it. I remember organizing backed up videos in jellyfin was a mess I never quite got working as well as I’d like.
I see there’s a couple alternatives mentioned on the Pinchflat GitHub. What is everybody else using to accomplish this?
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Yt-dlp is what I see mostly
Make sure you update often though. Youtube/Google/Alphabet are playing whackamole.
You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the release binaries
If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program
I put it in a container that has a build process every week.
Yup, don’t need anything else.
Most kids today don’t know how to use a computer, but old farts like me use yt-dlp.
yt-dlp
yt-dlp is great for cli, and if you want a web gui, you can run metube in docker
If I wanted a web UI I would just make a script that ran yt-dlp $1 and then use php shell_exec(script URL);
Metube is a nice UI with yt-dlp as a background that is updated regularly.
On Android I use Seal. Aside from an occasional hiccup it’s awesome and does a phenomenal job 99% of the time. If I ever can’t get one item to work and there’s no alternative, I use one of the ones on my Linux machine. I’ll post the name when I’m home and can check.
yt-dlp rules
TubeArchivist rules
I use jdownloader2.
Paste a YouTube link and it will download the thumbnail, the video, a separate audio, and the transcript.
It will also download from a lot of video hosting sites if you know what I mean 😜
Stacher already dines the one off things like that for me. I’m more looking at automated runs.
Just use Jdownloader to download whatever you want from the internet.
That’s what I use a well, Specifically jdownloader2. I have run into a few YouTube videos it can’t get. Typically they are music.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web Plex Brand of media server package SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 7 acronyms.
[Thread #93 for this comm, first seen 14th Feb 2026, 14:01] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot.
I still use Pinchflat. It doesn’t exactly do as I like, but I’m mostly just downloading two channels, so it’s okay enough for me.
I’m not really looking to do this with apps since google is pretty close to the regime so anything good could be taken down at any time. I want something to copies it down and I pull in with my existing stack like Pinchflat did, but cleaner.
Part of this is I’m still on apple. I’m looking at fleeing, but certainly not to google. Until I finally get off my ass and get a Linux phone, let’s just assume this has to work from a webUI
I have been using a docker container - ytdl-sub, which uses yt-dlp to download YouTube videos with metadata for jellyfin
thanks for mentioning ytdl-sub!
can it selectively download videos or does it auto download all videos of a subscription?
By default it auto downloads everything, but you can set rules and filters to avoid videos you don’t want.
You also have to explicitly download shorts, as they won’t download by default.
I use metube and Pinchflat.
Metube is great for one-off video downloads and works for many sites including social media. This comes in handy a lot when I want to send a short reel to friends without linking to Facebook, etc.
Pinchflat automatically downloads my favorites playlists and a couple other channels that I follow. These videos go into specific folders that are linked to Plex libraries.
I use metube on the server and made mobile integration with Android using “HTTP Shortcuts” to easily submit links to metube via its API. Just a simple Android share click and it’s done.
