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?
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
If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program
Simply running
pip install yt-dlpdoesn’t update though, right? You need to add an upgrade flag, so either:pip install yt-dlp --upgradepip install yt-dlp -U
I just did
uv tool install yt-dlp[default] --with mutagen. Updates are handled automatically.I put it in a container that has a build process every week.
Yt-dlp is the way. J-Downloader is okay too if you need a good interface but dlp is just too damn powerful to not use
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
On Android Newpipe has the best UI in my opinion.
As others have already said, yt-dlp is absolutely the gold standard. It even works in Termux. As for a dedicated Android app, there are apps like Seal which are effectively just wrappers for yt-dlp. Then the open source YouTube clients like Tubular, which are primarily for browsing/watching videos, have a download button on every video.
Seal is my favorite app to demonstrate the power of installing apps outside of Google Play
Android users can use YTDLnis for a nice GUI FE. It’s also available for install from IzzyOnDroid.
@muusemuuse There are many comment but only a few links so check it out :
For PC, yt-dlp is by far the best ( https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp)
There are many wrapper/UIs you can install, like https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp.
For Android, I’ve seen people mention NewPipe https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
But personally I think Seal is the best as it allows to download entire playlists. https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal
I use newpipe on phone but metube isn’t too hard to install with docker
yt-dlp is great for cli, and if you want a web gui, you can run metube in docker
I don’t think docker is a good solution for people who need a gui
There is portainer. CLI until you install portainer then everything is GUI based.
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);
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.
I use GUI wrappers for yt-dlp - Parabolic on Fedora GNOME and Seal on Android
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
[Thread #93 for this comm, first seen 14th Feb 2026, 14:01] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot.
I’ve downloaded many videos with PipePipe on my Android.
Parabolic
I use the Parabolic flatpak and it works well (apart from when the mouse gets caught for a few days in the cat and mouse game that is YouTube downloading).
Metube is a nice UI with yt-dlp as a background that is updated regularly.
