MeTube

Web GUI for youtube-dl (using the yt-dlp fork) with playlist support. Allows you to download videos from YouTube and dozens of other sites (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/supportedsites.md).

Run using Docker

docker run -d -p 8081:8081 -v /path/to/downloads:/downloads --user 1001:1001 alexta69/metube

Run using docker-compose

version: "3"
services:
  metube:
    image: alexta69/metube
    container_name: metube
    restart: unless-stopped
    user: "1001:1001"
    ports:
      - "8081:8081"
    volumes:
      - /path/to/downloads:/downloads

Configuration via environment variables

Certain values can be set via environment variables, using the -e parameter on the docker command line, or the environment: section in docker-compose.

• DOWNLOAD_DIR: path to where the downloads will be saved. Defaults to /downloads in the docker image, and . otherwise.
• AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR: path to where audio-only downloads will be saved, if you wish to separate them from the video downloads. Defaults to the value of DOWNLOAD_DIR.
• URL_PREFIX: base path for the web server (for use when hosting behind a reverse proxy). Defaults to /.
• OUTPUT_TEMPLATE: the template for the filenames of the downloaded videos, formatted according to this spec. Defaults to %(title)s.%(ext)s.
• YTDL_OPTIONS: Additional options to pass to youtube-dl, in JSON format. See available options here. They roughly correspond to command-line options, though some do not have exact equivalents here, for example --recode-video has to be specified via postprocessors. Also note that dashes are replaced with underscores. Example value: {"sleep_interval":10}.

Using browser cookies

In case you need to use your browser's cookies with MeTube, for example to download restricted or private videos:

• Add the following to your docker-compose.yml:

    volumes:
      - /path/to/cookies:/cookies
    environment:
      - YTDL_OPTIONS={"cookiefile":"/cookies/cookies.txt"}

• Install in your browser an extension to extract cookies:
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
• Extract the cookies you need with the extension and rename the file cookies.txt
• Drop the file in the folder you configured in the docker-compose.yml above
• Restart the container

Chrome extension

Rpsl has created a Chrome extension that allows right-clicking a video and sending it to MeTube. You can install it from Google Chrome Webstore or use developer mode and install from sources.

Bookmarklet

kushfest has created a Chrome bookmarklet for sending the currently open webpage to MeTube. Please note that if you're on an HTTPS page, your MeTube instance must be behind an HTTPS reverse proxy (see below) for the bookmarklet to work.

GitHub doesn't allow embedding JavaScript as a link, so the bookmarklet has to be created manually by copying the following code to a new bookmark you create on your bookmarks bar. Change the hostname in the URL below to point to your MeTube instance.

javascript:!function(){xhr=new XMLHttpRequest();xhr.open("POST","https://metube.domain.com/add");xhr.send(JSON.stringify({"url":document.location.href,"quality":"best"}));xhr.onload=function(){if(xhr.status==200){alert("Sent to metube!")}else{alert("Send to metube failed. Check the javascript console for clues.")}}}();

shoonya75 has contributed a Firefox version:

javascript:(function(){xhr=new XMLHttpRequest();xhr.open("POST","https://metube.domain.com/add");xhr.send(JSON.stringify({"url":document.location.href,"quality":"best"}));xhr.onload=function(){if(xhr.status==200){alert("Sent to metube!")}else{alert("Send to metube failed. Check the javascript console for clues.")}}})();

Running behind a reverse proxy

Use the following nginx configuration to run MeTube behind a reverse proxy. The extra proxy_set_header directives are there to make WebSocket work. Don't forget to set the URL_PREFIX environment variable to the correct value as well.

location /metube/ {
        proxy_pass http://metube:8081;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
}

If you're using the linuxserver/swag image for your reverse proxying needs (which I can heartily recommend), it already includes ready snippets for proxying MeTube both in subfolder and subdomain modes under the nginx/proxy-confs directory in the configuration volume.

Build and run locally

Make sure you have node.js and Python 3.8 installed.

cd metube/ui
# install Angular and build the UI
npm install
node_modules/.bin/ng build
# install python dependencies
cd ..
pip3 install pipenv
pipenv install
# run
pipenv run python3 app/main.py

A Docker image can be built locally (it will build the UI too):

docker build -t metube .

Development notes

• The above works on Windows and MacOS as well as Linux.
• If you're running the server in VSCode, your downloads will go to your user's Downloads folder (this is configured via the environment in .vscode/launch.json).