Changeyan/youtube-downloader

YouTube Downloader

A web-based YouTube video downloader built with Node.js and yt-dlp. Paste a URL, browse available formats, and download videos in various resolutions or extract audio as MP3.

Features

• Video Info Extraction — Fetches title, thumbnail, uploader, view count, duration
• Format Selection — Browse all available video resolutions (144p–4K) and audio-only options
• Real-time Progress — Live download progress bar with speed indicator via yt-dlp events
• Success Modal — Confirmation dialog with direct file download link after completion
• Download History — Persistent list of downloaded files with delete support
• Responsive UI — Dark theme, mobile-friendly layout

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Node.js + Express
Video Engine	yt-dlp (via yt-dlp-wrap)
Frontend	Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS (single page)

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ (Download)
• yt-dlp — The core video downloader. Install via one of these methods:
  • Windows (chocolatey): choco install yt-dlp
  • Windows (pip): pip install yt-dlp
  • macOS: brew install yt-dlp
  • Linux: sudo apt install yt-dlp

After installing, verify with yt-dlp --version. The server uses the yt-dlp command on PATH by default. To use a custom path, edit YT_DLP_PATH in server.js.

Installation

# Clone or download this repository
cd youtube-downloader

# Install Node.js dependencies
npm install

Running

npm start

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

To change the port:

PORT=8080 npm start

API Reference

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/info?url=	Extract video metadata and available formats
POST	/api/download	Start a download (body: {url, format})
GET	/api/status/:jobId	Poll download progress
GET	/api/downloaded	List all downloaded files
GET	/api/file/:filename	Download / serve a saved file
DELETE	/api/file/:filename	Delete a saved file

Project Structure

youtube-downloader/
├── server.js            # Express server + yt-dlp integration
├── public/
│   └── index.html       # Single-page frontend (UI + client JS)
├── downloads/           # Downloaded files stored here (auto-created)
├── package.json
└── README.md

License

MIT