iffych673/snapfetch-code

SnapFetch — free video downloader tool site

A small Flask website with a video-downloader tool (ssstik-style) at its core, built to live on a custom domain and earn from Google AdSense.

What's inside

Path	What it is
/	The tool: paste a link → fetch formats → download video or MP3
/how-to-download-tiktok-videos	Guide article (SEO content)
/how-to-download-facebook-videos	Guide article (SEO content)
/about, /contact	Trust pages (needed for AdSense review)
/privacy-policy, /terms, /dmca	Legal pages (needed for AdSense review)
/robots.txt, /sitemap.xml, /ads.txt	Served by the app; ads.txt is a placeholder until AdSense approval
POST /api/info	JSON: video title/thumbnail/duration + format list
GET /download	Streams the chosen file through the server via yt-dlp

The download engine is the yt-dlp binary. Every download goes through the server route (never a hotlink), so formats are fetched fresh from the source.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• pip install -r requirements.txt (just Flask)
• A yt-dlp binary; set YTDLP_BIN to its path (default ~/workspace/bin/yt-dlp). To install one: curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
• ffmpeg on PATH (only needed for the MP3 option)

Run locally

./run.sh            # listens on $PORT or 8901

Deploy (a) — small VPS with systemd

1. Copy this folder to the server, e.g. /opt/snapfetch.
2. Create a virtualenv and install requirements:

   cd /opt/snapfetch
   python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
   

   Install yt-dlp to /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp and ffmpeg via your package manager.
3. For production traffic use gunicorn behind nginx (the built-in Flask server is fine for testing only):

   .venv/bin/pip install gunicorn
   

   Example systemd unit /etc/systemd/system/snapfetch.service:

   [Unit]
   Description=SnapFetch
   After=network.target
   
   [Service]
   WorkingDirectory=/opt/snapfetch
   Environment=YTDLP_BIN=/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
   Environment=PORT=8901
   ExecStart=/opt/snapfetch/.venv/bin/gunicorn -w 2 --timeout 300 -b 127.0.0.1:8901 app:app
   Restart=always
   User=www-data
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

   systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl enable --now snapfetch
   

4. Point nginx (or Caddy) at 127.0.0.1:8901 as a reverse proxy, add your domain + HTTPS (Let's Encrypt via certbot), and you're live.
5. Note: downloads are capped at 2 concurrent (a semaphore in app.py) to protect a small VPS. Raise it there if the server is beefier.

Deploy (b) — Render

1. Push this folder to a Git repo and create a Web Service on Render.
2. Build command: pip install -r requirements.txt
3. Start command:

   curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o /tmp/yt-dlp && chmod +x /tmp/yt-dlp && YTDLP_BIN=/tmp/yt-dlp gunicorn -w 2 --timeout 300 -b 0.0.0.0:$PORT app:app
   

   (Render provides $PORT automatically. yt-dlp must be re-downloaded on each deploy because the filesystem is ephemeral — the command above does that.) Alternatively add a render.yaml or use a Docker deploy with yt-dlp + ffmpeg baked into the image (recommended if MP3 conversion is important, since Render's native environment may not include ffmpeg).
4. Add your custom domain in Render's dashboard; HTTPS is automatic.

Going live with AdSense

1. Deploy on the real domain first, with all pages reachable.
2. Apply for AdSense; after approval, replace the placeholder in the /ads.txt route (in app.py) with the publisher line Google gives you.
3. The privacy policy already discloses AdSense cookies — keep it that way.
4. Rename the site: the name "SnapFetch" appears in templates/base.html, app.py (SITE_NAME), and the page templates — a find-and-replace does it.

Limits of v1 (known)

• Max 2 concurrent downloads; a download is capped at 240 s and the whole file is buffered in memory before streaming — fine for short clips (Reels, TikToks, Shorts), not ideal for very long/large videos. For a bigger launch, switch /download to chunked streaming to disk-backed responses.
• Private/login-only videos can't be fetched (by design).
• Some platforms rate-limit datacenter IPs; if a big platform starts failing, the usual fix is a residential-proxy yt-dlp config — out of scope for v1.