Skip to content

A minimal Electron application to download videos, eg from youtube, and associated captions (optional). Uses youtube-dl under the hood.

Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

pietrop/electron-video-downloader

Repository files navigation

Electron video (youtube) downloader

An app that quickly downloads video from youtube, and corresponding human or automated captions.

The app is built in electron for osx, and uses youtube-dl under the hood, which means there is a long list of supported sites.

Key features

  • Download video form youtube and other sites
  • Download captions from youtube vtt
  • Option to convert youtube capitons into plain text on download
  • Option to download youtube automated captions
  • Option to download "youtube human proofread captions" when available
  • Option to load a comprensive list of languages for captions files
  • Works on osx desktop

Usage

  • Download latest app from release section
    • For mac, download the .dmg file
    • open it, and drag the app in the application folder
    • in the application folder, the first time, right click to the app to open it
    • from then on after the first time you can just double click
  • Add youtube url from youtube share functionality
  • chose app preferences, see screenshot below.
  • click Download
  • retrieve downloaed files in Movie folder
  • done :)

video_downloader

video_downloader_loader

Development

git clone repo, cd into folder, npm install, npm start.

Build

To package for OSX as dmg

npm run build:mac

OR to package for OSX as zip file


npm run pack:mac

See package.json scripts section for details on packaging for other platforms.

"pack": "build --dir",
"pack:mac": "build --dir --mac --x64",
"pack:linux": "build --dir --linux --x64",
"pack:win": "build --dir --win --x64",
"build": "build",
"build:mac": "build --mac --x64",
"build:mac_app_store": "echo 'Mac App Store Option Not currently implemented'",
"build:win": "build --win nsis-web --x64",
"build:linux": "build --linux  --x64"

Possible todo to extend the app:

  • add check box option for downloading associated subtitles.

  • support languages other then english when downloading captions.

  • if url is of playlist, then download playlist

  • show list of extractors in app half implemented, but vimeo not working

  • optional a video preview for select url.

  • figure out a way to support direct url to video, eg not from supported extractors.

  • Add CSS styling (needs checking if youtube-dl works cross platform).

  • Package app and make release.

  • Check if app works on osx,

  • Check if app works windows,

  • Check if app works linux.

  • add a logo.

  • refactor yotube downloader as separate component.

  • add possibility for user to set default destination folder, as opposed to Movie in home folder on osx.

  • change var destDownloadFolder = app.getPath("videos"); to be a default, corresponds to Movie folder.

    • with a promt to change dest folder to prefered one,
    • and rember choice, eg in local storage?
  • Add human vs automated label to text file of captions to distinguish is downloading both one after the other.

  • escape emoji, sometimes emojis are in the title, and that's hard to parse/read/save.

Contributors