After two years since the previous version, a new YouTube-DL GUI (YouTube-DLG) version was made available for download recently. The new 0.4 version ships with a a new user interface, easier format and save path selection and more.
YouTube-DL GUI is, like its name suggests, a graphical user interface for the powerful command line tool youtube-dl, available for Linux and Windows. In case you’re not familiar with youtube-dl, this is a popular tool that allows downloading videos from YouTube and around 1000 other websites.
YouTube-DL GUI features include:
- options to select the video and audio format;
- post-processing options such as: extract audio from video file, embed thumbnail in audio file, add metadata, select audio quality;
- can embed subtitles into the video file (mp4 only);
- configurable filename format for the downloaded audio/video file;
- supports authentication;
- allows using a proxy;
- can specify user agent and referrer;
- supports passing extra youtube-dl command line options.
YouTUbe-DL GUI automatically downloads (and updates) the youtube-dl binary so you don’t have to worry about having an old youtube-dl that no longer works. By default, the binary is saved under the ~/.config/youtube-dlg directory.
For post-processing, the application uses FFmpeg, so you’ll need this installed for some options, like merging DASH files, etc.
Changes in YouTube-DL GUI 0.4:
- new user interface;
- easier format selection (now available directly in the main UI, and not in the app settings);
- easier save path selection (now available directly in the main UI, and not in the app settings);
- added new options to move item in queue, pause, play, delete, pause, etc.;
- added new supported youtube-dl options: -v, –ignore-config, –hls-prefer-native, –no-mtime, etc.;
- added option for embedding thumbnails to audio files;
- support for new output templates;
- added generic video formats (3gp, mp4, webm, etc..);
- added dynamic format options: the “default” format option in the UI downloads the best available format (“best” option in youtube-dl), while setting the default format as well as enabling the ‘Extract audio from video file’ option will download the best audio (“bestaudio” option in youtube-dl) available;
- post-processing:
- calculate final size of post process files;
- extract final extension after merging process;
- extract final extension after recording process;
- bug fixes and various other changes.
For more information, see the YouTube-DL GUI changelog.
Using the new YouTube-DL GUI is fairly easy. Simple enter the URL (or multiple URLs) in the “Enter URLs below” box, then click “Add”. To start downloading, click the start button (cloud icon in the bottom right hand side corner of the app window).
Install YouTube-DL GUI in Ubuntu or Linux Mint
YouTube-DL GUI is available in the main WebUpd8 PPA, for Ubuntu 17.04 and 16.04 / Linux Mint 18.x. To add the PPA and install the application, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt update
sudo apt install youtube-dlgIf you don’t want to add the PPA, you can grab the deb from HERE. Important: you’ll also need the twodict package (new dependency), which is available HERE.
The latest YouTube-DL GUI doesn’t work in Ubuntu 14.04 because it requires wxPython 3 which is not available in the official Trusty repositories. The old version still works though.
For other Linux distributions and Windows, see the YouTube-DL GUI GitHub page.
Originally published at WebUpd8: Daily Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.
