FoxTube Downloader

This is a simple GUI that uses YT-DLP for downloading videos and audios from YouTube and optionally cuts them into shorter clips. Fun fact: I had already built a very similar thing years ago but it was old and broken, so I re-made it; hence the "version 2".

Installation

The release page provides an executable .exe file and a .zip archive. These were built using pyinstaller (with and without the --onefile option respectively). If you don't trust me, that's more than fair. You can create your own executables by cloning the repo and doing the following:

1. Downloading external dependencies (ffmpeg binaries, yt-dlp and optionally UPX for compressing binaries in the final build). This can be achieved by entering the bin folder and running the download_dependencies.py script.

cd bin
python download_dependencies.py

2. Creating a Python virtual environment with venv and installing required libraries.

python -m venv .env
.env\Scripts\activate
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Building the application through the provided scripts build.ps1 and build_onefile.ps1.

.\build.ps1 # or .\build_onefile.ps1

Of course, you can also run the application as a Python script using:

python start.py

Usage

Simply paste the URL of a YouTube video into the upper entry field, or use the "Paste" button. Then, select the desired start and end times for the video.

• If all fields are left empty, the video (or audio) will be downloaded in its entirety
• Otherwise, empty fields are considered zeros Finally, choose the folder where the video will be downloaded. The output file will be assigned the video title, an ID and the time indication in its filename.

Configurations

You can change some elements of the GUI through the config.yaml file, even after the build (it will be into the _internal folder). Particularly, you can change the preferred video and audio formats (this is still WIP), the quality of video and audio, as well as colors, fonts and app language (IT or EN).

Disclaimer

The project is still a huge WIP and uses external libraries extensively, so I don't take any responsibility in case of weird behaviours on your computer.

Updates

Version 2.1 (25/12/2024)

• Previously, the application actually required ffmpeg to be on path. Now, the --ffmpeg-location flag is added to all commands to use the bundled version.
• Added debug configuration.
• Removed ffprobe and ffplay from binary requirements.
• Fixed pysplash requirement.