This package manages a video download queue for youtube-dl, which serves as the back end. It manages a single youtube-dl subprocess, downloading one video at a time. New videos can be queued at any time. With this package you can also view video descriptions and, in conjunction with mpv media player, even play videos online.

To make use of this package compile it with the command:

$ make

And then add the following line to your Emacs startup file:

(load "path/to/this/directory/youtube-dl-autoloads")

Since youtube-dl itself is somewhat conservative, it is recommended to consider using its actively developed fork yt-dlp instead. The youtube-dl executable name doesn't matter for this package, it is customizable, but mpv media player requires just youtube-dl. Thus, if some other fork is used in fact, the respective alias should be created anyway.

The following actions are available from the tools / youtube-dl submenu in the general Emacs menu bar when this package is installed:

• Customize -- Open youtube-dl customization group.
• Submit download -- Submit download from a URL provided by user adding it to the download queue.
• Submit download audio -- Submit audio content download from a URL provided by user adding it to the download queue.
• Play video clip -- Play video clip from a URL provided by user online.
• View video clip info -- Retrieve video clip description from a URL provided by user and show it in the dedicated buffer.
• Show download queue -- Get to the download queue control buffer.

The downloaded stuff is placed in the directory that can be customized via the youtube-dl-download-directory option. It is ~/download/youtube by default. It will be automatically created if absent.

Evident video and audio downloads go to their respective subfolders that are automatically created by need in the download directory. By default these subfolders are named video and audio, and, of course, their names are customizable.

In the download queue control buffer each item is presented by a line where its title, total size, and progress are displayed along with some additional status information if any. Currently active item is highlighted.

The following actions are available in this buffer via hot keys:

• a -- Add new download by a URL from user.
• l -- Show download log for the item under point.
• L -- Close the download log.
• y -- Yank URL from the item under point into kill ring.
• SPC -- Start playback for the item under point.
• RET -- Open video description for the item under point.
• k -- Stop playback if any.
• q -- Close the window.
• Q -- Stop download process, clear queue and quit.
• d -- Delete the item under point from the download queue.
• p -- Pause / unpause download for the item under point.
• P -- Pause / unpause all downloads.
• s -- Toggle slow download mode for the item under point.
• S -- Toggle slow download mode for all items.
• [ -- Decrement priority for the item under point.
• ] -- Increment priority for the item under point.

When submitting a download from a URL that actually points to a playlist, the entire playlist will be submitted. In the download queue control buffer playlist is represented by a group of items with head and bottom separators. Playlist item titles are prefixed by their respective indices. The most of download control actions described above can be applied to an entire playlist when the playlist header is under point. If download submission action is invoked with prefix argument (C-u), playlist order will be reversed.

Unless the youtube-dl-restrict-filenames option is set (it is not set by default), playlists are downloaded in their own subdirectories.

When video description view is requested for a URL that actually points to a playlist, this playlist is submitted for download as paused and presented to the user for further manipulations.

Video description if requested is shown in a specially dedicated buffer. Along with the descriptive information this buffer may contain some action buttons and clickable links and following keystrokes are available there:

• a -- Save clip URL as a w3m bookmark.
• k -- Stop playback if any.
• q -- Quit view and close the window.

An additional keystroke y in w3m-mode pops up the menu of youtube-dl available actions. The keystroke RET in w3m-mode is redefined in such a manner that being pressed on an anchor tries to suggest an applicable youtube-dl action guessing it from the URL nature. When no special actions are guessed, the anchor is visited with w3m-view-this-url in the usual way.

Link to a video clip can be saved as a w3m bookmark directly from the youtube-dl view buffer by pressing a.

When youtube-dl playback or download submission is invoked on an anchor, the anchor URL is used. Otherwise the URL is requested from the user. After download submission the download control buffer pops up with pointer positioned on the newly added item.

Web interface of Youtube in practice doesn't fit for browsing with w3m. But there is an opensource alternative frontend called Invidious that can be used instead. You can install it locally if you prefer or just use one of the publicly available instances. In either case you should specify the address of the chosen instance in the customization option youtube-dl-w3m-invidious-url. And that is the only thing necessary to take advantage of the Invidious frontend.

The following additional keystrokes are available in w3m-mode when this package is installed:

• Y -- Youtube search.
• i -- Visit homepage of the Invidious instance in use.

This package also takes care of proper redirection of the Youtube requests and Invidious pages preparation for better view in W3m.

To display the size and progress, this package relies on a specific output format from youtube-dl. Using an external downloader (--external-downloader) breaks this, as can mucking around too much with the command line switches.