I had Pinchflat set up on my server and never got around to putting it back in after I nuked it. I remember organizing backed up videos in jellyfin was a mess I never quite got working as well as I’d like.
I see there’s a couple alternatives mentioned on the Pinchflat GitHub. What is everybody else using to accomplish this?
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Parabolic
Metube is a nice UI with yt-dlp as a background that is updated regularly.
On Android, I use ytdlnis, which is a wrapper around yt-dlp. You can “share” a video from to YouTube app to ytdlnis and it’ll add it to the download queue.
I always recommend Seal just because I can never remember the name of this app. Has anyone made use of both and has an opinion on which is better?
I’m not really looking to do this with apps since google is pretty close to the regime so anything good could be taken down at any time. I want something to copies it down and I pull in with my existing stack like Pinchflat did, but cleaner.
Part of this is I’m still on apple. I’m looking at fleeing, but certainly not to google. Until I finally get off my ass and get a Linux phone, let’s just assume this has to work from a webUI
I have been using a docker container - ytdl-sub, which uses yt-dlp to download YouTube videos with metadata for jellyfin
thanks for mentioning ytdl-sub!
can it selectively download videos or does it auto download all videos of a subscription?
You’re painting yourself into a corner by avoiding degoogled Android operating systems. I guess my suggestion for you would probably have to be to install yt-dlp on your server, and then use an SSH app when you need to download a video. Maybe someone more familiar with Apple can offer a better suggestion.
I was looking at a pixel running graphene this last upgrade cycle but google taking a swing a third party roms chased me back to apple for now.
Ah yes, Apple is notorious for the freedom of app installations…
Yt.dlp. I wrote a small pyrhon script to give me a gui. Works really well.
I still use Pinchflat. It doesn’t exactly do as I like, but I’m mostly just downloading two channels, so it’s okay enough for me.
I use jdownloader2.
Paste a YouTube link and it will download the thumbnail, the video, a separate audio, and the transcript.
It will also download from a lot of video hosting sites if you know what I mean 😜
Stacher already dines the one off things like that for me. I’m more looking at automated runs.
I mean you can use Peertube for that. I use it that way.
yt-dlp
I use GUI wrappers for yt-dlp - Parabolic on Fedora GNOME and Seal on Android
I use Tubular
I use metube on the server and made mobile integration with Android using “HTTP Shortcuts” to easily submit links to metube via its API. Just a simple Android share click and it’s done.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web Plex Brand of media server package SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.
[Thread #93 for this comm, first seen 14th Feb 2026, 14:01] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot.
TubeArchivist rules
On Android I use Seal. Aside from an occasional hiccup it’s awesome and does a phenomenal job 99% of the time. If I ever can’t get one item to work and there’s no alternative, I use one of the ones on my Linux machine. I’ll post the name when I’m home and can check.
