YouTubuddy

Search/Watch/Download YouTube videos with a lightweight, interactive tool

• Simple
  • Does not need a web browser to operate
  • One bash script that runs everything
  • Based on youtube-dl
  • Minimal dependencies
  • Minimal size: less than 500 KB total
• Secure
  • YouTube can't track you
  • Videos won't appear in your browsing history
• Flexible
  • Add your own flags to VLC and youtube-dl. For example, make VLC repeat the playlist, or play in fullscreen
• Awesome
  • Supports playlists, direct links, and searches
  • Displays video thumbnails and tooltips in search results
  • Allows selecting multiple videos from a list
  • Easily Download multiple videos with a single click
  • Play all selected videos in VLC

To download:

git clone https://github.com/Botspot/youtubuddy

To run:

~/youtubuddy/gui

The first time you run it, YouTubuddy takes care of dependencies and adds a menu button.

Updating:

YouTubuddy will automatically keep itself updated with this main repo. To disable this feature, create a file at ~/youtubuddy/no-update.

How it works:

It turns out youtube-dl has this little-known feature that allows you to search YouTube.
As it searches, youtube-dl creates a JSON file at ~/youtubuddy/data/search.json. Every new line in the file is another search result.
Most of the rest of the script is dedicated to reading that json file and displaying the search results in a YAD dialog window.

Optional Settings:

To change video playback quality:

Open VLC:
Go to tools > preferences
Enable "All" option in settings
In the left pane select "input/codecs" then on the right pane in "track settings" click preferred resolution option and select the video quality.
Note: This option will also degrade the video quality for all video (local, streams etc).

To change video download quality:

To change the default download quality open youtubuddy > options > youtube-dl args, and insert something like -f 135+140.
The 135 sets the video quality, which in this case is 480p. The 140 is audio quality.
List of video quality codes:

code        format  quality
140         m4a       audio only
160         mp4       144p       
133         mp4       240p      
134         mp4       360p      
135         mp4       480p       
136         mp4       720p   
17          3gp       176x144     
36          3gp       320x240     
5           flv       400x240     
43          webm      640x360     
18          mp4       640x360     
22          mp4       1280x720