Open Video Downloader is a cross-platform youtube-dl client with a graphical interface, made in Electron and node.js. Remember that youtube-dl is a simple free program to download videos from almost any website with the command line.
Among the main features of Open Video Downloader or youtube-dl-gui, it stands out that can download from various platforms (YouTube, vimeo, Twitter and many others, according to the creator), download multiple videos and playlists and channels at once. Specifically, up to 32 videos can be downloaded synchronously.
In addition to this, youtube-dl-gui, which is already in its version 2.4.0, allows you to select the resolution and the format in which you want to download, in addition to downloading private videos (so far only tested on YouTube). It shows you how big the download will be on your system and the app automatically keeps the ytdl update. If you want to mess around less, you can download music from YouTube with Jdownloader and websites that we recommend.
14 Tricks to get the most out of YouTube
Different operating systems and future plans
This application is tested on Windows, Linux and MacOS and its creator said that “if you decide to build for another platform, it may or may not work.”
If you’re on Windows, you must ensure that the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86) it’s installed. As for the dependencies of this app for MacOS and Linux, it is Python, although they warn that in the operating system for Apple it comes pre-installed and that in Linux “it almost always comes pre-installed”.
To use it, you have to download the installer or executable corresponding to your system and paste a link in the upper box that will appear on the screen of this app. Wait for the app to gather all the necessary metadata and after that hit “Download” and the videos will be saved to your download folder.
On the other hand, among the expected features is to select individual audio and video codecs (in advanced mode), offer a list of all audio qualities and have support for downloading livestreams.
A little history of youtube-dl
In 2006, the year that YouTube was acquired by Google, García, the creator of youtube-dl, lived in a town in the Avilés region of Asturias. And, despite being close to one of the Principality’s main cities, the area in which he lived lacked cable and ADSL Internet access. His only option to connect to the Internet passed through a 56ks modem which gave it a download speed of 4KB/s. A situation that made it “painful” to access any YouTube video: thus, for example, a video of only 10 MB would take 40 minutes to load.
Faced with this situation, García was interested in a solution that would allow him to download the video directly to the hard drive. And, if possible, with a download management system that would allow you to resume them.
The software was born as a command line program written in Python, specifically in 143 lines of code (plus comments). It was released on SourceForge (GitHub didn’t exist yet) under the MIT license on August 8, 2006. Before the year was out, Linux.com dedicated an article to youtube-dl, which made it quite a popular program.