ytdl-tui

A terminal YouTube downloader with a clean TUI — pick your format, pick your quality, paste a URL and watch it download. No browser, no GUI, no fuss.

Built with Bun, TypeScript, and OpenTUI.

Features

• Download video (MP4) or audio only (MP3)
• Quality selection — Best, 1080p, 720p, 480p
• Live progress bar with speed and ETA
• Keyboard-driven UI, no mouse needed
• Downloads saved to ~/Downloads/ytv/

Requirements

yt-dlp must be installed on your system:

# macOS
brew install yt-dlp

# Linux
sudo apt install yt-dlp
# or
pip install yt-dlp

# Windows
winget install yt-dlp

Bun runtime:

curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

Install

bunx ytdl-tui

Or install globally:

bun install -g ytdl-tui
ytdl-tui

Usage

┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  URL input                               │
├─────────────────┬────────────────────────┤
│  Mode           │  Quality               │
├─────────────────┴────────────────────────┤
│  Progress / Result                       │
├──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Hints                                   │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘

1. Paste a YouTube URL into the URL field
2. Press Enter to move to Mode selection
3. Pick Video + Audio or Audio Only with arrow keys
4. If video, press Enter or Tab to move to Quality
5. Press Enter on your chosen quality to start the download
6. File saves to ~/Downloads/ytv/

Keyboard shortcuts:

| Key | Action | | ----------- | ------------------- | | Tab | Move focus forward | | Shift+Tab | Move focus backward | | ↑ / ↓ | Navigate options | | Enter | Confirm / download | | Ctrl+C | Quit |

Tech Stack

• Bun — runtime and package manager
• TypeScript — language
• OpenTUI — terminal UI framework
• yt-dlp — download engine

License

MIT