Graphical YouTube-DL

Graphical YouTube-DL is an easy-to-use Windows application that facilitates a clean and intuitive interface for downloading videos from YouTube. It represents a graphical interface for youtube-dl.

It can save videos with the MP4 or MKV format (depending on how the clips were uploaded) as well as extract audio streams to create MP3 audio tracks. The tool is also capable of downloading and saving music from SoundCloud.

The downloaded package contains almost all the necessary components for getting Graphical YouTube-DL to work properly, including FFmpeg and FFprobe (libraries and codecs for media), youtube-dl (the command-line tool that makes this GUI possible), as well as DosCommmand (component for executing DOS programs). However, it requires some C++ runtime libraries.

The GUI clearly adopts a modern look, thanks to a dark theme with red buttons. It checks for all dependencies at startup and warns you if any component is missing, an issue that can be easily resolved by moving the correct files to the same directory as Graphical YouTube-DL.

If you want to play the retrieved content as soon as you finish downloading it, you can do so directly from the application by launching its built-in media player. Its functions are pretty basic, making them highly accessible to a broad range of users, it supports a lot of formats and can become transparent if needed.

The whole operation is pretty basic since you can paste a YouTube or SoundCloud link on the top side of the window and click "Download" to begin the job. Log details are shown in this panel so you can quickly spot any errors. For YouTube links, it's possible to choose the video format between MKV and MP4, or opt for the MP3 audio conversion. SoundCloud links can be saved only to MP3 audio tracks.

Conversion errors will occur if the selected video format is not available for download, however, since Graphical YouTube-DL cannot autodetect the streams. Also, you have to click "Fix DosCommand" before starting a new download task after the first one is over. All files are saved in the same location as the application and have the names of the uploaded videos. There are no options integrated for indicating a different folder or name.

The graphical version of youtube-dl offers simple-to-use options for downloading YouTube and SoundCloud files as well as optionally converting YouTube clips to MP3s. It can be used by those interested in a straightforward downloader without complex features. However, upon closer examination, we have noticed that the cmd version has many other options.

For example, youtube-dl can download YouTube playlists or display them in a list, force Internet connections via IPv4 or IPv6, as well as check the IP address of geo-restricted videos through a proxy. At this point, it seems that Graphical YouTube-DL has to catch up with its command-line counterpart if it wants to offer the same level of advanced options.