youtubeDLFrontEnd

YoutubeDLFrontEnd is a lightweight piece of software that acts as a GUI for youtube-dl, a command line utility that enables you to download clips from YouTube and other sources across the web.

The program does not require installation and you can unpack the archive in any location on your computer. On the other hand, you need to have youtube-dl on your computer and you might need to have FFmpeg and similar utilities for accessing certain features.

The application comes with a minimalistic, yet clean and highlight intuitive interface that is unlikely to give you any hassle. The UI is designed as a table that features several columns that display the URL, status, the date and time the link is added and the destination folder.

Since the idea of the app is to make everything more convenient, you can add links one per line manually or by enabling the clipboard feature. Afterwards, you can hit ADD or use the Ctrl+D shortcut to download the clips.

It is worth mentioning that the utility allows you to add arguments that are going to be applied to all the videos you download in an instance. The arguments are essentially commands you can use in the console and that help you configure the app to abort downloading if an error occurs, to mark videos as watched on YouTube or grab playlists starting with a certain video, for instance.

As you probably hinted, the arguments also allow you to select the video format for the clips you are grabbing. You can retrieve a list of all available formats of requested videos, download subtitles, skip the DASH manifests and related data, so on and so forth. You can find a full list of arguments in the Settings window.

If you are using youtube-dl, but would like to be able to manage it more efficiently via keyboard shortcuts and by adding extra arguments, then perhaps YoutubeDLFrontEnd could lend you a hand.