youtube-dl Viewer

As incredible and commonplace as the internet has become, one aspect will remain unchanged throughout its entire lifespan — unpredictability. Your favorite videos can disappear instantly and unexpectedly if their platform is shut down, their creator deletes their channel or if they get copyright struck by companies.

In order to avoid losing access to videos that are important to you, a handy application that goes by the name of youtube-dl can download them instantly for offline use. In order to quickly view them without sacrificing system resources, an open-source web app such as youtube-dl-viewer can be used to have a nicer, cleaner view of your archived videos.

Upon placing the executable inside the folder where your downloaded videos reside, double-clicking it will run a web server on your PC that can be accessed from any browser of your choice. Once loaded, the program will automatically display all of your videos in grid, compact or tabular styles, according to your liking.

Depending on your screen size, the width of each item in the list of videos can be adjusted, and the list can be sorted by title, category or filename. In terms of customization, there are only four main themes to choose from. However, thanks to the app’s implementation as a webpage, browser add-ons such as Dark Reader can be installed to change its colors.

Depending on the way your youtube-dl utility is configured, this application can display multiple details such as the duration of the video, how many likes it received and what platform it was downloaded from. Clicking on a small downward-facing arrow while in the detailed view toggles the video’s description, its upload date and tags.

The action of clicking on any of the listed items can be customized to open the video inside the browser, download the file itself, or opening the original webpage that the video was downloaded from. Extra useful data such as the configuration, system status and history of the actions triggered by the app are also at the user’s disposal.

The app can thus function as a basic video viewer for your archives that are stored either locally or in the cloud. Its simple layout can be a nice alternative to complex or resource-hungry media library managers such as Plex or Kodi. At the same time, when using Microsoft Edge, for example, the webpage can be installed as a fully-functioning progressive web app with a shortcut on the desktop or the Start Menu, for a nicer experience.

For people who want a free and easy-to-use way of viewing their video backups or archives, youtube-dl-viewer can be a great choice that does not take up too many system resources.