15 ms·

The tragedy of this software (and many like it) is that despite working exactly as advertised, easily and with a lot of features, because it's a quiet open sour

by guycook 10y ago

The tragedy of this software (and many like it) is that despite working exactly as advertised, easily and with a lot of features, because it's a quiet open source project without any SEO rigging it will never appear in page 1 of any searches by laymen trying to download videos ("save youtube to hard drive", "download youtube videos" et al). The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs just because they wanted to save a video is ridiculous.

jmnicolas 10y ago
Your family members would use a command line app ?
- Lanari 10y ago
  His family members are a lines of code...
- guycook 10y ago
  If they knew about it, sure. All it would take is a 3 step (after initial download) instructional with some screenshots: 1. Open Explorer where you downloaded youtube-dl 2. Shift+Right click -> Open command window here 3. Type 'youtube-dl <space>' and paste url[0], then enter As I said it really is a discoverability problem, one that the organiser of the world's information is neither incentivised nor really expected to address. [0] ok, this is a pain pre Win 10, but ^V is supported now
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    [0] ok, this is a pain pre Win 10, but ^V is supported now Just gotta remember the old "Alt-Space, E, P" shortcut sequence. And Alt-Space, E, K for selecting/copying.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      What's wrong with right-click?
      - kqr 10y ago
        Forces you to take your hands off the keyboard.
    - akx 10y ago
      Shift-Insert, man.
  - mozumder 10y ago
    This is about 2 steps longer than most family member capabilities.
    - gbog 10y ago
      Always the same argument, and still wrong. It depends 100% on the desirability of the expected result. I have seen a non-IT guy do an incredibly complex serie of super user operations on his PC just to install CS. He was very motivated. But if you asked him to install Chrome in place of IE he would even understand what it meant. Same: many people still use peer-to-peer software to download movies, mostly porn. I guess it is better now but for a long time you had to do some port forwarding -- yes, port forwarding -- on your home router to get bearable download speed. Nowadays it still seem very difficult to get the proper non English subtitles for movies, but it is very attractive so people do it despite all the "steps". So, please, let's stop this "Family memebers are below-two-clicks stupid" mantra. It is false. The truths is: they usually do not care enough for the second click. When they do care enough, typing a command line is very feasible.
      - mozumder 10y ago
        OK then you definitely haven't met my family members, who routinely can't log in because they have the caps-lock on.
        madez 10y ago
        He is saying that they can't login when the caps-lock is on because they don't care enough. I think he is right. Even old people are able to do complex stuff, but only if they care.
      - chriswarbo 10y ago
        I agree. I think it's important to keep track of who cares about the user's task too. As you say, if the user cares about a task, they'll jump through many hoops to get it done. Especially when money is involved (e.g. finding cracked copy of XYZ to avoid paying license fee) When someone else wants the user to do a task, e.g. a business wants users to install and use its software, then it's definitely better to assume that users will give up at minor annoyances or complications. Again, especially when money is involved; i.e. it should be as easy as possible for people to give you money.
  - bithush 10y ago
    > 1. Open Explorer where you downloaded youtube-dl Already too complicated for my parents. I have shown my mother how to open her downloads folder for over a decade and she still can't do it. Sigh.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    I happen to be on a fresh copy of Windows 7 right now, so I'm going to try it. I expect to encounter at least several steps where a nontechnical user would be totally lost or frustrated. 1. Download Python 2.7 and install. Encountered error where the installer stopped with no indication that it had completed or failed. Tried to install again and it messed up the original installer which was hiding in the background and it failed. 2. Downloaded the YouTube-dl.exe. Running it does nothing. Youtube-dl gives no instructions on how to install. 3. Reading the documentation of youtube-dl, installation instruction is just "place it in their home directory or any other location on their PATH." 4. Google about PATH variables and home directories... I wouldn't expect a nontechnical user to get past this step. 5. Add C:\Python27 to the Path variable. 6. Drop youtube-dl.exe into C:\Python27. 7. Start Powershell. Doubt a nontechnical user would know how to do this, but whatever. 8. Figure out how to format a command to youtube-dl. Reading through the documentation is kind of confusing at first, but I will just copy a command from this HN thread. 9. Paste "youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 dQw4w9WgXcQ" into powershell. As you mentioned yourself, something a nontechnical user would have trouble doing since control-v is disabled. 10. "ERROR: ffprobe or avprobe not found. Please install one." So Google how to install ffprobe. 11. First link links to another page, which has a long 14 step guide asking me to figure out how to install PHP before I even start, so I'm just giving up here, 30 minutes in. Sadly I didn't even get to the "it's working but I don't know where it's saving the files to" issue.
    - ptman 10y ago
      "We also provide a Windows executable that includes Python." I read this as not having to install python for it to work. I think some powershell commands that have required arguments start interactively prompting the user for values for those arguments if they aren't specified on the command line. That would probably work: 1. Download youtube-dl.exe 2. double-click 3. youtube-dl.exe notices the lack of url as argument and prompts: URL: 4. paste URL and hit enter 5. Progress bar of download (?)
      - Houshalter 10y ago
        That may be correct, but the download page explicitly says "Remember youtube-dl requires Python version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+ to work." and links to python's website. I tried renaming Python.exe and it still worked, so I have no idea what's up with it.
kalessin 10y ago
I literally taught my younger brother how to pip install --upgrade youtube-dl from cmd.exe and then use it.
aluhut 10y ago
It's not easy because it's an command line. Not a single family member would touch this here. It's sad but understandable.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  Depends on the family. My mom taught me DOS.
  - giancarlostoro 10y ago
    This is true, while my mom never taught me too much she still did plenty in DOS. My dad on the other hand... He has an iPhone but would be happy with a flip phone, he uses the exact same amount of functionality that both phones carry, only difference being he has to touch his screen.
    - kccqzy 10y ago
      Off topic but just want to say, Apple knows there are many people like this, and the 16GB models are designed for them. I tire of seeing whines about 16GB being not enough. We the tech people are siloed in our own bubble and we often can't comprehend the existence of such people, unless they are our family members/close friends.
      - giancarlostoro 10y ago
        Well I don't mind him having a modernized phone, at least he gets a GPS. Not sure if he's ever used it, he probably could, he just likes to be simple I guess. As for the 16GB my only peeve against Apple (I'm an Android user though) is no availability to add in an SD card, even if it can't be used as "permanent" storage SD cards hold their value for being portable and transferable. It wont affect me as much though since I'm an Android user. I'm inclined to agree with you though, except hard drive space is a lot cheaper these days, for about $10 I can have a 32 GB USB 3.0 thumb drive. Eventually the cheaper iPhone options should just carry a minimal 32GB if they decide to stop overcharging for more space. Videos and images are only going to increase in file size over the years to account for 4K adaptability, granted that might take quite a while.
ProfOak_ 10y ago
I found this neat project that adds a GUI to YouTube-dl. It looks like an easy program for non-technical people to use. https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui
- masklinn 10y ago
  guycook's lament is about the findability of the project for laypeople, not about its interface. The interface is not an issue when laypeople can't find the project in the first place.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    Well the reason it has a bad ranking is because it isn't accessible to lay people. People might click the link and say "how do I install pip? Whats a PATH variable?" (or even "What's a command line?") and click back to the search page. Google counts that as a vote against that site, hence the bad ranking.
    - giancarlostoro 10y ago
      I never knew this occurred, how do they do this if I open links in a new tab? Maybe if the website uses Google Analytics they might take this into account, but if they didn't have any other software from Google? I'm quite intrigued. Thanks for that post!
      - Houshalter 10y ago
        I think just clicking the link and then clicking a different link counts against the first link. It probably doesn't matter if you actually use the back button or not. I don't know how they account for people clicking multiple links in new tabs. My guess is they reorder links sometimes so that users that click multiple links cancel each other out. They just try to maximize the probability you will click on a link and not come back to the search page.
rplnt 10y ago
SMPlayer, which I use, includes some sort of yt downloader, not that I ever used it. As for the SEO - I haven't had any problems in the last years. First or second hit was a working webpage that gave me the downlaod url (not much options though).
macco 10y ago
The link an hacker news will definitly help.
z3t4 10y ago
Open source projects should use more restrictive license or someone will be able to take this and bundle it with crapware + SEO.
dalore 10y ago
SEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search results. Lot's of open source projects come up top of the results when you search for stuff because of this fact.
- mootothemax 10y ago
  >SEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search results You have tell Google what your site is about, otherwise it's pretty hopeless; you're pretty much well asking Google to guess what terms the site should rank for. The five-minute-basics this site needs are to create a meaningful title tag (getting "YouTube Downloader" in there would be a great start. With zero research, maybe even "YouTube Downloader - Save Videos for Later"), create a friendly meta description that'll tell people what it's about in the search result pages, and use an H1 where it's currently using a TD with "subtitle" class. It wouldn't hurt to also have a short bullet-point list of uses cases, just to get related search terms - e.g. "save youtube to my computer" - that the big G can use to direct users to the site. >Lot's of open source projects come up top of the results when you search for stuff because of this fact. The problem is so bad, I know lots of people - myself included - who hunt for projects first on Github, and Google a distant second. Google is capable of some quite incredible things; using mind-reading to find out the important parts of a project or what it relates to, sadly, isn't one of their core strengths.
  - OJFord 10y ago
    > The problem is so bad, I know lots of people - myself > included - who hunt for projects first on Github, and > Google a distant second. Seriously? I search with `site:github.com` all the time.
    - mootothemax 10y ago
      >Seriously? >I search with `site:github.com` all the time. Yup - I find that Google's index isn't always as fresh as Github's, and being able to filter by code vs. repository vs. issues and then by language if necessary is a great help. Basically, for me, finding open-source projects is a real unsolved problem!
blablabla123 10y ago
Yeah, you really need to go through the documentation if you want to download something the way you want. I guess it's more like wget.
wslh 10y ago
> The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs... I think it is time antivirus, Google Chrome, et al recognize those installers as crapware and give a warning before installation (yes, including Java SDK and Skype trying to install toolbars). Currently Google Chrome is giving a malware warning just because you have an .exe in your web page that for them seems malware, and if you work in
- retube 10y ago
  > Currently Google Chrome is giving a malware warning just because you have an .exe So how should one make available for download windows executables?
  - hawski 10y ago
    Is this detection working for msi or zip files?
    - wslh 10y ago
      Yes.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - wslh 10y ago
    More info here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9512919/getting-around-chromes-malicious-file-warning http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9512919/getting-around-ch...
reedlaw 10y ago
I don't think it's a tragedy because if it was very popular and easy to use YouTube would likely block it. It's directly competing with their own YouTube Red. Also look at popular Linux distros like Ubuntu. As soon as they reach mass market they lose what made them special to begin with and start experimenting with advertising and so on.
- Kristine1975 10y ago
  Is it really possible to block youtube-dl? All it does is the same thing Youtube's own HMTL5 player does, except that it saves the video instead of playing it back.
  - throwaway7767 10y ago
    They can change their site around enough to make it not worth the effort to maintain the tool. But it's always a cat-and-mouse game.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    Certain videos will download without audio then I update youtube-dl and that usually fixes it.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    Yes. It's called a cease and desist.
    - MrBra 10y ago
      From https://www.quora.com/Is-downloading-YouTube-videos-legal/answer/Paulina-M-Leon https://www.quora.com/Is-downloading-YouTube-videos-legal/an... Downloading from YouTube is in most cases not illegal - it could be considered time-shifting for personal consumption, in some cases fair use, both of which are legal in US. In some cases though - like downloading the movies that are paid or videos with limited distributions and not available in the States, could be considered copyright infringement. What downloading does though is break YouTube's Terms of Service. Even though some courts already stated explicitly that breaking Terms of Service is not illegal, doing so might still get you in trouble in civil court, as you are breaking an agreement between yourself and the company services of which you are using. If you would be using YouTube APIs for your product, they would probably suspend your access if they wouldn't like your product, so something to consider. Is it ok to download the videos for offline viewing? Your choice - might not be illegal, but not 'ok' from YouTube's point of view. Doesn't youtube lose out on advertising revenue this way? Yes - that's is precisely the reason for the rule :) The big unknown here is that the issue has not been presented in US courts yet, at least as far as I know, so there is no precedent. Hope it helps. -------------- Also check http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/is-it-legal-download-youtube-videos-3420353/ http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/is-it-legal-downl... -------------- Also check http://lifehacker.com/5901773/breaking-a-terms-of-service-isnt-necessarily-a-crime http://lifehacker.com/5901773/breaking-a-terms-of-service-is...
sombremesa 10y ago
Good! The top slots belong to those services which don't require you to download anything but the video to your computer. In this day and age, is there really any excuse for making anything beyond a web app, or in rare cases, a browser app? If I want to do a one off task, I'm not going to download any software for it, when I know there is an alternative that can be used entirely on the browser. There are plenty of addons for major browsers that do this. Those belong on page 1, not this. Most users don't give a shit about FOSS.
baldfat 10y ago
I treat youtube-dl like Fight Club. I am glad it isn't on the top of searches since I am afraid sites would start trying to stop it from working harder.
- dexterdog 10y ago
  They already do. That's why it updates pretty much every time I do a homebrew update.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    I should have said. They would try harder.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- haddr 10y ago
  I hope you haven't voted this article then. Let's keep it secret ;)
- samstave 10y ago
  Exactly! SHHH - dont talk about ytdl... obv if the masses start talking about things like this, then sites like YT will go on the attack. WE DO NOT WANT THIS.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  I don't know what parent is talking about, this script it's already very popular. I found it years ago and it wasn't difficult to find on google. Something worth mentioning is that the script works with dozens and dozens of video sites (or just sites with regular video content). Almost any video you throw at it gets downloaded. When something breaks it's usually fixed within days. It's a great piece of work.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  I think most video download sites use youtube-dl on the backend so they should already be doing that.
Mahn 10y ago
To be fair, it it wasn't a crapware YouTube Downloader, it would be something else. As long as "computer intuition" doesn't become more commonplace, we are always going to have this problem despite our best efforts to get rid of crapware on the net.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
haddr 10y ago
Spot on! However I worry that if projects such as this or mps-youtube (console youtube player) get mainstream, they would be effectively shut down in some way...
at-fates-hands 10y ago
I've started to become more and more disgruntled with search engines in general. Yeah, if I want to find something obvious, I'll find it. But what about mildly obscure software like this? This is something I would completely use, but have no way to find it. There's so many tools out there which are totally awesome, but wilting away because you can't find it in the search engines. As much as I love technology, it still seems the best stuff is usually found through the old tried and true methodologies. Word of mouth, conferences, or from friends or other developers.
zyngaro 10y ago
It's a command line tool not very lambda Windows user friendly; that's why it's not very popular maybe

by guycook 10y ago

jmnicolas 10y ago

Your family members would use a command line app ?

Lanari 10y ago
His family members are a lines of code...
guycook 10y ago
If they knew about it, sure. All it would take is a 3 step (after initial download) instructional with some screenshots: 1. Open Explorer where you downloaded youtube-dl 2. Shift+Right click -> Open command window here 3. Type 'youtube-dl <space>' and paste url[0], then enter As I said it really is a discoverability problem, one that the organiser of the world's information is neither incentivised nor really expected to address. [0] ok, this is a pain pre Win 10, but ^V is supported now
- nitrogen 10y ago
  [0] ok, this is a pain pre Win 10, but ^V is supported now Just gotta remember the old "Alt-Space, E, P" shortcut sequence. And Alt-Space, E, K for selecting/copying.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    What's wrong with right-click?
    - kqr 10y ago
      Forces you to take your hands off the keyboard.
  - akx 10y ago
    Shift-Insert, man.
- mozumder 10y ago
  This is about 2 steps longer than most family member capabilities.
  - gbog 10y ago
    Always the same argument, and still wrong. It depends 100% on the desirability of the expected result. I have seen a non-IT guy do an incredibly complex serie of super user operations on his PC just to install CS. He was very motivated. But if you asked him to install Chrome in place of IE he would even understand what it meant. Same: many people still use peer-to-peer software to download movies, mostly porn. I guess it is better now but for a long time you had to do some port forwarding -- yes, port forwarding -- on your home router to get bearable download speed. Nowadays it still seem very difficult to get the proper non English subtitles for movies, but it is very attractive so people do it despite all the "steps". So, please, let's stop this "Family memebers are below-two-clicks stupid" mantra. It is false. The truths is: they usually do not care enough for the second click. When they do care enough, typing a command line is very feasible.
    - mozumder 10y ago
      OK then you definitely haven't met my family members, who routinely can't log in because they have the caps-lock on.
      - madez 10y ago
        He is saying that they can't login when the caps-lock is on because they don't care enough. I think he is right. Even old people are able to do complex stuff, but only if they care.
    - chriswarbo 10y ago
      I agree. I think it's important to keep track of who cares about the user's task too. As you say, if the user cares about a task, they'll jump through many hoops to get it done. Especially when money is involved (e.g. finding cracked copy of XYZ to avoid paying license fee) When someone else wants the user to do a task, e.g. a business wants users to install and use its software, then it's definitely better to assume that users will give up at minor annoyances or complications. Again, especially when money is involved; i.e. it should be as easy as possible for people to give you money.
- bithush 10y ago
  > 1. Open Explorer where you downloaded youtube-dl Already too complicated for my parents. I have shown my mother how to open her downloads folder for over a decade and she still can't do it. Sigh.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  I happen to be on a fresh copy of Windows 7 right now, so I'm going to try it. I expect to encounter at least several steps where a nontechnical user would be totally lost or frustrated. 1. Download Python 2.7 and install. Encountered error where the installer stopped with no indication that it had completed or failed. Tried to install again and it messed up the original installer which was hiding in the background and it failed. 2. Downloaded the YouTube-dl.exe. Running it does nothing. Youtube-dl gives no instructions on how to install. 3. Reading the documentation of youtube-dl, installation instruction is just "place it in their home directory or any other location on their PATH." 4. Google about PATH variables and home directories... I wouldn't expect a nontechnical user to get past this step. 5. Add C:\Python27 to the Path variable. 6. Drop youtube-dl.exe into C:\Python27. 7. Start Powershell. Doubt a nontechnical user would know how to do this, but whatever. 8. Figure out how to format a command to youtube-dl. Reading through the documentation is kind of confusing at first, but I will just copy a command from this HN thread. 9. Paste "youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 dQw4w9WgXcQ" into powershell. As you mentioned yourself, something a nontechnical user would have trouble doing since control-v is disabled. 10. "ERROR: ffprobe or avprobe not found. Please install one." So Google how to install ffprobe. 11. First link links to another page, which has a long 14 step guide asking me to figure out how to install PHP before I even start, so I'm just giving up here, 30 minutes in. Sadly I didn't even get to the "it's working but I don't know where it's saving the files to" issue.
  - ptman 10y ago
    "We also provide a Windows executable that includes Python." I read this as not having to install python for it to work. I think some powershell commands that have required arguments start interactively prompting the user for values for those arguments if they aren't specified on the command line. That would probably work: 1. Download youtube-dl.exe 2. double-click 3. youtube-dl.exe notices the lack of url as argument and prompts: URL: 4. paste URL and hit enter 5. Progress bar of download (?)
    - Houshalter 10y ago
      That may be correct, but the download page explicitly says "Remember youtube-dl requires Python version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+ to work." and links to python's website. I tried renaming Python.exe and it still worked, so I have no idea what's up with it.

kalessin 10y ago

I literally taught my younger brother how to pip install --upgrade youtube-dl from cmd.exe and then use it.

aluhut 10y ago

It's not easy because it's an command line. Not a single family member would touch this here. It's sad but understandable.

CalRobert 10y ago
Depends on the family. My mom taught me DOS.
- giancarlostoro 10y ago
  This is true, while my mom never taught me too much she still did plenty in DOS. My dad on the other hand... He has an iPhone but would be happy with a flip phone, he uses the exact same amount of functionality that both phones carry, only difference being he has to touch his screen.
  - kccqzy 10y ago
    Off topic but just want to say, Apple knows there are many people like this, and the 16GB models are designed for them. I tire of seeing whines about 16GB being not enough. We the tech people are siloed in our own bubble and we often can't comprehend the existence of such people, unless they are our family members/close friends.
    - giancarlostoro 10y ago
      Well I don't mind him having a modernized phone, at least he gets a GPS. Not sure if he's ever used it, he probably could, he just likes to be simple I guess. As for the 16GB my only peeve against Apple (I'm an Android user though) is no availability to add in an SD card, even if it can't be used as "permanent" storage SD cards hold their value for being portable and transferable. It wont affect me as much though since I'm an Android user. I'm inclined to agree with you though, except hard drive space is a lot cheaper these days, for about $10 I can have a 32 GB USB 3.0 thumb drive. Eventually the cheaper iPhone options should just carry a minimal 32GB if they decide to stop overcharging for more space. Videos and images are only going to increase in file size over the years to account for 4K adaptability, granted that might take quite a while.

ProfOak_ 10y ago

I found this neat project that adds a GUI to YouTube-dl. It looks like an easy program for non-technical people to use. https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui

masklinn 10y ago
guycook's lament is about the findability of the project for laypeople, not about its interface. The interface is not an issue when laypeople can't find the project in the first place.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Well the reason it has a bad ranking is because it isn't accessible to lay people. People might click the link and say "how do I install pip? Whats a PATH variable?" (or even "What's a command line?") and click back to the search page. Google counts that as a vote against that site, hence the bad ranking.
  - giancarlostoro 10y ago
    I never knew this occurred, how do they do this if I open links in a new tab? Maybe if the website uses Google Analytics they might take this into account, but if they didn't have any other software from Google? I'm quite intrigued. Thanks for that post!
    - Houshalter 10y ago
      I think just clicking the link and then clicking a different link counts against the first link. It probably doesn't matter if you actually use the back button or not. I don't know how they account for people clicking multiple links in new tabs. My guess is they reorder links sometimes so that users that click multiple links cancel each other out. They just try to maximize the probability you will click on a link and not come back to the search page.

rplnt 10y ago

SMPlayer, which I use, includes some sort of yt downloader, not that I ever used it. As for the SEO - I haven't had any problems in the last years. First or second hit was a working webpage that gave me the downlaod url (not much options though).

macco 10y ago

The link an hacker news will definitly help.

z3t4 10y ago

Open source projects should use more restrictive license or someone will be able to take this and bundle it with crapware + SEO.

dalore 10y ago

SEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search results. Lot's of open source projects come up top of the results when you search for stuff because of this fact.

mootothemax 10y ago
>SEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search results You have tell Google what your site is about, otherwise it's pretty hopeless; you're pretty much well asking Google to guess what terms the site should rank for. The five-minute-basics this site needs are to create a meaningful title tag (getting "YouTube Downloader" in there would be a great start. With zero research, maybe even "YouTube Downloader - Save Videos for Later"), create a friendly meta description that'll tell people what it's about in the search result pages, and use an H1 where it's currently using a TD with "subtitle" class. It wouldn't hurt to also have a short bullet-point list of uses cases, just to get related search terms - e.g. "save youtube to my computer" - that the big G can use to direct users to the site. >Lot's of open source projects come up top of the results when you search for stuff because of this fact. The problem is so bad, I know lots of people - myself included - who hunt for projects first on Github, and Google a distant second. Google is capable of some quite incredible things; using mind-reading to find out the important parts of a project or what it relates to, sadly, isn't one of their core strengths.
- OJFord 10y ago
  > The problem is so bad, I know lots of people - myself > included - who hunt for projects first on Github, and > Google a distant second. Seriously? I search with `site:github.com` all the time.
  - mootothemax 10y ago
    >Seriously? >I search with `site:github.com` all the time. Yup - I find that Google's index isn't always as fresh as Github's, and being able to filter by code vs. repository vs. issues and then by language if necessary is a great help. Basically, for me, finding open-source projects is a real unsolved problem!

blablabla123 10y ago

Yeah, you really need to go through the documentation if you want to download something the way you want. I guess it's more like wget.

wslh 10y ago

> The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs... I think it is time antivirus, Google Chrome, et al recognize those installers as crapware and give a warning before installation (yes, including Java SDK and Skype trying to install toolbars). Currently Google Chrome is giving a malware warning just because you have an .exe in your web page that for them seems malware, and if you work in

retube 10y ago
> Currently Google Chrome is giving a malware warning just because you have an .exe So how should one make available for download windows executables?
- hawski 10y ago
  Is this detection working for msi or zip files?
  - wslh 10y ago
    Yes.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- wslh 10y ago
  More info here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9512919/getting-around-chromes-malicious-file-warning http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9512919/getting-around-ch...

reedlaw 10y ago

I don't think it's a tragedy because if it was very popular and easy to use YouTube would likely block it. It's directly competing with their own YouTube Red. Also look at popular Linux distros like Ubuntu. As soon as they reach mass market they lose what made them special to begin with and start experimenting with advertising and so on.

Kristine1975 10y ago
Is it really possible to block youtube-dl? All it does is the same thing Youtube's own HMTL5 player does, except that it saves the video instead of playing it back.
- throwaway7767 10y ago
  They can change their site around enough to make it not worth the effort to maintain the tool. But it's always a cat-and-mouse game.
- baldfat 10y ago
  Certain videos will download without audio then I update youtube-dl and that usually fixes it.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Yes. It's called a cease and desist.
  - MrBra 10y ago
    From https://www.quora.com/Is-downloading-YouTube-videos-legal/answer/Paulina-M-Leon https://www.quora.com/Is-downloading-YouTube-videos-legal/an... Downloading from YouTube is in most cases not illegal - it could be considered time-shifting for personal consumption, in some cases fair use, both of which are legal in US. In some cases though - like downloading the movies that are paid or videos with limited distributions and not available in the States, could be considered copyright infringement. What downloading does though is break YouTube's Terms of Service. Even though some courts already stated explicitly that breaking Terms of Service is not illegal, doing so might still get you in trouble in civil court, as you are breaking an agreement between yourself and the company services of which you are using. If you would be using YouTube APIs for your product, they would probably suspend your access if they wouldn't like your product, so something to consider. Is it ok to download the videos for offline viewing? Your choice - might not be illegal, but not 'ok' from YouTube's point of view. Doesn't youtube lose out on advertising revenue this way? Yes - that's is precisely the reason for the rule :) The big unknown here is that the issue has not been presented in US courts yet, at least as far as I know, so there is no precedent. Hope it helps. -------------- Also check http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/is-it-legal-download-youtube-videos-3420353/ http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/is-it-legal-downl... -------------- Also check http://lifehacker.com/5901773/breaking-a-terms-of-service-isnt-necessarily-a-crime http://lifehacker.com/5901773/breaking-a-terms-of-service-is...

sombremesa 10y ago

Good! The top slots belong to those services which don't require you to download anything but the video to your computer. In this day and age, is there really any excuse for making anything beyond a web app, or in rare cases, a browser app? If I want to do a one off task, I'm not going to download any software for it, when I know there is an alternative that can be used entirely on the browser. There are plenty of addons for major browsers that do this. Those belong on page 1, not this. Most users don't give a shit about FOSS.

baldfat 10y ago

I treat youtube-dl like Fight Club. I am glad it isn't on the top of searches since I am afraid sites would start trying to stop it from working harder.

dexterdog 10y ago
They already do. That's why it updates pretty much every time I do a homebrew update.
- baldfat 10y ago
  I should have said. They would try harder.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
haddr 10y ago
I hope you haven't voted this article then. Let's keep it secret ;)
samstave 10y ago
Exactly! SHHH - dont talk about ytdl... obv if the masses start talking about things like this, then sites like YT will go on the attack. WE DO NOT WANT THIS.
rpgmaker 10y ago
I don't know what parent is talking about, this script it's already very popular. I found it years ago and it wasn't difficult to find on google. Something worth mentioning is that the script works with dozens and dozens of video sites (or just sites with regular video content). Almost any video you throw at it gets downloaded. When something breaks it's usually fixed within days. It's a great piece of work.
Houshalter 10y ago
I think most video download sites use youtube-dl on the backend so they should already be doing that.

Mahn 10y ago

To be fair, it it wasn't a crapware YouTube Downloader, it would be something else. As long as "computer intuition" doesn't become more commonplace, we are always going to have this problem despite our best efforts to get rid of crapware on the net.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

haddr 10y ago

Spot on! However I worry that if projects such as this or mps-youtube (console youtube player) get mainstream, they would be effectively shut down in some way...

at-fates-hands 10y ago

I've started to become more and more disgruntled with search engines in general. Yeah, if I want to find something obvious, I'll find it. But what about mildly obscure software like this? This is something I would completely use, but have no way to find it. There's so many tools out there which are totally awesome, but wilting away because you can't find it in the search engines. As much as I love technology, it still seems the best stuff is usually found through the old tried and true methodologies. Word of mouth, conferences, or from friends or other developers.

zyngaro 10y ago

It's a command line tool not very lambda Windows user friendly; that's why it's not very popular maybe