Ulauncher yt-dlp

A Ulauncher extension for downloading videos with yt-dlp. Supports full videos and clips with timestamps.

Features

• Download any video yt-dlp supports (YouTube, Vimeo, hundreds more)
• Clip extraction with start and end timestamps
• Desktop notification on completion or failure
• Configurable download directory and format

Requirements

• Ulauncher 6 (Extension API v2)
• yt-dlp
• ffmpeg (needed for merging video and audio, clips and audio extraction)
• Deno (needed by yt-dlp for YouTube and other sites)
• notify-send (usually already installed on Linux desktops)

Installing yt-dlp and ffmpeg

# Fedora
sudo dnf install yt-dlp ffmpeg

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install yt-dlp ffmpeg

# Arch
sudo pacman -S yt-dlp ffmpeg

# Or with pip (yt-dlp only, install ffmpeg separately through your package manager)
pip install yt-dlp

Installing Deno

yt-dlp needs Deno to download from YouTube and some other sites. Run this in a terminal:

curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sh

The installer will ask two questions:

1. "Edit shell configs to add deno to the PATH?" - type Y and press Enter. This is required.
2. "Set up completions?" - just press Enter to skip. You don't need this.

Then close and reopen your terminal so the PATH change takes effect.

Install

Open Ulauncher preferences, go to Extensions, click "Add extension" and paste:

https://github.com/no-faff/ulauncher-yt-dlp

Usage

Command	What it does
yt <url>	Download full video
yt <url> 1:30 3:45	Download clip from 1:30 to 3:45
yta <url>	Download as MP3
yta <url> 1:30 3:45	Download clip as MP3

Timestamps accept m:ss, h:mm:ss or plain seconds.

Downloads run in the background. A desktop notification appears when the download finishes (or fails).

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Download directory	Where files are saved	~/Downloads
Default format	Best quality, MP4 or audio only	MP4
Max resolution	Limit video resolution to save bandwidth and disk space	Best available
Subtitles	Off, embed in video, save as SRT, save as TXT, or both SRT and TXT	Off
Subtitle language	Language code (e.g. en, fr, de, es)	en
SponsorBlock	Remove or mark sponsor segments in YouTube videos	Off
Embed metadata	Embed title, uploader, thumbnail in the file	No
Filename template	yt-dlp output template	%(title)s.%(ext)s
Browser cookies	For private or restricted videos. Set to the browser where you're logged in	None

Also by No Faff

• Find - find files and directories by name

Licence

MIT