Kyron

A shitty yt-dlp wrapper for bulk downloading YouTube channels/playlists locally or for archival purposes. It can also download deleted or private YouTube videos via Wayback Machine, on your system locally

Warning

Certain parts of the code are tailored to my specific use case, since they're a part of a private scripts that I use. So it won't be full-featured like yt-dlp has to offer and it won't satisfy other needs and edge cases.

In other words: this codebase is certified H O T garbage

Note

Downloading livestreams, especially ones that exceed from few to several hours, can significantly hog up disk space. Make sure you have available space first (preferably a formatted drive) before commiting to downloading them!

Installation

WIP

CLI reference

General

Argument	Description
channel_name <...>	A list of YouTube channel handle(s) to download, will be ignored if config has downloads has items
--list <name,size,videos> --l <name,size,videos>	List all downloaded channels from the current directory or from the config
--dir <DIR_NAME>	Set custom download directory (default is the terminal's working directory)
--create-config	Creates a .kyron_config.json file. Option is ignored if a config file exists or is defined from --download-from-config
--download-from-config <CONFIG_DIR>	Reads a JSON config file. If option downloads is present in the config, positional arguments for channel_name is ignored completely and will adhere to the config you set

Thumbnails

Options for keeping track of thumbnail/avatar changes

Argument	Description
--ignore-new-thumbnails	Ignores keeping previous revisions of thumbnails and avatars
--delete-previous-thumbnails	Deletes previous revisions from thumbnails and avatars

Managing downloads

Argument	Description
--skip-download --no-download	Mirrors yt-dlp argument for skipping video downloads
--rename-handle <OLD_NAME> <NEW_NAME>	Requires two arguments, essentially renames its folder and archive file specified in --download-archive from yt-dlp parameters correspondingly
--sleep-interval <SLEEP_SEC>	Adds a delay in seconds for each request. Mirrors the option from yt-dlp. Default: 9
--download-livestreams	If available, include downloading VODs/livestreams; appends {BASE_URL}/live from the request URL
--download-shorts	If available, include downloading Shorts; appends {BASE_URL}/shorts from the request URL
--cookies <COOKIE_FILE>	Specify a cookie file; only use for certain edge cases (i.e. accessing age-restricted or private videos)

Others/Misc.

For development stuff or niche use cases

Argument	Description
--no-log	Disables logging; enabled by default to keep track of what's changed and stores it from .kyron_data directory for each channel
--verbose, -v	Enables verbose logging, useful for debugging, or... I dunno, showing your hacker superiority

Config reference

The default config generates this:

{
  "shorts": {
    "include": false
  },
  "livestreams": {
    "include": false,
    "length_limit": 0
  },
  "downloads": []
}

downloads

You can either specify a list of channels/playlists or have a specific condition of a channel, can be mixed with either option.

Example of a basic list of channels:

{
  "downloads": [
    "@abc",
    "@def"
  ] 
}

Applying certain conditions of a channel:

{
  "downloads": [
    {
      "handle": "@abc",
      "livestreams": {
        "include": true,
        "filter": ">=1h30m"
      }
    },
    {
      "handle": "@def",
      "shorts": {
        "include": true
      }
    }
  ] 
}

shorts

Download Shorts from a creator; can be enabled with the shorts.include flag.

Defaults:

{
  "shorts": {
    "includes": false
  }
}

livestreams

Download VODs/livestreams from a creator

Defaults:

{
  "livestreams": {
    "includes": false
  }
}

Options

There are some specific keys that are used in objects:

• handle can only used on downloads
• include can only used on livestreams and shorts

Config schema

interface Schema {
  shorts?: {
    include: boolean
    cookies?: string
  }

  livestreams?: {
    include: boolean
    filter?: string
    cookies?: string
  }

  cookies?: string
  check_thumbnails?: boolean

  downloads?: (
    | string
    | {
      handle: string
      check_thumbnails?: boolean
      cookies?: string
      shorts?: {
        include: boolean
      }
      livestreams?: {
        include: boolean
        filter: string
      }
    })[]
}