Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 66 posts

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#31

Post by dspillett »

jb1991 wrote: post #3

I'm curious what is the reason for a GUI for such a simple utility? The command line for this kind of tool seems like the perfect interface. Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter. No buttons to press, etc.

> Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter.

Unless you have reason to want something other than the default format that it will pick (perhaps for compatibility with an old set-top media box), or need other options like turning off SSL verification for some sites (it does much more than youtube) that have this misconfigured, options for playlist, ..., ...

For the simplest and most common use case it is just copy+paste, but for others there are a lot of options. I prefer the CLI and manpage myself, but some are far more comfortable with a GUI, finding the options more discoverable that way.

(though having had a quick look at the project page it looks like this doesn't offer options beyond format selection, but for some users that is useful enough to warrant a GUI)

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#32

Post by filmgirlcw »

schoen wrote: post #7
Nux wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's handy for people who are not comfortable with the command line, no matter how simple it is. In addition it allows one to convert to mp3 etc. The number of people who might want to download something from Youtube & co is significantly larger than that of people comfortable with the cli.

I won't criticize someone for making more interfaces for this software, but I like the prospect that more people have been and will be motivated to learn about command line interfaces in order to use powerful software like youtube-dl.

OK, but if someone needs something like this for work (believe it or not, this stuff is faster than the official YouTube tools for downloading videos), expecting them to learn the CLI, install the libraries, figure out the settings, is a lot to expect. Especially if a Frontend exists. And on Mac, installing it isn’t a big deal (tho for CLI averse people it is) but it is more complicated in Windows (especially for people who don’t use a shell everyday).

I’m a huge fan of good CLIs. I’m also a huge fan of GUIs. Why require people to learn something just to use a video downloader?

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#33

Post by filmgirlcw »

suction wrote: post #18
beckman466 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't criticize > but please stop gatekeeping > motivated to learn about command line interfaces in order to use powerful software many people never get basic tech literacy. i think we’d benefit from not simply assuming others have (or could have) access to the same resources, time and patience that we had. i think you probably mean well but your statement, which sort of implies that people say “I am choosing not…

Tech literacy would help a great deal saving our democracies. Nobody needs to know command line, but to be able to tell if you're on a Russian disinfo website or a legit source of information is also (but not only) a matter of tech literacy, so I think OP is on to something here.

Tech literacy isn’t using a CLI. Get over yourself.

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#34

Post by toyg »

elAhmo wrote: post #14

As someone who has been working with Python a lot up to this year, I am wondering has the state of GUI frameworks improved for Python in the recent months/years? If I want to have, lets say, an application that looks (and works) like a native MacOS or Windows application, would I bet able to do that? All of the examples look really odd, with weird buttons and simply not feeling like native apps.

PyQt and "QT for Python" both use the QT framework, which uses native widgets and supports Windows, MacOS, and KDE on Linux. It's kind of the gold-standard of desktop toolkits for Python.

This said, in the age of Electron, "things not looking native" does not seem to be a problem for most users.

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#35

Post by bsenftner »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #23
elAhmo wrote: post #14

As someone who has been working with Python a lot up to this year, I am wondering has the state of GUI frameworks improved for Python in the recent months/years? If I want to have, lets say, an application that looks (and works) like a native MacOS or Windows application, would I bet able to do that? All of the examples look really odd, with weird buttons and simply not feeling like native apps.

wxWidgets does use native controls so should feel like a native app. Sadly this is its only redeeming feature.

I'm curious way people hate on wxWidgets so much. As a cross platform GUI, it works, and has a better license for developers than QT, and when investigating QT it looked like it requires more than just a library, but QT specific tooling to build things.

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#36

Post by slightwinder »

jb1991 wrote: post #3

I'm curious what is the reason for a GUI for such a simple utility? The command line for this kind of tool seems like the perfect interface. Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter. No buttons to press, etc.

> I'm curious what is the reason for a GUI for such a simple utility?

From the screenshots alone some benefits are quite obvious. Namely the ability to handle multiple URLs at once, as also the Download-Manager with it's progress bar. I have a bunch of scripts myself for downloading videos, but interfaces for such things is not really a strength of the command line. I already thought about making some job-manager for myself because of those reasons. So I can totally understand people making a GUI and releasing it.

> The command line for this kind of tool seems like the perfect interface. Just copy a URL, paste it, press enter.

That's only if you have no other requirements. youtube-dl is a monster of parameters. You can setup any little crap and do many more things than just download a youtube-url. On the screenshot I see some config-buttons and some kind of profile? This quite matches with any mildly complex usecase for this tool. Having a GUI supporting you in setting up what other would do with scripts is beneficial, especially for those not breathing in shell-commands.

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#37

Post by sha-3 »

politelemon wrote: post #2

That project is abandoned. There is an ongoing fork called youtube-dl-gui: https://github.com/oleksis/youtube-dl-gui And an alternative called tartube: https://github.com/axcore/tartube

It seems to me like youtube-dl is also abandoned.

yt-dlp[0] is a fork with additional features and fixes. It is also actively maintained.

[0]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#38

Post by lifeslikethis »

sha-3 wrote: post #37
politelemon wrote: post #2

That project is abandoned. There is an ongoing fork called youtube-dl-gui: https://github.com/oleksis/youtube-dl-gui And an alternative called tartube: https://github.com/axcore/tartube

It seems to me like youtube-dl is also abandoned. yt-dlp[0] is a fork with additional features and fixes. It is also actively maintained. [0]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Ever since youtube-dl was removed from Github, it seems like they gave up on the project.

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#39

Post by kzrdude »

lifeslikethis wrote: post #38
sha-3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like youtube-dl is also abandoned. yt-dlp[0] is a fork with additional features and fixes. It is also actively maintained. [0]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Ever since youtube-dl was removed from Github, it seems like they gave up on the project.

youtube-dl works right now, so not sure if this is a fair thing to say. But you might have more insight than me. Maybe they realized that becoming a famous project is only a detriment to their mission

Re: A cross platform front-end GUI of the popular YouTube-dl written in wxPython

#40

Post by toyg »

bsenftner wrote: post #35
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wxWidgets does use native controls so should feel like a native app. Sadly this is its only redeeming feature.

I'm curious way people hate on wxWidgets so much. As a cross platform GUI, it works, and has a better license for developers than QT, and when investigating QT it looked like it requires more than just a library, but QT specific tooling to build things.

> I'm curious way people hate on wxWidgets so much.

Because it just looks bad and outdated on most platforms.

Post reply on HN