`ytui` is a terminal-based tool designed to help you search and
play YouTube videos directly from your local terminal player.
You can query videos from various sources
such as your history, subscribed channels, or by searching YouTube.
Table of Contents
Features
ytui offers a wide range of features designed to enhance
your YouTube experience directly from the terminal. Some of the key features include:
-
YouTube Search and Playback: Search YouTube videos using keywords
or retrieve videos from your history or subscribed channels,
and play them directly in your local terminal video player.
-
FZF Integration: ytui features something similar the popular fuzzy finder
fzf (powered by https://github.com/ktr0731/go-fuzzyfinder) to allow fast
and efficient video search results navigation.
This makes it easy to browse through large lists of videos
and pick the one you want to play.
-
Video History Management: Keep track of the videos you've watched using ytui.
The tool logs your watch history in the watched_history.json
file for quick reference later.
-
Channel Subscription Support: Search for videos from
your subscribed YouTube channels or specify channels in the configuration file.
-
OAuth Authentication: Securely authenticate with YouTube
using OAuth to access your personal subscriptions.
The tool leverages the YouTube Data API to fetch data related to your account.
-
Terminal-Based User-interface: Allowing you to search for videos
directly from the terminal environment.
-
Customization: Adjust settings through a configuration file
located in $HOME/.config/ytui/config.yaml to tailor the tool
to your preferences, such as channel subscriptions and OAuth credentials.
These features make ytui a powerful and convenient way to interact
with YouTube directly from your terminal, streamlining video searching
and viewing for command-line users.
Requirements
You must have mpv and yt-dlp installed.
Installation
To install ytui, follow the instructions for your operating system.
Ensure that you have the required dependencies installed.
-
Install binary
ytui runs on most major platforms. If your platform isn't listed below,
please [open an issue][issues].
Please note that binaries are available on the release pages, you can extract the archives for your
platform and manually install it.
Linux / WSL
You can use the following package manager:
| Distribution |
Repository |
Instructions |
| Any |
[Linuxbrew] |
brew install banh-canh/ytui/ytui |
| Arch Linux |
[AUR] |
yay -S ytui-bin |
macOS
You can use the following package manager:
| Distribution |
Repository |
Instructions |
| Any |
[Linuxbrew] |
brew install banh-canh/ytui/ytui |
Usage
See Documentations.
Configuration
The configuration file for ytui is located at $HOME/.config/ytui/config.yaml.
This file allows you to specify which channels to subscribe to and your OAuth credentials.
Configuration File Structure
channels:
local: false
subscribed:
- UCTt2AnK--mnRmICnf-CCcrw
- UCutXfzLC5wrV3SInT_tdY0w
download_dir: ~/Videos/YouTube
history:
enable: true
invidious:
proxy: ''
instance: invidious.jing.rocks
loglevel: info
youtube:
clientid: fsdfsdf
secretid: ffsdfsdf
Notes
-
local: false - When set to true, ytui will use the channels
specified in the configuration file for subscribed channels.
If you prefer to use your Youtube user-subscribed channels, set this to false.
-
channels.subscribed: [] is a list of channel Ids. To be used with local: true.
-
OAuth - You need to enable OAuth authentication with YouTube
to access your subscribed channels.
Ensure that your clientid and secretid are properly configured.
The following scope is also required: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.readonly
-
invidious.proxy: - Must be set with either socks5://<socks5_proxy>:1234 or http://<http_proxy>:4567. Leave empty to disable.
Files
watched_history.json - This file, located in $HOME/.config/ytui/,
logs each video watched using ytui when querying the history.
Examples
-
Search for a Video on YouTube:
ytui query search "your search query"
-
Fetch Videos from Your Subscribed Channels:
ytui query subscribed
-
Retrieve Videos from Your History:
ytui query history
Troubleshooting
If you encounter any issues while using this application, you can check the log file for detailed error messages and troubleshooting information. The log file is located at:
$HOME/.config/ytui/ytui.log
Steps to View the Log
-
Open a terminal: Use your terminal application to navigate to the logs.
-
Display the log: Run the following command to view the log content:
cat $HOME/.config/ytui/ytui.log
This will print the log file's contents directly to your terminal.
-
Tail the log (Optional): If the application is still running and you want to monitor log updates in real-time, you can use the tail command:
tail -f $HOME/.config/ytui/ytui.log
-
Check for errors or warnings: Look for lines marked with [ERROR] or [WARNING] to identify issues.
Reporting Issues
When reporting issues, please include relevant log entries to help with diagnosing the problem. You can copy the log content and include it in your bug report.
License

ytui is open-source and available under the LICENCE.
For more detailed usage, you can always use ytui --help or ytui <subcommand> --help
to get more information about specific commands and flags.