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Video downloader

Vibranium ships a small CLI wrapper around yt-dlp (vb-util-yt-dlp) that makes downloading a video much simpler. It's designed to be plain and simple, so it has no settings nor options to configure it; URL in -> .mp4 out.

Using it

From the app launcher (Super+A): seach for "Video Downloader".

As a one-shot command:

vb-util-yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

What it does automatically

  • Picks the best quality: downloads the best available video and audio streams, then remuxes them into an .mp4 in your default downloads directory.
  • Handles cookies for you: many sites require login cookies to access the highest quality. The wrapper automatically tries your browsers in order (there are eight in the fallback chain) and caches the first one that works.
  • Knows when you're not looking1: if the terminal window is on a non-active workspace when the download finishes, it closes automatically and sends a notification instead. If the window is on your active workspace, it simply stays open—you were already watching it.

  1. This is a fairly opinionated behavior and may be removed in a future release. ↩