made it so i just click file and paste YouTube url
Linux is amazing
#! /usr/bin/bash
echo "Enter a url"
read a
yt-dlp -x $a
Stop right now. This will all end in tears. You’ll become a developer and spend the rest of your life fixing bugs. You can still get out.
I like fixing things but getting paid to do it is the hard part. I also want to give back to Linux community even if it is small.
this is neat, thanks!
Amazing.
Injust switched a year ago and now I finally discovered bash scripts.
It is so mich easier, I also automated some manual tasks with Python scripts to name my PDFs, never would have done that with windows.
And the best part of it, it’s actually fun and I want to even do more.
As always I have to thank DJT, for make me switch. 🤣
DJT, best Linux promoter of 2025 :P
Very happy you had fun making the little script! One thing that will become important pretty quick if you continue making these scripts is that it’s almost always better to wrap your variables in quotes - so it becomes
yt-dlp -x “$a”. It’s okay here but if you ever paste something that has a space in it, this will keep it together ‘as one’.If you want to expand your knowledge with this, some fruitful paths to go down are the following:
- can you find a way to download multiple urls one after the other if you paste them all at once? (Multiple arguments)
- can you find a way to ask the user for these multiple urls one after the other? (loops)
- and can you find a way to have it ask until you hit enter without a url pasted and only then it starts? (conditionals and test)
The last one is already quite a bit advanced but if you can do that you have enough of the ‘programming’ basics of the shell down to a degree that you can create many little helpers like this with ease.
Of course don’t feel forced to do any of that - if you’re happy with the improvement as-is, that’s all you need to enjoy the fun of Linux!
One thing that will become important pretty quick if you continue making these scripts is that it’s almost always better to wrap your variables in quotes - so it becomes
yt-dlp -x “$a”.Oh man, this reminds me of the joke that any program that’s more complex than Hello World has bugs – and folks still don’t even agree how to spell “Hello, World!”.
Of course, Bash is a particular minefield in this regard…
I once wrote a 2 line, 10 word script that had 9 bugs in it. I’m not overly proud of that one.
I think you might have a career as an accomplished entymologist ahead of you with so much success finding bugs!
You’ve got me beat. I just have a text file with some common usage examples in it.
I do the same, for the commands I forget. Joplin is also handy for making longer notes.
I love things like this, makes it so easy to learn when it’s a really simple to understand and explicit implementation of a high level feature (read input, pass to command)
Here is a script I wrote:
~/bin 0s > cat vget #!/usr/bin/env fish yt-dlp --embed-metadata --write-subs --embed-subs --write-thumbnail --prefer-free-formats -f "[height<=1080]" $argvawesome! I never would have thought to make something like that.
Guess we’re sharing scripts now. I have a script that downloads playlists as MP3s and keep an archive.
#!/usr/bin/env sh browser_cookies="firefox:1cvnyph7.YouTube TV" download() { url="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=%241" dir=$2 archive_name=$3 yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 --embed-thumbnail --embed-metadata --cookies-from-browser "$browser_cookies" --download-archive "archives/$archive_name.txt" -P "$dir" -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "$url" } download PLPzniwWWCSjVQteWPqVvyu8SQsrStVYwZ high-quality-rips/ rips download PLPzniwWWCSjWZj3-DAOh8ZKrsVReP_Ksm good-playlist/ picksThat’s great! Here’s a few tips to take it a bit further; the world is your oyster!
Open your .bashrc file (e.g. /home/yourusername/.bashrc) and add the following:
alias get="/path/to/your/bash/file"Now open a terminal and type get, and it’ll launch the script. No clicking needed, it’ll run anytime from any terminal!
And if you do use the alias then you can use another refinement, you can drop the echo: instead of $a, you can use $1 and remove the echo & read as you no longer need them:
Now for example you can type in a terminal:
get http://url.to.video/And yt-dlp will do it’s stuff. $1 passes the first parameter after starting the script as a variable to it.
You can use the keyboard shortcut Control+shift+v to paste a URL into the terminal, no mouse needed; just remember to add a space after typing get
The op script is meant to be opened in the GUI in a terminal then the URL gets pasted in there. It took me a second to see it.
What does your ~/.bashrc look like? My last change was modifying a
playlistcommandspoiler: I explain my last change to my ~/.bashrc file
playlist https://www.youtube.com/@YouTube/videosor
playlist /home/username/Videosor just from any directory with files
playlistAnd then takes all the videos found at the url or at the path (including within folders), adds them to a playlist, shuffles them, and plays them from mpv.
playlist() { param="" # If the first parameter has a length more than 1 character if [ ${#1} -gt 1 ]; then param="${@}" else param="." fi screen mpv $param --shuffle --ytdl-raw-options-add=cookies-from-browser=firefox --loop-playlist=inf --no-keepaspect-window --no-auto-window-resize }other functions and aliases in my ~/.bashrc
alias code=codium alias files=nautilus alias explorer=nautilus alias rust="/path/to/.cargo/bin/evcxr" alias sniffnet="export ICED_BACKEND=tiny-skia; /path/to/.cargo/bin/sniffnet" alias http-server='/path/to/.cargo/bin/miniserve' alias iphone='uxplay' alias airplay='uxplay' alias watch='screen mpv --ytdl-raw-options-add=remote-components=ejs:github --ytdl-raw-options-add=cookies-from-browser=firefox --no-keepaspect-window ' alias twitch='watch' alias timeshift-launcher="pkexec env WAYLAND_DISPLAY='$WAYLAND_DISPLAY' XDG_RUNTIME_DIR='$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR' /usr/bin/timeshift-launcher" alias update="sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo flatpak update -y && sudo snap refresh" alias resize="path/to/resize/videos/resize.sh" playlist() { param="" # If the first parameter has a length more than 1 character if [ ${#1} -gt 1 ]; then param="${@}" else param="." fi screen mpv $param --shuffle --ytdl-raw-options-add=cookies-from-browser=firefox --loop-playlist=inf --no-keepaspect-window --no-auto-window-resize } gif() { ffmpeg -i $1 -f yuv4mpegpipe - | gifski -o $2 ${@:3} -;}I wonder if we have the same resize.sh
The version I have was copied from stackoverflow. It doesn’t work very well, it makes a rough estimate to get the video file size under the set value. As an example
resize video.mp4 10Which then resizes the video to 10 megabytes if possible.
resize.sh code
file=$1 target_size_mb=$2 # target size in MB target_size=$(( $target_size_mb * 1000 * 1000 * 8 )) # target size in bits length=`ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "$file"` length_round_up=$(( ${length%.*} + 1 )) total_bitrate=$(( $target_size / $length_round_up )) audio_bitrate=$(( 128 * 1000 )) # 128k bit rate video_bitrate=$(( $total_bitrate - $audio_bitrate )) ffmpeg -i "$file" -b:v $video_bitrate -maxrate:v $video_bitrate -bufsize:v $(( $target_size / 20 )) -b:a $audio_bitrate "${file}-${target_size_mb}mb.mp4"I’ll probably replace it eventually.
Definitely not the same lol
Mine uses ffmpeg to change the resolution, it doesn’t so much care about file sizes.
It could be a one-liner if you only ever feed it a single file to manipulate…
I might add one for scaling. I just don’t use it as frequently as trying to meet a file size limit. The scaling is also much easier to remember
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "scale=600:-1" -an out.mp4It does get complicated though, when scaling many videos and images, I’ve used something like the following in the past
find . -exec ffmpeg -i {} -vf "scale=1920:1080:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease,pad=1920:1080:-1:-1:color=black" {}.mp4 \;Those were the only two that showed up when I typed
history | grep scale.after commenting, I also added a new video file resizer.
It works significantly better than the one I previously posted. It’s also copied from stackoverflow.
bitrate="$(awk "BEGIN {print int($2 * 1024 * 1024 * 8 / $(ffprobe \ -v error \ -show_entries format=duration \ -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 \ "$1" \ ) / 1000)}")k" ffmpeg \ -y \ -i "$1" \ -c:v libx264 \ -preset medium \ -b:v $bitrate \ -pass 1 \ -an \ -f mp4 \ /dev/null \ && \ ffmpeg \ -i "$1" \ -c:v libx264 \ -preset medium \ -b:v $bitrate \ -pass 2 \ -an \ "${1%.*}-$2mB.mp4"
You’ll probably like this youtube channel then :)
Thanks looks good
One of us! One of us!
Hell yeah
I have a similar scriptlet that I use to open YouTube URLs in mpv, using just and wl-clipboard… I just copy the URL and press my G1 key (it has a keybind of
just yt-pasteattached) which launches the yt-paste snippet below, reads the url from the clipboard, parses it and passes it to mpv.# Parse the clipboard for YouTube URLs and open them in mpv yt-paste: #!/usr/bin/env bash YOUTUBE_URL_REGEX="^https:\/\/(www\.youtube\.com\/watch\?v=|youtu\.be\/)[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11}" YOUTUBE_PLAYLIST_URL_REGEX="^https:\/\/(www\.youtube\.com\/playlist\?list=)[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+" YOUTUBE_SHORTS_URL_REGEX="^https:\/\/(www\.youtube\.com\/shorts\/)[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{11}" # Youtube URL if [[ "$(wl-paste)" =~ $YOUTUBE_URL_REGEX ]]; then echo "Opening valid YouTube URL" >&2 notify-send --app-name="YT-Paste" --icon=mpv --transient "Opening YouTube URL" mpv "$(wl-paste)" # Youtube Playlist URL elif [[ "$(wl-paste)" =~ $YOUTUBE_PLAYLIST_URL_REGEX ]]; then echo "Opening valid YouTube Playlist URL" >&2 notify-send --app-name="YT-Paste" --icon=mpv --transient "Opening YouTube Playlist URL" mpv "$(wl-paste)" # Youtube Short URL elif [[ "$(wl-paste)" =~ $YOUTUBE_SHORTS_URL_REGEX ]]; then echo "Opening valid YouTube Shorts URL" >&2 notify-send --app-name="YT-Paste" --icon=mpv --transient "Opening YouTube Shorts URL" mpv "$(wl-paste)" # No Match else echo "Clipboard does not contain a valid YouTube URL" >&2 notify-send --app-name="YT-Paste" --icon=mpv --transient "Whoops!" "Clipboard does not contain a valid YouTube URL" exit 1 fihell yeah
