Yanker

a better video Yoinker.

Stick a URL in a terminal, watch yanker show you every quality the site offers, with estimated sizes and grab the one you want. Paste. pick and yank it.

pull from YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Instagram, TikTok, X and other sites.

• Every format, with sizes. Not just "best guess" you can just choose from the whole list, estimated file size included, sorted by quality.

• Keeps the terminal clean. Alt-screen in, non-TTY-safe --list out.

• Custom output path. Pick exactly where your downloads land with Ctrl + O.

• Grab-protected streams. If a site's CDN pushes back (403 throttling), yanker retries with fresh extraction and browser cookies before giving up.

yanker says yt-dlp is missing. Install it, or let yanker fetch the standalone build for you with yanker --update-yt-dlp.

Downloads fail with a 403. The CDN is challenging the request — retry, or pass --cookies cookies.txt (see the cookies section below).

yanker re-extracts the stream with fresh browser cookies before it gives up. That retry is bounded, so a persistently hostile CDN fails after a handful of attempts rather than hanging — if you are scripting around a known-bad host, prefer --cookies over relying on the retry.

Nothing appears on a non-TTY terminal. The interactive picker needs a TTY; use --list or --best when scripting over ssh.

• src/cli.tsx — argument parsing and the headless paths (--list, --best, --mp3)
• src/app.tsx — the interactive picker
• src/lib/ytdlp.ts — format probing, download, and cookie retry
• src/lib/format.ts — byte/duration formatting shared by both UIs
• src/lib/config.ts — the remembered output directory
• src/lib/clipboard.ts — paste and copy, with a bounded probe
• src/theme.ts — the three themes and terminal detection

--theme light / --theme dark / --theme auto (the default). ctrl+t cycles the three in the picker.

Auto-detection reads COLORFGBG when the terminal exports it. When it does not, auto picks dark unless COLORTERM=truecolor says otherwise. If your terminal has a light background but exports a truecolor COLORTERM, set YANKER_THEME=light to force it.

yanker remembers where you last saved downloads. State lives in ~/.yanker/config.json:

{
  "lastOutDir": "~/Videos"
}

That file is yours to edit or delete — removing it just resets the memory. YANKER_OUT overrides it for a single run, and -o overrides both.

A remembered directory that has since been deleted or unmounted is ignored, so yanker falls back to your default rather than failing the download.

• Node.js ≥ 22
• yt-dlp — optional.
• ffmpeg — optional. ffmpeg-static as a bundled fallback for merging and mp3 conversion
• Clipboard paste — optional, only for Tab-paste in the URL field: Linux needs wl-paste (Wayland) or xclip/xsel (X11), macOS uses pbpaste, Windows uses PowerShell Get-Clipboard.

npm install -g @dummy3ye/yanker

Or try it without installing anything:

npx @dummy3ye/yanker

or you can just run the cool installer by:
(it looks better if you have gum by charm.sh installed)

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dummy3ye/yanker/refs/heads/master/install.sh | sh

Piping a script straight into a shell is convenient but means you are running code you have not read. If you would rather look first:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dummy3ye/yanker/refs/heads/master/install.sh -o install.sh
less install.sh
sh install.sh

npx @dummy3ye/yanker sidesteps the question entirely.

The interactive TUI requires a TTY. On non-TTY terminals (scripts, ssh pipes), pass a URL with --best / --mp3 / --list for headless output. see below ↓

Over ssh or in CI, --list is the safest bet: it prints every format with its estimated size and exits, so it composes with grep/head instead of waiting on a picker that can never be answered.

yanker https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ      # straight to the format picker
yanker                                   # prompts for a link (auto-suggests a copied URL)
yanker <url> --list                      # print every format + estimated size
yanker <url> --best                      # grab the best format, no picker
yanker <url> --mp3                       # audio only, straight to mp3
yanker <url> -o ~/clips                  # save somewhere else
yanker <url> --cookies cookies.txt       # use exported browser cookies (see below)
yanker --theme light                     # force the light palette
yanker --update-yt-dlp                   # self-update the standalone yt-dlp

yanker lists all available formats: resolution, codec, container, bitrate and estimated file size, best options first. Pick one with ↑/↓, hit enter, and watch it fly. Files land in ~/Videos by default, and the saved path is printed when you're finished.

Sizes in the list are estimates derived from each format's reported bitrate and duration, so treat them as a guide rather than an exact figure — the real size depends on the container the site serves.

yanker has no completion script yet, but the common invocations are short enough to alias:

alias yl='yanker --list'
alias yb='yanker --best'

YouTube starts answering every request with "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" the moment it can't see your browser — which is exactly what happens on a VPS, Docker, or any box without Chrome/Firefox on it. That's what --cookies is for: hand yanker your real logged-in session and the wall comes down.

Get the cookies. In the browser you actually use for YouTube, export them to a Netscape-format file — Chrome: Get cookies.txt LOCALLY extension; Firefox: cookies.txt extension. Move it over, then:

scp cookies.txt root@your-vps:/root/

yanker <url> --cookies /root/cookies.txt   # one-off
yanker --cookies /root/cookies.txt         # or set it once and use the picker

The cookies go to work both while fetching video info and while downloading. When a file is given, it's the only cookie source — yanker skips its automatic browser-cookie fallbacks and trusts the file.

Treat it like a password, because it is one: the file is a full login session. Keep it private, and re-export it whenever YouTube expires the session and the bot wall comes back.

Playlists are detected automatically — the picker offers "grab all" (best or mp3) or "first video only" to walk through the format list of the first entry. Press Tab in the URL field to paste whatever is in your clipboard — if it looks like a link it lands right in the field.

nvm use                # switch to the pinned Node version (see .nvmrc)
npm install
npm run build          # bundle with tsup to dist/
npm run dev            # rebuild on change
npm run typecheck      # tsc --noEmit
npm run link           # rebuild + npm link for global `yanker`
npm run unlink yanker  # to unlink the global command

Stack: TypeScript, Ink (React for terminals), yt-dlp, tsup ffmpeg.

yanker is a personal-archiving tool. Downloading content may violate a platform's terms of service — only grab what you're allowed to keep, and support the people who make what you save.

--cookies sends your browser's cookies to yt-dlp. That resolves the cases where the CDN challenges a request it would otherwise serve: age-gated videos, members-only uploads, and anything bound to a signed-in session.

It does not help with region blocks (pass --geo-bypass-country for those) and it does not bypass a takedown. If a video plays in your browser and fails in yanker, cookies are almost always the fix.

The file is read by yt-dlp and never sent anywhere else. Netscape format, which is what every browser extension exports.

--list and the interactive picker both read the same format table, but they do not always present it in the same order. --list prints in yt-dlp's own order; the picker sorts by height, then bitrate, then frame rate. Ties are resolved deterministically, so the picker's order is stable run to run — just not necessarily the same as --list.

Pick by the label (1080p · avc1 · 60fps), not by row number.

Scripts can therefore distinguish "you asked for something impossible" from "the fetch broke", without scraping stderr.

A size looks far too small. Sizes are estimated from the bitrate whenever yt-dlp does not report an exact filesize, which is most of the time. The estimate assumes a constant bitrate, so VBR encodes read high. Where an exact figure exists it is used instead.

A format shows no size at all. The stream has no reported bitrate, or the video has no duration (a live stream still running). Nothing can be estimated in that case, so the label is blank rather than 0 B.

yanker --list 'https://youtu.be/VIDEO' | grep '1080p'

Then hand the id straight to yt-dlp when you want something the picker does not offer:

yt-dlp -f 137+140 --merge-output-format mp4 'https://youtu.be/VIDEO'

If this saved you some time, an issue describing what you were trying to do is worth more than a star — it says what is still missing.

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