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YouTube Ripper

Local web utility that extracts audio and video from YouTube, transcribes with Whisper, and generates clean text transcripts.

Features

  • Five output modes: Audio Only, Text Only, Audio + Text, Video, Video + Text
  • Video quality selection: 480p, 720p, 1080p, or Best Available
  • Audio format: M4A (AAC) — plays on Mac, Android, iOS
  • Video format: MP4 with merged audio
  • Transcription: Local Whisper (faster-whisper) — no cloud APIs, no data leaves your machine
  • Text output: Clean .txt transcript with title, source URL, and paragraph breaks
  • Real-time progress via Server-Sent Events (download %, speed, ETA for video)
  • Supported URLs: youtube.com/watch, youtu.be, youtube.com/shorts, youtube.com/live

Output Modes

Mode What you get Quality picker?
Audio Only M4A No
Text Only TXT transcript No
Audio + Text M4A + TXT No
Video MP4 Yes
Video + Text MP4 + TXT Yes

Video + Text downloads the video, extracts the audio track, runs Whisper on it, generates the text transcript, and cleans up the intermediate audio file.

Requirements

  • Python 3.12+
  • uv package manager
  • ffmpeg (brew install ffmpeg)

Quick Start

cd tools/youtube-ripper
uv run python app.py

Open http://localhost:4039, paste a YouTube URL, pick your mode, and hit Rip It.

For development with auto-reload:

FLASK_DEBUG=1 uv run python app.py

Stack

Component Tool
YouTube download yt-dlp
Transcription faster-whisper (base model, int8)
Text generation Python pathlib
Web server Flask
Frontend Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS

Output

Files are saved to output/ by default (gitignored). The UI shows clickable saved-file links after each run, so you can download the generated files directly from the browser.

Generated filenames include the YouTube id to avoid collisions between same-title videos:

  • Title [video_id].m4a
  • Title [video_id].mp4
  • Title [video_id].txt

In "Text Only" mode, the downloaded audio file is automatically deleted after transcription. In "Video + Text" mode, the app downloads the video once, extracts temporary transcription audio locally with ffmpeg, and removes that temporary audio after transcription.

Notes

  • First run downloads the Whisper base model (~150MB)
  • No database, no accounts, no cloud services
  • Port: 4039
  • The server binds to 0.0.0.0 for Tailscale reachability, but requests are accepted only from loopback and Tailscale client ranges by default.
  • YouTube downloads use your local Chrome Profile 1 cookies by default to avoid bot/sign-in checkpoints.
  • To override auth, set YOUTUBE_RIPPER_COOKIES_FROM_BROWSER, for example firefox:default, or set YOUTUBE_RIPPER_COOKIES to a Netscape-format cookies file.

Configuration

Optional environment variables:

Variable Default Purpose
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_OUTPUT_DIR output/ Directory for generated files
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_HOST 0.0.0.0 Flask bind host
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_PORT 4039 Flask port
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_ALLOWED_CLIENTS 127.0.0.0/8,::1/128,100.64.0.0/10,fd7a:115c:a1e0::/48 Comma-separated allowed client IPs/CIDR ranges
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_WHISPER_MODEL base faster-whisper model name
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_WHISPER_DEVICE cpu faster-whisper device
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_WHISPER_COMPUTE_TYPE int8 faster-whisper compute type
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_COOKIES_FROM_BROWSER chrome:Profile 1 Browser cookies source for yt-dlp
YOUTUBE_RIPPER_COOKIES unset Netscape-format cookies file path