MeTube

MeTube is a self-hosted web UI for yt-dlp, for downloading media from YouTube and dozens of other sites. Docker images are multi-arch (amd64/arm64).

Key capabilities:

• Download videos, audio, captions, and thumbnails from a browser UI.
• Download playlists and channels, with configurable output and download options.
• Subscribe to channels and playlists, periodically check for new items, and queue new uploads automatically.

🐳 Run using Docker

docker run -d -p 8081:8081 -v /path/to/downloads:/downloads ghcr.io/alexta69/metube

🐳 Run using Docker Compose

services:
  metube:
    image: ghcr.io/alexta69/metube
    container_name: metube
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8081:8081"
    volumes:
      - /path/to/downloads:/downloads

⚙️ Configuration via environment variables

Certain values can be set via environment variables, using the -e parameter on the docker command line, or the environment: section in Docker Compose.

🏠 Runtime & Permissions

• PUID: User under which MeTube will run. Defaults to 1000 (legacy UID also supported).
• PGID: Group under which MeTube will run. Defaults to 1000 (legacy GID also supported).
• UMASK: Umask value used by MeTube. Defaults to 022.
• DEFAULT_THEME: Default theme to use for the UI, can be set to light, dark, or auto. Defaults to auto.
• LOGLEVEL: Log level, can be set to DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL, or NONE. Defaults to INFO.
• ENABLE_ACCESSLOG: Whether to enable access log. Defaults to false.

⬇️ Download Behavior

• MAX_CONCURRENT_DOWNLOADS: Maximum number of simultaneous downloads allowed. For example, if set to 5, then at most five downloads will run concurrently, and any additional downloads will wait until one of the active downloads completes. Defaults to 3.
• DELETE_FILE_ON_TRASHCAN: if true, downloaded files are deleted on the server, when they are trashed from the "Completed" section of the UI. Defaults to false.
• DEFAULT_OPTION_PLAYLIST_ITEM_LIMIT: Maximum number of playlist items that can be downloaded. Defaults to 0 (no limit).
• SUBSCRIPTION_DEFAULT_CHECK_INTERVAL: Default minutes between automatic checks for each subscription. Defaults to 60.
• SUBSCRIPTION_SCAN_PLAYLIST_END: Maximum playlist/channel entries to fetch per subscription check (newest-first). Defaults to 50.
• SUBSCRIPTION_MAX_SEEN_IDS: Cap on stored video IDs per subscription to limit state file growth. Defaults to 50000.
• CLEAR_COMPLETED_AFTER: Number of seconds after which completed (and failed) downloads are automatically removed from the "Completed" list. Defaults to 0 (disabled).

📁 Storage & Directories

• DOWNLOAD_DIR: Path to where the downloads will be saved. Defaults to /downloads in the Docker image, and . otherwise.
• AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR: Path to where audio-only downloads will be saved, if you wish to separate them from the video downloads. Defaults to the value of DOWNLOAD_DIR.
• CUSTOM_DIRS: Whether to enable downloading videos into custom directories within the DOWNLOAD_DIR (or AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR). When enabled, a dropdown appears next to the Add button to specify the download directory. Defaults to true.
• CREATE_CUSTOM_DIRS: Whether to support automatically creating directories within the DOWNLOAD_DIR (or AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR) if they do not exist. When enabled, the download directory selector supports free-text input, and the specified directory will be created recursively. Defaults to true.
• CUSTOM_DIRS_EXCLUDE_REGEX: Regular expression to exclude some custom directories from the dropdown. Empty regex disables exclusion. Defaults to (^|/)[.@].*$, which means directories starting with . or @.
• DOWNLOAD_DIRS_INDEXABLE: If true, the download directories (DOWNLOAD_DIR and AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR) are indexable on the web server. Defaults to false.
• STATE_DIR: Path to where MeTube will store its persistent state files (queue.json, pending.json, completed.json, subscriptions.json). Defaults to /downloads/.metube in the Docker image, and . otherwise.
• TEMP_DIR: Path where intermediary download files will be saved. Defaults to /downloads in the Docker image, and . otherwise.
  • Set this to an SSD or RAM filesystem (e.g., tmpfs) for better performance.
  • Note: Using a RAM filesystem may prevent downloads from being resumed.
• CHOWN_DIRS: If false, ownership of DOWNLOAD_DIR, STATE_DIR, and TEMP_DIR (and their contents) will not be set on container start. Ensure user under which MeTube runs has necessary access to these directories already. Defaults to true.

📝 File Naming & yt-dlp

• OUTPUT_TEMPLATE: The template for the filenames of the downloaded videos, formatted according to this spec. Defaults to %(title)s.%(ext)s.
• OUTPUT_TEMPLATE_CHAPTER: The template for the filenames of the downloaded videos when split into chapters via postprocessors. Defaults to %(title)s - %(section_number)s %(section_title)s.%(ext)s.
• OUTPUT_TEMPLATE_PLAYLIST: The template for the filenames of the downloaded videos when downloaded as a playlist. Defaults to %(playlist_title)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s. Set to empty to use OUTPUT_TEMPLATE instead.
• OUTPUT_TEMPLATE_CHANNEL: The template for the filenames of the downloaded videos when downloaded as a channel. Defaults to %(channel)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s. Set to empty to use OUTPUT_TEMPLATE instead.
• YTDL_OPTIONS: Additional options to pass to yt-dlp, as a JSON object. See Configuring yt-dlp options for details, examples, and available options reference.
• YTDL_OPTIONS_FILE: Path to a JSON file containing yt-dlp options. Monitored and reloaded automatically on changes. See Configuring yt-dlp options.
• YTDL_OPTIONS_PRESETS: Named bundles of yt-dlp options, selectable per download in the UI. See Configuring yt-dlp options for format and examples.
• YTDL_OPTIONS_PRESETS_FILE: Path to a JSON file containing presets. Monitored and reloaded automatically on changes. See Configuring yt-dlp options.
• ALLOW_YTDL_OPTIONS_OVERRIDES: Whether to show a free-text field in the UI for per-download yt-dlp option overrides. Defaults to false. See Configuring yt-dlp options for details and security considerations.
• YTDL_NIGHTLY_UPDATE_TIME: If set, will cause MeTube to use nightly yt-dlp builds instead of the stable releases. Set to the time (HH:MM, 24-hour) when you want the daily upgrades and MeTube restart to happen. Defaults to empty (disabled).

🌐 Web Server & URLs

• HOST: The host address the web server will bind to. Defaults to 0.0.0.0 (all interfaces).
• PORT: The port number the web server will listen on. Defaults to 8081.
• URL_PREFIX: Base path for the web server (for use when hosting behind a reverse proxy). Defaults to /.
• PUBLIC_HOST_URL: Base URL for the download links shown in the UI for completed files. By default, MeTube serves them under its own URL. If your download directory is accessible on another URL and you want the download links to be based there, use this variable to set it.
• PUBLIC_HOST_AUDIO_URL: Same as PUBLIC_HOST_URL but for audio downloads.
• HTTPS: Use https instead of http (CERTFILE and KEYFILE required). Defaults to false.
• CERTFILE: HTTPS certificate file path.
• KEYFILE: HTTPS key file path.
• CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS: Comma-separated list of origins permitted to make cross-origin requests to the MeTube API; * allows all. When unset or empty, all cross-origin requests are denied. Required for browser extensions and bookmarklets — see Sending links to MeTube.
• ROBOTS_TXT: A path to a robots.txt file mounted in the container.

🎛️ Configuring yt-dlp options

MeTube lets you customize how yt-dlp behaves at three levels, from broadest to most specific:

1. Global options — apply to every download by default.
2. Presets — named bundles of options that users can pick per download from the UI.
3. Per-download overrides — free-form options entered in the UI for a single download.

When a download starts, these layers are combined in order. If the same option appears in more than one layer, the more specific one wins: per-download overrides beat presets, and presets beat global options.

In JSON presets and overrides, setting an option to null clears that option for that download (for example, "download_archive": null overrides a global archive path so the archive is not used). This follows yt-dlp’s usual meaning of None for that option.

Option format

yt-dlp options in MeTube are expressed as JSON objects. The keys are yt-dlp API option names, which roughly correspond to command-line flags with dashes replaced by underscores. For example, the command-line flag --write-subs becomes "writesubtitles": true in JSON.

Tip: Some command-line flags don't have a direct single-key equivalent — for instance, --embed-thumbnail and --recode-video must be expressed via "postprocessors". A full list of available API options can be found in the yt-dlp source, and this conversion script can help translate command-line flags to their API equivalents.

Global options

Global options form the baseline for every download. There are two ways to define them, and you can use either or both:

Inline via environment variable (YTDL_OPTIONS) — pass a JSON object directly:

environment:
  - 'YTDL_OPTIONS={"writesubtitles": true, "subtitleslangs": ["en", "de"], "updatetime": false, "writethumbnail": true}'

Via a JSON file (YTDL_OPTIONS_FILE) — mount a file into the container and point to it:

volumes:
  - /path/to/ytdl-options.json:/config/ytdl-options.json
environment:
  - YTDL_OPTIONS_FILE=/config/ytdl-options.json

where ytdl-options.json contains:

{
  "writesubtitles": true,
  "subtitleslangs": ["en", "de"],
  "updatetime": false,
  "writethumbnail": true
}

The file is monitored for changes and reloaded automatically — no container restart needed. If you use both methods and they define the same key, the file takes precedence.

Presets

Presets let you define named bundles of options that appear in the web UI under Advanced Options as "Option Presets". Users can select one or more presets per download, making it easy to apply common option combinations without editing global settings.

Like global options, presets can be set inline or via a file:

• YTDL_OPTIONS_PRESETS — a JSON object where each key is a preset name and its value is a set of yt-dlp options.
• YTDL_OPTIONS_PRESETS_FILE — path to a JSON file containing presets, monitored and reloaded on changes.

If both are used and they define a preset with the same name, the file's version takes precedence.

Example — a presets file defining three presets:

{
  "sponsorblock": {
    "postprocessors": [
      { "key": "SponsorBlock", "categories": ["sponsor", "selfpromo", "interaction"] },
      { "key": "ModifyChapters", "remove_sponsor_segments": ["sponsor", "selfpromo", "interaction"] }
    ]
  },
  "embed-subs": {
    "writesubtitles": true,
    "writeautomaticsub": true,
    "subtitleslangs": ["en", "de"],
    "postprocessors": [{ "key": "FFmpegEmbedSubtitle" }]
  },
  "limit-rate": {
    "ratelimit": 5000000
  }
}

This makes three presets available in the UI:

• sponsorblock — strips sponsor, self-promo, and interaction segments from videos.
• embed-subs — downloads English and German subtitles and embeds them into the video file.
• limit-rate — caps download speed to ~5 MB/s.

When multiple presets are selected for a download, they are applied in order. If two presets set the same option, the later one wins.

Per-download overrides

For one-off tweaks, MeTube can expose a free-text JSON field in the UI ("Custom yt-dlp Options") where users type yt-dlp options that apply only to that single download. This is disabled by default:

environment:
  - ALLOW_YTDL_OPTIONS_OVERRIDES=true

Once enabled, the field appears under Advanced Options. Any options entered there take the highest priority, overriding both global options and selected presets.

⚠️ Security note: Enabling this allows arbitrary yt-dlp API options to be supplied by anyone with access to the UI. Depending on the options used, this may enable arbitrary command execution inside the container. Enable only in trusted environments.

How the layers combine

When a download starts, the final set of yt-dlp options is built in this order:

1. Start with global options (YTDL_OPTIONS / YTDL_OPTIONS_FILE).
2. Apply each selected preset in order (later presets overwrite earlier ones for conflicting keys).
3. Apply any per-download overrides on top (overwrite everything else for conflicting keys).

MeTube always forces its own flat-extract behaviour during the initial metadata fetch (extract_flat, noplaylist, etc.); presets cannot override those keys for that phase.

Example: Suppose your global options set "writesubtitles": false, but you select a preset that sets "writesubtitles": true. Subtitles will be written for that download because the preset overrides the global setting. If you additionally enter {"writesubtitles": false} in the per-download overrides field, that value wins and subtitles will not be written.

Configuration cookbooks

The project's Wiki contains examples of useful configurations contributed by users of MeTube:

• YTDL_OPTIONS Cookbook
• OUTPUT_TEMPLATE Cookbook

🍪 Using browser cookies

In case you need to use your browser's cookies with MeTube, for example to download restricted or private videos:

• Install in your browser an extension to extract cookies:
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
• Extract the cookies you need with the extension and save/export them as cookies.txt.
• In MeTube, open Advanced Options and use the Upload Cookies button to upload the file.
• After upload, the cookie indicator should show as active.
• Use Delete Cookies in the same section to remove uploaded cookies.

🔗 Sending links to MeTube

Several integrations let you send URLs to MeTube from wherever you are, instead of pasting them into the UI. The browser-based ones make cross-origin requests, so they require CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS to be set; and if you're on an HTTPS page, your MeTube instance must be served over HTTPS too (with HTTPS=true or behind an HTTPS reverse proxy — see below).

Browser extensions allow right-clicking videos and sending them directly to MeTube. Since extensions request from their own origin, set CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=*.

• Chrome: contributed by Rpsl — install from the Chrome Webstore or from sources.
• Firefox: contributed by nanocortex — install from Firefox Addons or get sources here.

Bookmarklets send the currently open page to MeTube with one click. Add the origins of the sites where you use them to CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS, e.g. https://www.youtube.com,https://www.vimeo.com. The code (Chrome and Firefox variants, contributed by kushfest and shoonya75) is in the Bookmarklets wiki page.

iOS Shortcut: rithask created an iOS shortcut for sending URLs to MeTube from Safari's share menu; it prompts for your instance address on first use.

Raycast: dotvhs has created an extension for Raycast for adding videos to MeTube directly from Raycast.

🎵 Pairing with a music tagger

MeTube deliberately stops once the file is written — tagging and library organization belong to dedicated tools. Point one at your audio download folder (AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR):

• beets — beet import matches tracks against MusicBrainz, fixes tags, and files them into an Artist/Album library; headless and scriptable.
• MusicBrainz Picard — GUI tagger with acoustic fingerprinting.
• Lidarr — full music library manager; add the folder as an import path.

🔒 HTTPS support, and running behind a reverse proxy

It's possible to configure MeTube to listen in HTTPS mode. docker-compose example:

services:
  metube:
    image: ghcr.io/alexta69/metube
    container_name: metube
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8081:8081"
    volumes:
      - /path/to/downloads:/downloads
      - /path/to/ssl/crt:/ssl/crt.pem
      - /path/to/ssl/key:/ssl/key.pem
    environment:
      - HTTPS=true
      - CERTFILE=/ssl/crt.pem
      - KEYFILE=/ssl/key.pem

MeTube can also run behind a reverse proxy for HTTPS termination or authentication. When serving under a subdirectory, set URL_PREFIX accordingly. MeTube uses WebSocket for real-time updates, so the proxy must pass the Upgrade/Connection headers, as in this NGINX example:

location /metube/ {
        proxy_pass http://metube:8081;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
}

Apache, Caddy, and linuxserver/swag (with Authelia) examples are in the Reverse proxy configurations wiki page.

🔄 Updating yt-dlp

MeTube is powered by yt-dlp, which requires frequent updates as video sites change their layouts. A new MeTube Docker image is published automatically when a new yt-dlp stable release is available, so keep your container up to date — watchtower works well for this. To follow yt-dlp's nightly channel instead, set YTDL_NIGHTLY_UPDATE_TIME.

🔧 Troubleshooting and submitting issues

MeTube is only a UI for yt-dlp. Issues with authentication, postprocessing, permissions, or YTDL_OPTIONS should be debugged with yt-dlp directly first — once working, import those options into MeTube. To test inside the container:

docker exec -ti metube sh
cd /downloads

Common issues and their fixes are collected in the Troubleshooting FAQ on the wiki.

💡 Submitting feature requests

MeTube development relies on community contributions. If you need additional features, please submit a PR. Create an issue first to discuss the implementation before writing code — MeTube's scope is deliberately narrow: it downloads well and stops once the file is written. Features that improve the download itself are welcome; post-download file management (tag editing, metadata lookups, library organization) is out of scope regardless of implementation quality — see AGENTS.md for the full policy. Feature requests without an accompanying PR are unlikely to be fulfilled.

🛠️ Building and running locally

Make sure you have Node.js 22+ and Python 3.13 installed.

# install Angular and build the UI
cd ui
curl -fsSL https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | sh -
pnpm install
pnpm run build
# install python dependencies
cd ..
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
uv sync
# run
uv run python3 app/main.py

A Docker image can be built locally (it will build the UI too):

docker build -t metube .

Note that if you're running the server in VSCode, your downloads will go to your user's Downloads folder (this is configured via the environment in .vscode/launch.json).