Download your favourite YouTube videos
- ID
- 43735
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 05 Nov 2026, 9:00 PM
- Fetched
- 06 Nov 2026, 6:18 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://criminallyvulgar.dev/you-should-absolutely-download-your-favourite-youtube-videos/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 6.0
- Created
- 06 Nov 2026, 6:19 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
A blog post arguing you should archive YouTube videos you care about, noting that even your own "liked videos" playlist has entries that quietly disappear (YouTube requires you to toggle a setting just to see unavailable ones). The author's concrete stack is yt-dlp (or a wrapper) plus a bulk drive or NAS for most people, and for a heavier case — hundreds of videos across dozens of playlists, played on a TV via Jellyfin — ytdl-sub, described as the only yt-dlp wrapper that properly preserved playlist structure, configured through YAML files and shipped in a self-hosted docker-compose form with a browser VS Code IDE. The Jellyfin side is a Library set to TV Shows mode named "YouTube" with all metadata scrapers off and file data preferred over filenames, with some videos tagged as "Documentaries" instead.
Why it matters
If your README, course notes, onboarding docs or blog posts embed YouTube links, some of those are already dead — the author's test is to open your liked-videos playlist and count the gaps. yt-dlp plus a NAS folder is the low-effort fix; only reach for ytdl-sub's YAML config if you actually need to keep dozens of playlists organised and served to a TV through Jellyfin. For anyone recording or curating Malaysian meetup talks, tutorials or creator content, this is the same decision: a local copy is the only copy you control.
Discussion angle
Ask everyone to open one project's docs and count how many embedded YouTube links still resolve — then debate whether archiving is worth the storage versus just replacing videos with text or self-hosted clips.