←back to thread

The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

(windowsread.me)
439 points Leftium | 2 comments | 19 Sep 25 12:20 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
peteforde ◴[20 Sep 25 01:23 UTC] No.45308944[source]▶
One of the things that drives me crazy about YouTube is that if a video gets taken down, it shows up as a "This video is no longer available" with no further metadata. I am far, far more uptight about no knowing which video was removed than I am about the fact that it is no longer available.

I have put serious thought into creating a tool that would automatically yt-dlp every video I open to a giant hard drive and append a simple index with the title, channel, thumbnail and date.

In general, I think people are way too casual about media of all kinds silently disappearing when you're not looking.

replies(7): >>45309263 #>>45309876 #>>45311419 #>>45311593 #>>45311732 #>>45312005 #>>45312465 #
1. youniverse ◴[20 Sep 25 03:00 UTC] No.45309876[source]▶
Agreed, I can't describe the sadness that some of my most treasured nostalgic videos were lost before I knew about yt-dlp, and I can't find out what their titles even were. For example on spotify when music gets removed, if it's in your playlist it just shows it greyed out and unplayable.

Someone at google please give us the ability to see titles!

replies(1): >>45311385 #
2. shaky-carrousel ◴[20 Sep 25 07:58 UTC] No.45311385[source]▶
Off the top of my head, did you try to access the URLs via archive.org? That way, at least you'll get the titles.