yank

A terminal UI for downloading video with yt-dlp.

Paste a URL, pick a format from a short list, watch a progress bar, get the path of the file that landed on disk.

brew install amornnan19/tap/yank

Illustration, not a screen recording: a scripted replay of yank's screens and motion. The video, sizes and speeds are made up.

What it does

Seven rows, not a hundred
A full yt-dlp extraction can list a hundred-odd formats. yank reduces them to at most seven: up to six video heights plus one mp3 audio row.
Sensible codec choice
Within a height it prefers avc1/h264, which plays everywhere, unless the vp9/av01 stream is at least 25% smaller.
yt-dlp fetched for you
Uses yt-dlp from your PATH if present, and never updates that copy. Otherwise it downloads the release asset and verifies it against the SHA-256 in the release's SHA2-256SUMS. Once a day, in the background, it checks for a newer release, verifies it the same way, and switches to it on the next launch that finds no other yank window using the old one.
ffmpeg is optional
Without ffmpeg you get fewer rows, only formats that already carry video and audio, and the picker says why. A smaller menu, not a failure.
Progress, then a path
Watch a progress bar while it downloads. The done screen tells you where the file landed: ~/Downloads.

Pick a format

yank
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

A walk through the old harbour at dusk

  1. 2160p       mp4  ~1.5 GB
  2. 1440p       mp4  ~747 MB
▸ 3. 1080p       mp4  ~407 MB                                               
  4. 720p        mp4  ~206 MB
  5. 480p        mp4   ~99 MB
  6. 360p        mp4   ~61 MB
  7. audio only  mp3   ~13 MB

↑↓ jk  move · 1-9  jump · enter  download · esc  back

Illustration, not a screenshot. Titles, formats and sizes vary by video.

Install & use

yank is a single static binary. It needs neither Go nor yt-dlp at runtime: it fetches and updates its own yt-dlp.

Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew install amornnan19/tap/yank

ffmpeg is optional and not installed with yank; brew install ffmpeg adds the merged and mp3 rows to the format picker.

Download a binary

Each release carries a yank_<version>_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz for darwin and linux on amd64 and arm64, and a checksums.txt with their SHA-256:

$
$
$

shasum -a 256 -c checksums.txt --ignore-missing
tar -xzf yank_<version>_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz yank
./yank --version

Then put the yank binary somewhere on your PATH.

macOS Gatekeeper. The binaries are not signed or notarized, so macOS quarantines one downloaded by a browser and refuses to run it. Clear the flag once:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./yank

Homebrew installs are not affected.

With Go

Go 1.27.1 or newer is required. The binary lands in go env GOBIN or $(go env GOPATH)/bin, which must be on your PATH.

go install github.com/amornnan19/yank/cmd/yank@latest

Use

$ yank                   # start on the input screen, ready for a pasted URL
$ yank <url>             # start with that URL
$ yank --update          # update the cached yt-dlp now; no terminal UI needed
$ YANK_NO_UPDATE=1 yank  # turn the daily background check off

enter: fetch the URL; in the picker, download the selected row; on the done screen, start another
↑ ↓ / j k: move the cursor in the picker
1–9: jump to a row without starting it
esc: cancel a fetch or download and go back
q: quit from the done screen
ctrl+c: quit from anywhere