Pglu

Download YouTube + Instagram videos, audio, images — any quality, with full metadata (title, description, tags, thumbnail). One engine, three ways to use it:

	Platform	What you get
📱	Android	A native .apk you sideload on your phone.
🪟	Windows	A double-clickable .exe (Kivy desktop GUI or local web dashboard).
🌐	Web dashboard	Run the server on your PC, use it from any browser — including your phone on the same Wi-Fi.

Built with yt-dlp + instaloader under the hood, Kivy for the native UI, FastAPI for the web dashboard.

Status: v0.1.0. The Android APK and Windows .exe are both produced automatically by the GitHub Actions workflow on every push.

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Download

Latest builds are attached to the Releases page.

File	Use for	Size
pglu-<version>-arm64-v8a_armeabi-v7a-debug.apk	Android phones	~30 MB
Pglu-Windows.zip	Windows 10/11 (64-bit)	~205 MB

No release yet? It will appear after the first successful Actions run. You can also grab the latest APK from the Actions tab → click the most recent green run → scroll to Artifacts → download pglu-debug-apk.

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Install — Android

1. Download the .apk to your phone (Drive, email, USB, whatever).
2. Tap the .apk file in your Files app. Android will ask:
   • "For your security, your phone is not allowed to install unknown apps from this source." → tap Settings → enable Allow from this source (one-time, per app).
3. Tap Install → Open when it's done.
4. On first launch, accept the storage permission prompt.

Downloads land in /sdcard/Download/Pglu/ — open the Files app or Gallery to find them. Each download includes the media file, a JPG thumbnail, and a .json sidecar with the full metadata (title, description, tags, view count, etc.).

Using the Android app

1. Copy a YouTube or Instagram link in any app (browser, YouTube app, Instagram).
2. Open Pglu → tap Paste → Fetch info.
3. Pick a quality from the dropdown (4K, 1080p, 720p, audio-only MP3, etc.).
4. Tap Download → wait for the progress bar → done.

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Install — Windows

1. Download Pglu-Windows.zip from the Releases page.

2. Right-click → Extract All anywhere (Desktop, Documents, USB stick).

3. Open the extracted folder — you'll see three shortcuts:

   Shortcut	What it does
   Pglu - Desktop.bat	Opens the native GUI (looks like the Android app).
   Pglu - Web Dashboard.bat	Starts a server on this PC. Open http://127.0.0.1:8765 in any browser.
   Pglu - Web Dashboard (LAN).bat	Same, but also accessible from your phone on the same Wi-Fi.

4. Double-click whichever you want.

5. The first time you run the LAN version, Windows Firewall will pop up — click Allow access.

ffmpeg is bundled inside the zip, so all qualities (including 4K with merged audio) work out of the box. No Python install needed.

Downloads land in C:\Users\<You>\Downloads\Pglu\.

Using the web dashboard from your phone

1. Run Pglu - Web Dashboard (LAN).bat on your PC.
2. Open PowerShell on your PC, type ipconfig, look for the IPv4 Address under your Wi-Fi adapter (e.g. 192.168.1.42).
3. On your phone (same Wi-Fi network), open any browser → go to http://192.168.1.42:8765.
4. Paste a URL, pick quality, hit Download. The file saves on your PC. Tap the Save button next to it in "My downloads" to also copy it to your phone.

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What it can download

From YouTube

• Videos at any resolution offered (144p → 4K → 8K, depending on the source)
• Audio-only as MP3 (192 kbps)
• Thumbnails as JPG
• Full metadata: title, description, tags, channel, duration, view/like count, upload date

From Instagram

• Reels (video)
• Posts (single image or carousel of multiple images/videos)
• IGTV
• Caption, hashtags, mentions, upload date, like count

Currently supports public Instagram content (no login required). Private accounts and stories need session cookies — planned for v0.2.

Everywhere

• A .json sidecar is written next to every download containing the full metadata as structured data — useful if you want to script over your library later.

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Build it yourself

Anyone can build the Windows .exe and the Android APK from source.

Prerequisites

• For Windows: Python 3.12, ffmpeg on PATH, pip install -r requirements.txt kivy pyinstaller.
• For Android: A Linux environment (WSL on Windows works), python3, openjdk-17, buildozer, cython==0.29.36. See BUILD_APK.md for the WSL setup script.
• For just the engine / CLI: Any Python 3.9+, pip install -r requirements.txt.

Quick commands

# Run from source — desktop GUI
py -3.12 main.py

# Run from source — web dashboard
py -3.12 main.py --web                      # localhost only
py -3.12 main.py --web --host 0.0.0.0       # accessible from your LAN

# Run from source — CLI (engine smoke test)
python -m app.cli info "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=..."
python -m app.cli download "<url>" --out=downloads          # best quality
python -m app.cli download "<url>" --audio --out=downloads  # MP3
python -m app.cli download "<url>" --format=137 --out=downloads  # specific format

# Build Windows .exe (Python 3.12 only)
py -3.12 -m PyInstaller pglu.spec
# .exe lands at dist/Pglu/Pglu.exe — copy ffmpeg.exe + ffprobe.exe into dist/Pglu/_internal/ to bundle it.

# Build Android APK (Linux/WSL only)
bash scripts/setup_wsl.sh        # one-time setup
bash scripts/build_apk.sh        # produces bin/pglu-*.apk

Project layout

app/
├── engine/      # yt-dlp + instaloader wrappers (the brains)
│   ├── common.py        # MediaInfo, MediaFormat, ProgressEvent dataclasses
│   ├── youtube.py       # YouTubeEngine — wraps yt-dlp
│   └── instagram.py     # InstagramEngine — wraps instaloader
├── ui/          # Kivy desktop UI (also the basis for the Android APK)
│   ├── main.py
│   ├── app.kv
│   └── storage.py
├── web/         # FastAPI server + single-page HTML dashboard
│   ├── server.py
│   └── static/index.html
└── cli.py       # Headless CLI

main.py                # Entry point. Pass --web for the dashboard.
pglu.spec              # PyInstaller config for the Windows .exe
buildozer.spec         # Buildozer config for the Android APK
.github/workflows/     # Cloud CI that builds the APK on every push

Web dashboard API

If you want to script against the server:

Method	Path	What
GET	/	Dashboard HTML
POST	/api/info	Body: {"url": "..."} → returns MediaInfo JSON (formats, metadata, thumbnail).
POST	/api/download	Body: {"url": "...", "format_id": "...", "audio_only": false} → returns {"job_id": "..."}.
GET	/api/progress/{job_id}	Server-Sent Events stream: start, progress (%, speed, ETA), done, error.
GET	/api/downloads	List of saved files.
GET	/api/file?rel=<path>	Stream a saved file for browser download.

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FAQ

Q: Is this legal? Pglu is a thin wrapper around yt-dlp and instaloader — open-source tools widely used for personal offline use, accessibility, and archival. YouTube's and Instagram's Terms of Service forbid using third-party downloaders for redistribution of copyrighted content. Use this for personal viewing of content you have a right to access. Don't redistribute. Don't pirate. The maintainer accepts no responsibility for misuse.

Q: Why is the Windows zip 200 MB? Most of it is ffmpeg.exe + ffprobe.exe (~430 MB uncompressed, ~200 MB zipped). Bundling them means any quality works out of the box — no separate ffmpeg install. If you already have ffmpeg on PATH, delete _internal/ffmpeg.exe and _internal/ffprobe.exe and the app falls back to the system one.

Q: Why does the Android APK not have ffmpeg? Android packages ARM64 binaries and ffmpeg for Android is a separate ~80 MB blob. Pglu v0.1 ships without it, which means YouTube formats above 720p that need merging won't work yet — single-stream formats (incl. 720p combined, audio-only MP3) work fine. ffmpeg-for-Android bundling is planned for v0.2.

Q: YouTube says "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot." YouTube's rate limit for the IP making the request. Wait 10-15 minutes, or use a different URL first. On a real phone using normal home Wi-Fi this is rare.

Q: Instagram downloads fail with a connection error. Check whether your DNS or hosts file blocks instagram.com. Some adblockers and parental-control filters block it.

Q: Can I run the web dashboard 24/7 as a home media server? Yes — python main.py --web --host 0.0.0.0. Put it behind a reverse proxy (Caddy, nginx) if you want HTTPS and a domain name.

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Contributing

PRs welcome. Suggested directions:

• Instagram login flow (Stories, private accounts)
• ffmpeg-for-Android bundling
• Twitter/X, TikTok, SoundCloud support (yt-dlp already supports them — just thread them through the engine layer)
• Concurrent/queued downloads in the UI
• Dark/light theme toggle on the web dashboard

Open an issue first for anything large.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

The bundled ffmpeg.exe / ffprobe.exe binaries (in the Windows release zip) are distributed under their own LGPL/GPL terms; full license text is in _internal/LICENSE.* inside the zip.