Media Pull

Download YouTube videos in up to 4K quality with automatic ad & sponsor removal.

A native macOS desktop app built with Tauri, powered by yt-dlp and ffmpeg.

Features

Video Downloads Up to 4K resolution — 2160p, 1440p, 1080p, 720p, or 480p Audio-only mode — extract audio as high-quality M4A Smart format selection — best codec per resolution (H.264, VP9, AV1) GPU encoding — Apple VideoToolbox with automatic CPU fallback	SponsorBlock Integration Automatic sponsor removal — strips ads, intros, outros, and filler Community-powered — 8 configurable segment categories Smart auto-disable — skips SponsorBlock when downloading chapters
Chapter Downloads Split by chapter — download individual chapters as separate files Instant splitting — stream copy, no re-encoding Organized output — saves to Video Title/01 - Chapter Name.mp4	Playlist Downloads Batch download — entire playlists sequentially Selective downloading — pick which videos to include Resilient — continues to next video on failure Cancellable — stop after the current video finishes

Plus: trim/clip support, cookie authentication for age-restricted content, configurable bitrate encoding, searchable download history, one-click yt-dlp updates, real-time progress with speed & ETA, detailed activity logs, and keyboard shortcuts.

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Screenshots

_{Clean, minimal interface — paste a URL and hit Analyze}

_{Pick your quality, toggle SponsorBlock, enable subtitles or trim — then download}

_{Fine-tune which sponsor segments to remove with 8 community-powered categories}

More screenshots

_{Configure cookies, encoding, output directory, and advanced options}

_{Full activity log with export capability for debugging}

_{Built-in help with getting started guide, troubleshooting, and keyboard shortcuts}

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Installation

Download

Grab the latest .dmg from the Releases page.

1. Open the .dmg file
2. Drag Media Pull to your Applications folder
3. On first launch, right-click the app and select Open (macOS Gatekeeper)

Requirements

Dependency	Details
macOS 11+	Big Sur or later (Apple Silicon native)
yt-dlp	brew install yt-dlp or managed by the app
ffmpeg	brew install ffmpeg or bundled
Python 3.9+	Included with macOS

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How It Works

Media Pull uses a multi-stage pipeline for maximum quality:

Analyze  →  Download Video  →  Download Audio  →  Merge & Encode  →  SponsorBlock  →  Done
               (yt-dlp)          (yt-dlp)         (ffmpeg/GPU)       (optional)

1. Analyze — fetches video metadata, available formats, chapters, and thumbnail
2. Download — downloads separate video and audio streams at the highest available quality
3. Encode — merges streams into a single MP4 using hardware-accelerated H.264 encoding
4. SponsorBlock — queries the SponsorBlock API and removes matched segments via ffmpeg
5. Chapters (optional) — splits the encoded file into individual chapter files using stream copy

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Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              Frontend (HTML/CSS/JS)          │
│   index.html + src/main.js + components/    │
└──────────────┬───────────────────────────────┘
               │  Tauri invoke() / listen()
┌──────────────▼───────────────────────────────┐
│              Rust Backend (Tauri v2)         │
│   src-tauri/src/commands/*.rs               │
│   IPC bridge, process management            │
└──────────────┬───────────────────────────────┘
               │  stdin/stdout JSON lines
┌──────────────▼───────────────────────────────┐
│              Python Modules                  │
│   python/download.py  — download pipeline   │
│   python/analyze.py   — video/playlist info │
│   python/convert.py   — ffmpeg encoding     │
│   python/chapters.py  — chapter splitting   │
│   python/sponsorblock.py — segment removal  │
│   python/cookies.py   — browser cookie mgmt │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• Frontend — vanilla HTML/CSS/JS, no framework, no build step
• Rust — Tauri v2 shell, manages Python subprocesses, emits events to frontend
• Python — each module writes JSON lines to stdout, parsed by Rust in real-time

Building from Source

# Prerequisites
brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg node rust

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/bytePatrol/MediaPull.git
cd MediaPull

# Install JS dependencies
npm install

# Development (hot-reload)
npx tauri dev

# Production build
npm run tauri:build

The built app will be at src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/Media Pull.app.

Configuration

Settings are stored in ~/.config/media-pull/:

File	Purpose
config.json	Output directory and app config
settings.json	Cookies, SponsorBlock, encoding preferences
history.json	Download history

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License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

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Built with Tauri + yt-dlp + ffmpeg