ytconverter: an interactive CLI wrapped around yt-dlp

A menu in front of yt-dlp, not a downloader engine

ytconverter is a Python project that describes itself as a CLI tool for downloading YouTube videos in various formats directly from the terminal, and it is explicit about what it is built on. It builds on popular libraries, yt-dlp in particular, and frameworks within the Python ecosystem to handle video downloading, format conversion, metadata handling and more.

That framing matters for anyone deciding whether to use it. The extraction work, the format handling and the metadata come from yt-dlp and ffmpeg. The project contributes the layer above: an interactive CLI menu that the README says is easier than using commands every time, colourful terminal output that makes the options easier to pick, and a set of small conveniences around paths and file naming.

The repository structure matches that description. The ytconverter directory holds the package, standalone/ holds the install scripts for the clone-and-run route, and there is a pyproject.toml, a requirements.txt, a version.json and a .github directory. The entry point is declared as a console script named ytconverter, pointing at ytconverter.__main__:main, so once installed it is a single command.

The stated platform coverage is Termux, Windows and Linux, and the badges mark the status as stable. The audience is someone who wants to pull a video or an audio track and would rather click through a list than remember flags, including people working on an Android phone in Termux where the path handling and the missing package manager differ from a desktop.

The feature list is largely a yt-dlp list

Reading the feature list tells you what you get once the wrapper is out of the way, and most of it is capability that comes from the underlying tools.

Video downloading fetches videos directly from YouTube. Audio downloading grabs the audio of any video with a wide range of bitrate selection. Multiple video download lets you paste URLs one by one, and playlist download handles a full playlist in mp3 or mp4 format with subtitles. Subtitles are supported on their own as well.

The detail that most affects the daily experience is quality selection: the tool fetches all the available resolutions for the video and lets you choose, rather than taking whatever a default flag would give you. Metadata handling extracts and manages the metadata associated with the videos. Format conversion covers the usual targets, with MP3 and MP4 named in the list.

The output is not just files. The README describes colored terminal output whose purpose is to make the options easier to select, which is a small thing that matters a lot in an interactive menu, and it describes the auto update flag, where running ytconverter -U updates yt-dlp and ytconverter to the latest version and can detect when a new release of ytconverter appears.

None of this is exotic. It is a coherent package around a tool that already does the hard part, and the value you get is the ergonomics rather than the capability.

Path detection and title sanitization are the real local touches

Two of the smaller features are the ones that make the difference between a script that works on the developer machine and one that works on a phone.

The first is path selection. The README describes inbuilt features to detect the Downloads folder according to what platform the user is on, and separately the ability to enter a suitable path for every video. On Termux there is no conventional Downloads folder, and on Windows the path conventions differ from Linux, so a tool that hardcodes a Unix style path fails on both. Detecting the platform and letting the user override it per video is the kind of small handling that makes a downloader usable on a phone.

The second is title sanitization. The tool has an inbuilt re module implementation that converts special characters to text, avoiding errors. YouTube titles contain characters that break on some filesystems, particularly on Windows and on FAT formatted storage, and a download that produces a file you cannot open is a bad experience even if the download worked.

Both of these are the kind of detail that a wrapper exists to handle, and they are the reason a person might choose this over calling yt-dlp directly, where the same edge cases are entirely on the caller.

Three install routes, and ffmpeg is the common dependency

The requirements are short: Python 3.x, the Python libraries listed in requirements.txt, and the ffmpeg and yt-dlp binaries.

For Linux, Termux and macOS the documented route is to clone the repository and run the install script in the standalone directory.

git clone https://github.com/kaifcodec/ytconverter.git
cd ytconverter/standalone/
./install.sh # Auto-setup ffmpeg + dependencies

The script is described as auto-setup for ffmpeg and the dependencies. If it fails, the README falls back to installing ffmpeg from the system package manager, with commands for Debian and Ubuntu, Termux, Fedora and Arch.

There is also a PyPI route, which is the one to use if you do not want to track the repository.

pip3 install ytconverter
ytconverter -S

The -S flag is what the README shows to start the tool after installing, and it appears again in the Windows section. For Windows the route is the same clone, followed by install.bat, which the README says can be replaced by installing ffmpeg manually and adding it to PATH, and then the same pip3 install.

git clone https://github.com/kaifcodec/ytconverter.git
cd ytconverter/standalone/
install.bat # Or manually install ffmpeg and add it to PATH
pip3 install ytconverter

ffmpeg is the piece that cannot be skipped, and it is the usual failure point for a first run, since a Python package manager will not install it for you.

Updates come as a script and as a package flag

There are two update paths and they target different installations.

For the clone-and-run route, the repository ships an update script.

./update.sh # update to new repo, new yt-dlp version 

For the PyPI installation, the update is a flag on the tool itself.

ytconverter -U # pypi package 

The distinction is the useful part. The script updates the cloned repository and pulls a new yt-dlp version, while the flag updates the installed package. The README also mentions that the tool can auto detect whenever there is a new release of ytconverter, which is a soft form of that detection rather than a background service.

The version numbers across the repository do not fully agree, and it is worth knowing which one to look at. The badge in the README shows version 4.0.3, the recent releases list includes v4.0.3 dated 2025-12-29 and v4.0.2 dated 2025-12-28, and the pyproject.toml declares version 4.0.2.1. The repository also has a version.json file at the top level, which suggests the tool reads its version from there at run time.

For a user, the practical consequence is that the number printed by the tool may not match the number in the packaging metadata, and when reporting a problem the release tag and the printed version are the two things worth quoting.

Packaging is flit based and the dependency lists differ

The packaging is a modern Python one and worth a look if you are thinking about installing from source rather than from PyPI. The build backend is flit_core at version 3.2 or newer, and the project metadata declares the name ytconverter, the description as a terminal based YouTube video and audio downloader using yt-dlp and ffmpeg, the author as Kaif, and requires-python of 3.7 or newer.

The runtime dependencies listed in pyproject.toml are yt-dlp, ffmpeg-python, colored, fontstyle and httpx. The requirements.txt in the repository lists yt-dlp, fontstyle, colored and httpx, so ffmpeg-python appears in one list and not the other. That is the kind of small inconsistency worth knowing about if you install with pip install -r requirements.txt rather than letting the package manager resolve the metadata, because in that case the ffmpeg python helper is not pulled in.

The two small libraries, colored and fontstyle, are the source of the coloured output, and httpx is the HTTP client used for the release check. The console script entry point is ytconverter = ytconverter.__main__:main, so the command name on your shell is ytconverter and the module behind it is the package's main module.

The licence is MIT, with the LICENSE file referenced from the project metadata and present at the top of the repository.

Where the wrapper is the wrong tool

There is a clear case where this project is not the right answer, and it is scripting.

Everything in the feature list is aimed at a person at a terminal choosing from a menu. That is a deliberate choice, and it comes with a cost: an interactive menu is the wrong interface for a cron job, a batch job or a script that downloads a list of URLs unattended. For that work, yt-dlp itself has a documented command line and a Python API, and calling it directly gives you exit codes, output formats and flags that are stable and documented, without a menu layer in the way.

The second case is the one the README does not discuss. yt-dlp exists because the platforms it targets change their internals, and the extraction side of this tool is exactly as current as the yt-dlp version you happen to have. The project does update yt-dlp, and the update script and the -U flag both handle it, but the wrapper adds no independent knowledge of how YouTube works, so when a download stops working the fix is upstream and not here.

The third is legal and contractual rather than technical, and it sits outside the code entirely. What may be downloaded and what you may do with the result depends on the platform's terms and on the rights in the content, and no packaging choice changes that.

On maintenance, the last push was on 2026-04-30 and the repository is not archived, while the newest release tag is v4.0.3 from 2025-12-29, so commits are landing without a matching release. The README also asks for support, including a Bitcoin address, and asks for stars, and the author links a Telegram channel. For a tool whose value is convenience, that is a reasonable way to run it, and a reasonable thing to check before depending on it in a script.

Editorial conclusion

ytconverter fits a person at a terminal who wants to pull one video or a playlist and pick the resolution without learning yt-dlp flags, and it does not fit an unattended script, where the yt-dlp command line or its Python API is the better interface. Before installing, confirm that ffmpeg is on your path, run the standalone install script on your platform, and check that the printed version matches the release tag you intend to rely on.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. kaifcodec/ytconverter on GitHub
3. License: MIT
4. README
5. Releases