A simple script to download videos/podcasts from YouTube or RSS feeds.

Behind the scene it uses yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) and Python's feedparser.

Connect the home interface to download files to the home directory (optional)

sudo snap connect podcast-dl-gael:home

YouTube videos (or any other services supported by yt-dlp)

• List your YouTube video or playlist URLs here (one URL per line)

sudo vi /var/snap/podcast-dl-gael/common/podcast-dl/youtube-dl.conf.d/youtube-dl.url

# Jay Swanson
https://www.youtube.com/user/Cadelfwch/videos

# SmarterEveryDay
https://www.youtube.com/user/destinws2/videos

• Configure yt-dlp here

sudo vi /var/snap/podcast-dl-gael/common/podcast-dl/youtube-dl.conf.d/youtube-dl.conf

RSS feeds

• List your RSS feeds here (one RSS feed per line)

sudo vi /var/snap/podcast-dl-gael/common/podcast-dl/rss-dl.conf.d/rss-dl.url

# Format: URL [DIRECTORY]
# The optional DIRECTORY allows you to the save your files in a specific directory

# Late Night Linux - All Episodes Feed
https://latenightlinux.com/feeds/ /root/storage/podcasts/LateNightLinux

Scheduled downloads

• By default, new files are downloaded here everyday at 6am

ls -lh /var/snap/podcast-dl-gael/common/podcast-dl/podcasts/

Manually scheduling or downloading files

To download files at a different time, use a systemd timer (or equivalent) to run this command

sudo podcast-dl-gael.download-now

This command can also be run from the command line to download files manually.

Skip YouTube videos

To mark videos as already downloaded, run the youtube-dl-skip-download command. Depending on the number of videos, this could take a long time.

If you don't want to watch (again) the 1300+ first vlogs of Jay Swanson but would like to download the future ones, run this command

sudo podcast-dl-gael.youtube-dl-skip-download https://www.youtube.com/user/Cadelfwch/videos

Skip RSS feeds

To mark RSS feeds as already downloaded, run the rss-skip-download command.

If you don't want to listen (again) to all the Late Night Linux shows but would like to download the future ones, run this command

sudo podcast-dl-gael.rss-skip-download https://latenightlinux.com/feeds/

Revisions

2024-11-06

• podcast-dl-gael will now use core24 as most users are on Ubuntu 24.04

2024-10-05

• Add a fake user agent to workaround annoying podcast hosting sites (I'm looking at you podcastics.com)

2024-09-21

• Bundle ffmpeg, it was previously dropped by mistake
• Fix defaults for yt-dlp
• Fix logic

2024-09-17

• New build to resolve CVE-2024-8096/USN-7012-1

2024-08-06

• New build to resolve CVE-2024-7264/USN-6944-1

2024-05-22

• New build to resolve CVE-2024-3651/USN-6780-1

2024-04-26

• New build to resolve CVE-2024-28182/USN-6754-1

2024-03-28

• New build to resolve CVE-2024-2398/USN-6718-1

2024-01-31

• New build to resolve CVE-2023-2953/USN-6616-1

2023-10-12

• New build to resolve CVE-2023-38545/CVE-2023-38546/USN-6429-1

2023-10-07

• Back to stable releases of yt-dlp

2023-09-06

• v3.0 available on amd64, arm64 & armhf
• yt-dlp updated to nightly to workaround Unable to extract initial state (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/7624)
• New commands (youtube-dl-skip-download & rss-skip-download) to skip videos or RSS feeds
• Manual scheduling of downloads using the download-now command

2023-02-28

• New build to resolve CVE-2023-23914/CVE-2023-23915/CVE-2023-23916/USN-5891-1
• FFmpeg has been provided to allow transcoding

2023-02-23

• Moving away from youtube-dl to yt-dlp following https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/31530
• FFmpeg is not provided yet
• This may break your config, ajust /var/snap/podcast-dl-gael/common/podcast-dl/youtube-dl.conf.d/youtube-dl.conf accordingly

2022-04-01

• v2.0 available on amd64, arm64 & armhf
• Switched to Python's feedparser for reliability

2021-03-20

• Initial release