Software » MacOS Video » MacYTDL 1.31

Version 1.31 – New features and bug fixes

New features and improvements

There is a new setting “Get cookies”. This setting sends the “--cookies-from-browser” option to yt-dlp which will load cookies from the selected web browser to be used in downloads. The name of the desired web browser must be chosen from the drop down menu.
Note: Using cookies when downloading enables yt-dlp to apply credentials saved in cookies to the download. This can cause issues. For more detail see: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies.
There is now a soft limit on the number of playlist items to be downloaded, which can be changed by the user. This was previously hard coded in MacYTDL. The limit defaults to 20 and can be changed in the “Admin” dialog. A warning is issued if the proposed playlist has more items than in the set limit. The user may nonetheless continue to download the entire playlist.
The “File format” drop down can now be used to choose between audio formats: aac, m4a, mp3 and wav.
Note: Choosing a file format will result in an error if that format is not offered by the web site and a warning if the best video available is in a different format. Also, this setting does not replace the “Audio only” feature.
There is now a runtime setting for video passwords in the Main dialog. This helps with downloading private and similar videos which have a video specific password.
A new setting “Custom location” is now available for the “.netrc” file. This can be used to point yt-dlp to any text file that contains credentials to be used for downloading. The content of that file, however, must be in the “.netrc” format.
A new setting “Set merge format” has been added to the Settings dialog. This setting tells yt-dlp to merge separate download components into a container of the selected type. It overrides the default that is usually set by the serving web site. In many cases this obviates the need for a remux.
The download “Monitor” can hang if for some reason it has not closed after a long time. In testing, this has happened during recoding of the downloaded video which has taken more than 30 minutes. It seems more likely to hang if the Mac goes into Sleep mode. To try to prevent such hangs, a timer has been added to the Monitor so that it stops if it is still running after 25 minutes. The downloading and any required conversion, however, continue until complete.
Private videos in playlists are now automatically skipped during parallel downloads. Nonetheless, a warning is still issued before download commences.
The download Monitor dialog for playlists downloaded in parallel now has the name of the playlist.
Text entered in a number of places in the “Settings” and “Admin” dialogs is now retained when the related setting is switched off.
Downloads of playlists now commence much more quickly. This will be especially apparent for playlists with many items. Download speed, however, is unchanged.
URLs pasted into the MacYTDL text box which are surround by double quotes or smart quotes will no longer have to be corrected by the user.
The DMG image file in which MacYTDL is distributed is now code signed and notarised.
Bug fixes

Corrections made following a mistake when completing the “Admin” and “Settings” dialogs are now saved.
It is no longer possible to run MacYTDL from within the disk image file (DMG). MacYTDL is best run from the “Applications” folder (which can be seen by all users).
Choosing episodes to download from ABC iView in Australia now works correctly when invoked from the MacYTDL Service. The “:” separator now works whereas previously it was removed from the command sent to yt-dlp and so the wrong episodes were downloaded.
For users on of macOS prior to version 10.15, the option to update yt-dlp is only available if they have not updated to yt-dlp version 2025.08.11.
Note: yt-dlp has been significantly improved since August 2025. That 2025.08.11 version will become increasingly unable to function as web sites change.
The dialog presented during auto-checking yt-dlp on startup has been redrafted for users of the nightly version as there is no check that the nightly version is more up-to-date than the version installed.
The facility to update yt-dlp now installs the stable version if user has selected stable in the Utilities dialog. Previously, the nightly version was wrongly installed.
MacYTDL will now issue a warning for playlists containing more than set in the soft limit (see above) if downloads are to be in parallel.
yt-dlp no longer throws an error during the simulate stage if the Credentials for download dialog is skipped.
Diagonal slashes are now replaced by long hyphens in log file names. This avoids a technical issue with macOS.
Entries are now deleted from the batch file when “Clear completed URLs from batch file” is on, downloads are in parallel and there were no errors during the download.
Video details added to batch will not be corrupted by warnings found during the simulation checks.
A small change has been made to text in the “About MacYTDL” box.
An incomplete dialog shown when the offer to update FFmpeg was cancelled is now correct.
ABC iView Australia live streams are now recognised.
Log file names now have an underscore before the am/pm marker.
The “Show settings before download” dialog now shows the Deno version and .netrc location.
New Known Issues

It can take a long time for yt-dlp to be installed and also when switching from the nightly version to stable version. The cause is not known.
Workaround: Please, be patient. Research is continuing on why this is happening.
The SBS Chooser is still not working. Much more work has been done but SBS recently changed their web page structure yet again breaking the current method for parsing the page source.
Workaround: Please, be patient. This should be fixed in a future version of MacYTDL. In the meantime, only download individual episodes from SBS OnDemand.
MacYTDL might crash with the error: “The variable branch_execution is not defined.” I have worked hard on finding these errors and they have not occurred in testing. Nonetheless, they might occur for some users.
Workaround: Reopen MacYTDL and continue with the desired function. Send an email about the error to: macytdl@gmail.com.
The “QT compatible” and “recode video” features operate even when the downloaded video is already in the desired format.
Workaround: There isn’t one. Just wait for the conversion process to finish.
Sometimes, alerts are not shown when updating/installing components and at other times.
Workaround: There isn’t one. This might be fixed in a future version of MacYTDL which will include a more recent version of the Alerter tool. However, that will exclude users on old versions of macOS.
Using “Get formats list” on a 10 Australia video will crash MacYTDL. This is because Channel 10 are testing the provision of 1080p videos for download and the format name is currently “upgrade-attempt-1080p”. Note that the 1080p videos do download.
Workaround: There isn’t one. Hopefully, Channel 10 finalise this change before long and revert to the standard format names. If necessary, a fix will be made in the next version of MacYTDL to get around this glitch.
“Delete partially downloaded files” usually doesn’t delete those files which contain special characters when part of a parallel download process.
Workaround: Manually delete those files. Work is continuing on a fix.

• Download individual videos and playlists.
• Can download many videos at one time – tested up to 5 concurrent downloads.
• Works with YouTube, ITV, many video sites and Australian broadcasters: ABC iView, SBS On Demand, 7Plus, TenPlay, 9Now.
• Can cancel individual downloads.
• Options for download file format; remuxing; download a text description of the video; downloading and embedding subtitles, thumbnail images and metadata; downloading or extracting audio-only files.
• Downloads chosen episodes from ABC iView show pages.
• Batch downloads.
• Multiple shows can be downloaded separately (in parallel) or in one process (sequentially).
• Optional macOS Service for use in web browsers which copies the current URL, switches to MacYTDL and sets name of the video file to be downloaded.
• All components downloaded and installed by MacYTDL, which can be controlled by the user. Component updates available in the app.
• A separate log file is retained for each download enabling problem solving if a download fails.
• Has a built-in uninstaller which moves all components to Trash.

Instructions

• Download and open the DMG file.
• Read the Help file.
• Click and drag MacYTDL to any location - it's best to use the Applications folder.
• Run MacYTDL.
• Click on "Yes" to install components and create a preferences folder when asked.
• Wait.
• When main UI is displayed copy a video URL in your web browser, paste into the dialog and click on "Download".