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Complete Version history / Release notes / Changelog / What's New for MacYTDL
Version 1.26.1 – Bug fixes
This release has bug fixes and Spanish language improvements:
Fixed the crash when “Check yt-dlp version on startup” is turned on.
Added some Spanish translations that were missing and improved others – many thanks to Michel.
Default settings should be translated correctly when switching between English and other languages then back again.
The “Utilities” dialog should no longer trim longer text labels in non-English languages.
Simplified wording of the update YT-DLP facility in “Utilities”.
Version 1.26 – New features, options and bug fixes
Version 1.26 has a new formats listing dialog, can download multiple files in parallel and has a number of new options.
The names of log files now start with “ytdl_log-” instead of “youtube-dl_log-”. MacYTDL no longer installs youtube-dl which has not been updated since December 2021.
The “Settings” dialog has been split into two separate dialogs. The “Settings” dialog continues to handle settings which relate more to particular downloads. The second dialog is called “Admin” and handles settings which are more related to ongoing functions and control over how MacYTDL operates. Previously the “Settings” dialog could extend below the bottom of the screen on low resolution screens thus preventing new settings being added. This split enables more new settings to be added to MacYTDL.
It is now possible to download multiple videos in parallel. This can speed up downloads when individual downloads do not use all the available bandwidth. Parallel downloads are available for multiple URLs, playlists and batches.
A setting has been added to restrict resolution of downloaded videos. YT-DLP defaults to the best resolution available. This setting sets a maximum resolution to be downloaded which can make watching those videos more viable on slow/old Macs or low resolution screens.
A setting has been added to disable use of “.part” files. YT-DLP can use “.part” files during a download to indicate more clearly that the download is not complete. But, those files are not usually immediately playable.
A new setting to choose whether partially downloaded files should be deleted. If “part” file names are not used, however, a playable partially downloaded file is retained.
A “Suppress warnings” setting is now available which causes YT-DLP to ignore all warnings.
There is now a setting to discard or keep a URL after download. Previously MacYTDL would always discard URLs after download has started. The default is now to keep URLs available in Main dialog text box.
The “Formats List” dialog has been redesigned and is now scrollable on low resolution screens instead of extending below the bottom of the screen. Also, the list displays more quickly if the user needs to return to the dialog e.g. after pressing “Download” without selecting a format. The new dialog is formed with the Myriad Tables Lib by Shane Stanley.
Note: This function is problematic. If MacYTDL crashes, it can be worth trying the same URL again.
The “Formats List” now reports average bitrate. This should help distinguish more formats.
The “Formats List” no longer crashes:
if a Return is pressed on the warning issued when no formats have been selected; and
on videos from Dailymotion and 9Now.
Automatic downloads should work more often. It turns out that it has not worked much since version 1.23 of MacYTDL.
Note: I’ve not been to find a cure for the faults in this function and so it may result in an error.
Embedding subtitles no longer require specific file format or remux settings. However, some combinations will fail, depending on the codecs contained by the source download.
Downloading a batch now respects the user’s subtitle settings.
Adding two or more URLs to a batch should now work.
Installing a YT-DLP nightly build no longer crashes MacYTDL if the credentials dialog is cancelled.
The Monitor and Adviser dialogs should now show the playlist name when MacYTDL is downloading a playlist.
The Adviser dialog should play the downloaded file, if requested, more reliably.
Pressing the “Esc” key no longer closes the Monitor dialog and cancels a download. The only way to cancel a download is to click on the “Stop” or “Pause” buttons. Previously, a download could be accidentally cancelled by pressing the “Esc” key.
Code which previously worked around problems with downloading from SBS Australia has been removed. The workarounds are no longer needed.
MacYTDL no longer reports old stable YT-DLP builds as being more recent than current nightly builds.
Version 1.25 – One new feature and quite a lot of bug fixes
This release includes a facility to install “nightly” releases of YT-DLP. The nightly builds provide quick access to the latest fixes and changes. The installed version can be switched to the latest stable release as desired. All the other changes in this release are bug fixes.
Users can now install “nightly” releases of YT-DLP using the Utilities dialog. The nightly releases are the most up-to-date available and include all changes made to YT-DLP to that point. There can be a number of nightly builds each week.
The gap between the title bar and window content of all windows has been reduced to provide some more screen real estate.
The MacYTDL Service now prefers the URL of the active web browser window to any URL stored in the Clipboard. Previously, URLs remaining in Clipboard from earlier actions could be preferred even though they were invalid and/or did not relate to any video download.
The automatic updates to the MacYTDL Service will now function. There were bugs in the update code which prevented the Service from being updated.
Automatic downloads with subtitles should now work instead of causing an error.
“Get formats list” should now work with YouTube, ABC iView and SBS OnDemand videos instead of crashing.
Utilities dialog should be wide enough to show all contents.
Utilities dialog should show the actual installed YT-DLP version number instead of an old version.
MacYTDL should now record live streams from SBS Australia.
Attempting an auto-download when download folder not available should no longer cause a crash.
It’s now more likely that the MacYTDL Service will be removed from the Services menu when the Service is removed using the Utilities dialog.
All kinds of downloads from SBS Australia should now work – enabled by fixes to YT-DLP.
The SBS “Chooser” should now work again – code was searching for the wrong text.
The “Adviser” dialog should show more reliably.
Text in the “Monitor” dialog is less likely to overlap with the MacYTDL logo.
Version 1.24.1 – Bug fix release
This release is mainly to attend to a fatal bug in the Homebrew code. MacYTDL should now respect a Homebrew install if it pre-dates a MacYTDL install. Problems with SBS downloads and rare errors with the auto-download function remain. Changes in this release include:
Should no longer crash when Homebrew users first start MacYTDL.
Should no longer crash if downloads folder is not available during an auto download.
Should no longer crash if user chooses to return the “Main” on a warning dialog during an auto download.
Minor change to code which checks for Homebrew installs of YT-DLP on Intel Macs.
The “Show settings before download” dialog has been updated to include recently added settings.
A dialog is shown asking if the cookies location should be emptied if the “Use cookies” setting is turned off.
Improved position and reduced size of the MacYTDL logo in the “Monitor” progress dialog.
Simulate stage now respects “Use custom settings” setting for playlists.
Version 1.24 – New features and bug fixes
Release 1.24 adds a few new features and, as usual, attempts to deal with bugs:
All users can now use YT-DLP.
Users on macOS 10.13 and 10.14 no longer need to use the two dylib files in order to use YT-DLP.
Users currently using youtube-dl can continue to do so or switch to YT-DLP – highly recommended.
New users will be given YT-DLP by default.
Homebrew and MacPorts installs of YT-DLP, FFmpeg and FFprobe will be used if MacYTDL installs are not in place.
A new “Formats chooser” provides the option of choosing which file formats are to be downloaded.
Note that the layout of the dialog is a work-in-progress and may not be ideal for all cases.
MacYTDL should not crash on showing the Utilities dialog after the first installation.
Code has been added to help diagnose “end of file” errors which currently cannot be reliably reproduced.
Preparing to download playlists for which playlist item specifications have been entered in “Use custom settings” should be faster.
Updating YT-DLP should work again. The layout of the YT-DLP releases page was changed causing the macOS releases to be hidden.
MacYTDL should no longer crash when SBS Australia changes URLs.
A custom file name template than is empty or a single space character will cause an error.
Downloads from SBS OnDemand in Australia should generally work. This has been achieved by a workaround which may be broken by a future release of YT-DLP.
Items in the “Settings” dialog have been squeezed closer together to ensure the dialog is fully visible on low resolution screens.
MacYTDL no longer crashes if the preferences plist file is deleted while MacYTDL is open.
“Check for yt-dlp update” in “Utilities” now checks the version number of the currently installed YT-DLP instead of using the version number stored in the MacYTDL.plist file.
On multi-user setups, this should ensure every user has the same version number stored in MacYTDL.plist.
The “Check for FFmpeg update” function in “Utilities” now checks the installed FFprobe version as well as the FFmpeg version. A full update is done if either are out-of-date.
Version 1.23.1 – Bug fixes
Release 1.23.1 fixes a few critical bugs that were entirely developer error:
MacYTDL should now trap errors caused by URLs from which videos cannot be downloaded.
The delay before download commences should be shorter – code which checks for live streams has been made faster by combining with the simulate stage.
Batch functions should now be working normally. Bug was a missing variable in all the calls to batch functions.
The file names of certain downloads from ABC, ITV and 7Plus will no longer start with “NA-”.
The facility for playing completed live streams should be working again.
Version 1.23 – New settings, Pause/Resume & yet more bug fixes Latest
Release 1.23 adds some new features and has work on quite a number of bugs:
Added a “Pause/Resume” function to the “Monitor” dialog. A download can be resumed for as long as the Monitor dialog is displayed.
Added a “Force overwrite” setting. By default, MacYTDL will not delete an existing download file. This setting forces MacYTDL to look for an existing file and if found, offers to delete the file.
Added a “QT compatible video” setting which converts downloaded video into a format which can be shown in Quicktime Player – NOTE: the re-encoding can take a very long time.
MacYTDL should no longer crash when checking playlists.
Change naming of log files from “response” to “log”.
Changed shortcut for “Cancel” from [command-c] to [command-.]. This enables [command‑c] to be used to copy text in dialogs.
There should no longer be an errant full stop in the log file name when downloading a video which has a four character file name extension.
Progress text in Monitor dialog should be centre aligned in all versions of macOS.
Only the first item of audio-only playlists will be checked for available formats. Previously used to check all items which took a long time. There was no need as formats are usually the same for all items.
The “Cookies” file text box is larger to accommodate longer file names.
The window position is now saved if the “Utilities” or “Settings” dialogs are moved.
Should no longer get this warning on some YouTube videos: “yt_dlp/jsinterp.py:346: FutureWarning: Possible nested set at position 3”.
There should no longer be a crash if “Force overwrites” and “Auto download” are on, the download file already exists and user chooses “Return”.
MacYTDL is now released in “Run-Only” format – which is slightly smaller and faster. This means that its AppleScript code cannot be opened. However, text copies of each script are published on GitHub.
MacYTDL now identifies YouTube “Handle URLs” as channels.
YouTube channels, including “tabs”, are now handled in the same way as playlists.
The rare case of warning text showing in log file names should no longer occur.
MacYTDL should no longer crash if choosing not to download from a channel when auto-download is invoked.
MacYTDL now warns if there are more than 20 items in a playlist or channel (previously would warn if there were more than 35 items).
Downloading from YouTube channels using youtube-dl is no longer supported.
There should be fewer problems with ABC iView URLs.
Version 1.22 – New platform switcher + more bug fixes
This release primarily addresses problems related the the SBS OnDemand web site in Australia. It includes these changes:
A facility to switch between Intel and ARM versions of FFmpeg and FFprobe has been added to Utilities.
Restoring the current settings file to itself should no longer cause a crash.
Auto-gen subtitles are now found when using YT-DLP.
Installation now warns gently if user is offline or uses outgoing firewalls such as LittleSnitch.
Many changes to enable downloads from SBS OnDemand including from “Show” pages.
Downloads from SBS live pages not working at present. Waiting on a fix for YT-DLP.
A more gentle warning is issued when attempting to download from generic OnDemand and iView web pages instead of an error.
Attempting to automatically download from an Australian commercial “Show” page no longer causes a crash.
Preparing to download single playlist items should be significantly faster.
“srv3” has been added to list of available subtitle formats.
Version 1.21.2 – More bug fixes + ARM64 native code
With this release MacYTDL no longer requires Rosetta 2 to be used. It also has a number of classic bug fixes. In summary:
MacYTDL no longer requires use of Rosetta 2. This has been achieved by:
sourcing Apple Silicon builds of FFmpeg and FFprobe from https://ffmpeg.martin-riedl.de/;
using Homebrew to build an ARM64 version of AtomicParsley then merging that with an x86-64 version with lipo to make a Universal 2 version; and
using the same procedure to build a Universal 2 version of ets.
The “Settings” dialog should no longer show missing values in drop down boxes for non-English languages.
Timestamps should now be correctly provided in log files. There was a bug in the path to ets in MacYTDL code.
MacYTDL should function normally when the path to its location includes a space or special character.
The “Adviser” should display correctly when the path to MacYTDL’s location includes a space or special character.
Apostrophes should show correctly in the “SBS Chooser” dialog.
MacYTDL should no longer show an error when subtitles are specified for more than one episode in the “SBS Chooser”.
There should be no permission error when using the “Adviser” to open a log file after a download encountered an error.
Auto-downloads should now work when subtitles are specified.
MacYTDL no longer crashes if downloading a new version of MacYTDL when downloads folder is not available.
The "Show settings before download" setting is ignored if "Auto download" is operating.
Version 1.21.1 – More critical bug fixes
This release only contains bug fixes. I have had a lot of trouble with more stringent permissions controls since macOS 12.3. Some of these fixes, hopefully, have solved most of the problems:
Trying to change download folder when saved location not available should no longer crash MacYTDL.
Remux formats now include “mov”.
“Edit” batch file should no longer cause a permission denied error.
“Download” from batch file should no long crash MacYTDL.
Saving settings when MacYTDL Service is not installed should no longer cause an error.
MacYTDL should no longer crash when batch file is empty and “Download” is chosen in batch functions dialog.
Opening the “Help” file should not produce a permissions error – didn’t completely solve this in v1.21.
Version 1.21 – New features and more bug fixes
Version 1.21 has some new features, some better behaviours and bug fixes. Alas, as in the past, there are still some bugs which are proving difficult to squash. This version took a lot of work and the new "Auto download" function is particularly fragile. Normally it will work but sometimes, not. I'm researching why this is so. Just a reminder, that the "Use custom settings" feature enables any youtube-dl/YT-DLP settings to be used.
macOS 12.3, released earlier this month, does not contain Python. Thus, for the time being, MacYTDL cannot use youtube-dl in that version of macOS.
List of changes in v1.21:
The MacYTDL Service can now download videos directly without opening the MacYTDL Main dialog – “Auto download”. When Auto downloads are on, the name shown for the Service in the Services menu changes to “Download Video Now” (macOS 10.15+).
Settings can now be saved and restored and returned to the default.
MacYTDL now starts more quickly and the Main dialog shows more quickly when returning from “Settings” and “Utilities”. The slow startup and slow Main dialog were due to running youtube-dl/YT-DLP to get their version every time the Main dialog was displayed. The version of those tools are now stored in the MacYTDL preferences file.
MacYTDL is now compiled in macOS 12 Monterey. That has enabled the AppleScript Unix executable to be compiled into Universal format. Thus, MacYTDL now runs with either x86_64 or ARM64 code according to the architecture of the Mac.
Because they can involve hundreds of videos, a warning is issued for YouTube channel URLs.
The Monitor now shows more useful detail towards the completion of a download. It can show that the download is being merged, converted or being fixed.
The dialog reporting that there was a warning in the simulated download no longer provides the option to check for youtube-dl/YT-DLP updates. This is because such warnings rarely if ever relate to using an old version of those tools.
The Adviser should no longer report the the download is incomplete when the video has already been downloaded and not replaced.
The AtomicParsley executable has been updated to the latest provided by “Wez” on GitHub.
Successive Monitor dialogs should be correctly positioned according to the number of downloads currently underway instead of the number of downloads in the current session.
The various processes started for each download are now more likely to be correctly stopped when the user stops a download. This includes stopping the Adviser process first.
New code used to get screen resolution (suggested by Shane Stanley). Addresses crashes in OS X 10.11 and 10.12.
A few coding improvements including using a better way to get the MacYTDL version.
Code which used to look for and delete an old version of the Dialog Toolkit has been removed.
There should no longer be a crash due to YT-DLP not being installed.
The names of the localisation tables have been changed to be compatible with Script Debugger 8.
The name of the file containing the MacYTDL logo has been changed to be compatible with Script Debugger 8.
All code now refers to the YT-DLP executable in lower case to be consistent with the form provided by the YT-DLP developer.
Live streams from SBS OnDemand in Australia should be correctly identified and recorded.
The Adviser should now provide the option of playing a recorded live stream after download is stopped.
Some re-jigging of code to reduce errors caused by performing calls not supported by “System Events”.
The warning issued by YT-DLP when subtitles are being ignored is now suppressed. This is an issue in YT-DLP which might not be addressed for some time.
“Category” URLs for ABC iView are now treated as unsupported.
The “Episode Chooser” is now shown for ABC iView shows when downloading is done by YT-DLP. This also prevents an extractor error when YT-DLP miss-categorises certain iView URLs as playlists.
[Last minute change] The FFmpeg installer does not check for trusted certificates when MacYTDL is running on OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
Version 1.20 – New features and more bug fixes
Version 1.20 has some new features, some better behaviours and bug fixes. Alas, there are still some bugs which are proving difficult to squash.
New option to add timestamps to response log files using the ets tool.
New option to include custom youtube-dl/YT-DLP settings.
Fixed a bug in which an Alert during components install might not automatically close.
Fixed a bug in which users on macOS 10.14 and earlier switching to YT-DLP would get youtube-dl installed instead.
MacYTDL should not quit if checking for MacYTDL updates while offline.
“Keep original video and/or subtitles file” is now available in all post-processing cases. Previously it was only available if user specified a remux or required a subtitles conversion.
The Service should behave more elegantly if a web browser is active but with no window open.
The Service should show the MacYTDL logo in its warning dialogs.
An alert is displayed reminding the user to wait when download of a playlist has being requested.
The Monitor no longer closes if the “Logs” button is clicked.
Text shown in the Monitor has been reduced – previously advice Monitor showed was obvious.
The Monitor shows a “Logs” button for live stream downloads.
Clicking on the “Play” button after stopping a live stream recording should work.
Monitor no longer shows a warning dialog if the “Stop” button is clicked after a download has been completed.
Recording SBS live streams should be more reliable.
Playlists are no longer checked for live stream status – by definition a playlist should not contain a live stream as that would prevent later playlist items from being played. This should speed up playlist processing somewhat.
Version 1.19.4 – Another critical bug fix
Bug in code used to install YT-DLP/youtube-dl when MacYTDL is used for the first time. The code wasn't reporting which tool was installed.
Version 1.19.3 – More bug fixes
This release has one bug fix. The "Monitor" dialog could produce an error in a non-English language if the response file was empty. The fix was a workaround which uses the size of the response file instead of the text of the error.
Version 1.19.2 – More bug fixes
This release focused on bugs, particularly those in the Batch function.
Enabled the MacYTDL Service to work in the Brave web browser.
Batch downloads should work rather than crashing MacYTDL.
Monitor should no longer encounter an error because the response file name is too long. If the name is too long, any custom output template is removed.
A warning is displayed if the format of the “BatchFile.txt” file is incorrect – usually because of manual edits.
“Show settings before download” is now implemented for batch downloads.
An error should no longer be caused by non-UTF-8 characters in a file name saved in “BatchFile.txt”.
Batch downloads now respect the runtime option for downloads folder set in Main dialog.
Progress monitor for a batch download no longer shows a redundant return character after the file name.
Python version has been removed from the “Show settings” dialog. It was pointless as all Macs still have Python 2.7 installed and YT-DLP is packaged with Python 3.8.
The “Remove last item” function no longer raises an error if there is only one URL in the batch.
The progress monitor dialog no longer shows a URL after the file name.
It is no longer possible to dismiss the “download folder is not available” warning without making the folder available, returning to the Main dialog or quitting MacYTDL.
Changes to Settings cannot be saved if the downloads folder is not available.
MacYTDL can now use an NAS as the download folder. This has been tested on a basic
Netcomm modem. Results may vary with the make and arrangement of NAS.
Code used to get the current date and time has been fine-tuned.
Some old code has been removed.
Version 1.19.1 – Bug fixes
MacYTDL no longer crashes if the most recent version of YT-DLP is not available.
MacYTDL no longer crashes on start if “Check [youtube-dl/YT-DLP] version on startup” is specified.
SBS OnDemand “Show” and “movie” pages are now correctly parsed and downloads succeed rather than crashing MacYTDL.
Note that on some show pages, “Season 1” may appear in the MacYTDL “Chooser” dialog instead of the season name shown by SBS (e.g. “2021”).
Version 1.19 – YT-DLP and bug fixes
MacYTDL can now use YT-DLP as well as youtube-dl. YT-DLP works for Macs running macOS 10.15 Catalina and higher. It also has been tested to work on Macs running macOS 10.13 High Sierra and macOS 10.14 if two library files can be sourced. Some detail on the two library files is provided on page 41 of the Help.
YT-DLP has many additional features that are not yet implemented in MacYTDL. Those features can be added by using a ".config" file. See page 28 of Help. Detail on YT-DLP is available here: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp.
Version 1.19 needed a lot of work to use YT-DLP. So, there may be bugs that testing has not yet found. Please report any bugs or bad experiences in an issue here or send an email to macytdl@gmail.com.
In addition to implementing YT-DLP, in version 1.19:
MacYTDL now works better on M1 Macs (with high resolution Retina screens).
Batch functions dialog is now correctly positioned.
Multiple downloads now working again.
The “Play” function of the “Adviser” can now play the first video in a completed batch download.
Fixed the bug in which the SBS “Episode Chooser” incorrectly referred to “Season 1” for all downloads.
Fixed another bug in the SBS “Episode Chooser” in which errant numbers were sometimes shown before episode detail.
The “Alerter” tool is now used for all component installations.
A preference file maintained by macOS is now deleted by the “Uninstall” process.
MacYTDL no longer crashes on Quit if there is a non-null URL.
Version 1.18 – New options and bug fixes
Version 1.18 has: two new options, uses macOS notifications to advise downloads are finished and the usual range of bug fixes:
New option to specify a custom file name template. This powerful option can create new folders and include a large variety of keywords in the file name, e.g. auto-numbering multiple downloads and create folder for a playlist. Detail on how to use custom templates is provided here: youtube-dl/output template.
New option to specify a “cookies” file to provide credentials for downloads (e.g. the YouTube “Watch Later” playlist).
MacYTDL now uses macOS notifications via a separate tool, Alerter, to notify when download is completed.
Includes option to play the completed download in default video player.
If downloading a playlist or multiple videos, the first video downloaded will be played.
Notification settings can be changed in “System Preferences”.
MacYTDL behaves better with YouTube playlists:
Warns user if a playlist has more than 35 items – MacYTDL will seem to be not responding and downloading can take a very long time.
YouTube URLs which link to a playlist item will cause MacYTDL to download just that item.
The “Monitor” dialog cannot be closed for URLs which link to a live stream. The only option is “Stop”. That prevents accidentally closing the Monitor while a stream is being downloaded.
Note: MacYTDL can’t reliably identify all live streams. This is because some web sites do not report the “is_live” parameter. Beware of accidentally closing the Monitor dialog in such cases.
MacYTDL no longer shows a warning if the title of a download file contains the word “warning”.
MacYTL no longer shows an error if the last character of a URL is a space.
The “Embed thumbnails” now only applies to m4a and mp3 audio files and the setting is always visible (even if Atomic Parsley is not installed).
The Monitor dialog is positioned closer to the right end edge of the main display.
The Monitor dialog could fail to display after the download had started but before any relevant detail had been posted to the response file. It now should display in all circumstances.
The MacYTDL Service should produce fewer errors when there is no URL copied or selected.
The MacYTDL Service will look for MacYTDL’s bundleID instead of the app short name when checking whether MacYTDL is running.
The MacYTDL Service should be less likely to paste a previously used URL into the Main dialog.
MacYTDL should work better with file names containing non-ASCII characters (e.g. é).
The default location on the screen for the Main, Utilities and Settings dialogs is set to 50x50 on the Main display when an error is encounter with the System Profiler call.
The “Play” option provided when a download is finished should work when download has been remuxed and/or when youtube-dl merges downloads into “mkv” format.
Version 1.17 – New options and bug fixes
Version 1.17 has a couple of new features, a significant restructuring of code and yet more bug fixes:
Added option to supply a proxy URL for video downloads.
The Send-URL-To-MacYTDL service can now recognise URLs which have been copied to the Clipboard or selected in the text of any document. If both apply, any URL in text selected is used. If neither apply and a web browser is active, the URL in the active tab is used.
To reduce crashes in IDE used to create MacYTDL, a major restructure of handlers. Approximately 30% of code is now in a separate script file.
Installation process on first use of MacYTDL simplified: user is asked for agreement to install all components once instead of separately for each component.
Fixed a number of bugs in the SBS and ABC episode choosers including:
crashes when user chooses “All episodes”;
crash if an SBS OnDemand search URL was used;
failing to show last column of episodes in the ABC and SBS episode choosers;
episode chooser instructions sometimes overlapped the dialog heading.
A late change to the SBS episode chooser due to recent changes to the SBS web site. For the time being, the episode chooser can only provide episodes in season 1 for each show.
MacYTDL no longer crashes if user cancels the Uninstall at credentials stage.
FFmpeg and FFprobe are now required installs. Previously they could be installed later on which was pointless as youtube-dl needs to use FFmpeg for many downloads.
If the user chooses a file for the download folder, MacYTDL assumes the parent folder is intended. Previously, this was not checked and would cause a crash when MacYTDL tried to download a video ‘into a file’.
Made a note to self to always publish MacYTDL in a disk image file. Versions released in a Zip archive caused the Update MacYTDL function to crash.
Updates to the localisations (using Google Translate). Also, some words in drop-down boxes are now localised.
Dialogs and response files now include the name of more YouTube playlists.
Minor changes to layout of some dialogs.
Fixed the problem in which some partly downloaded files were not deleted when download was stopped.
Clicking on the “Help” button should now show the Help file instead of causing an error.
MacYTDL copes more elegantly when the Service is called while any dialog other than the Main Dialog is showing.
Monitor should no longer crash when progress is reported in GiB instead of MiB.
A “User cancelled” dialog is no longer shown when the “Download might not have completed” dialog is cancelled.
Version 1.17.b.1 - alpha test
Test copy of v1.17 with new proxy setting implemented, restructured code, debugged SBS/ABC Choosers and changes to Service. This version has the old Help file.
Most likely there are bugs in the new proxy settings – as the Developer has no proxy facility to enable testing. Any feedback would be welcome.
Version 1.16 – New options and bug fixes
Version 1.16 adds new options and more bug fixes:
New option to limit download speed – download rate specified in MB/sec.
Does not work if downloading is delegated to FFmpeg e.g. some HLS downloads
New option to download auto-generated subtitles (or “captions”) from YouTube.
MacYTDL respects youtube-dl behaviour – if both author and auto-generated subtitles are available, author is downloaded.
Australian SBS “OnDemand” show pages are now parsed – provides a list of episodes from which to choose.
Implemented Spanish localisation.
Main, Utilities and Settings dialogs reformatted to more suit Spanish.
New option to set the codec format for audio-only downloads.
Audio format options removed from File format chooser as they are not supported by youtube-dl.
Container can now be remuxed when audio-only is specified. However, audio codec is automatically changed to be compatible with the container.
MacYTDL can now be renamed without crashing e.g. “MacYTDL v1.16”. However, not all functions perform ideally so, it's best not to change the name.
Better handling of YouTube playlists.
Simulate stage waits till end of simulation before reporting errors.
Playlist name shown in response file name, Monitor dialog and Adviser dialog for most downloads.
The “Adviser” script, when requested, opens the user’s default text editor instead of TextEdit.
Removed duplicated code which checked for install of youtube-dl and FFmpeg.
Better handling of warnings and errors in the simulation step.
Handles more gently attempts to download from the Australian 7Plus, 10play and 9Now show pages.
Monitor dialog more often shows name of download instead of “the-error” or “the-warning”.
“avi” and “mkv” removed from File format chooser as they are not supported by youtube-dl.
Minor code changes to reduce errors.
Utilities dialog should work properly for users who install a custom brewed version of FFmpeg.
“IOError: CRC check failed” cases handled more elegantly.
Version 1.15 – Bug fixes
This release fixes some localisation mistakes and some bugs especially in the youtube-dl and FFmpeg installs. youtube-dl is now sourced from GitHub. The release also tests changes to improve usage in dual monitor setups.
Version 1.14.3 – FFmpeg update/install fix again
FFmpeg should now reliably install or update.
Users with system language set to German or Italian might notice some dialogs are translated from English. This indicates under-the-hood work to implement localization. Please send raise an issue is this causes any problems.
Version 1.14.2 – Expired certificate workaround
Due to an expired external CA root certificate, attempting to download the youtube-dl executable caused an error in "curl". For this release the SSL verification in curl has been suppressed. A permanent fix would involve Apple releasing an updated version of curl. For MacYTDL, the download source might be moved from yt-dl.org to GitHub.
Version 1.14.1 – Urgent bug fixes
Collection of urgent and other bug fixes:
All dialogs should now respect dark mode settings.
Subtitles downloads now works when more than one format of subtitles is available for download.
Debugging dialog removed from “Check for MacYTDL update”.
Using batch functions no longer causes errors.
Under the hood changes to facilitate localization in a future version.
Version 1.14 – Progress meter and bug fixes
Changes to the Monitor dialog:
Now reports on download progress with either percentage of total or amount downloaded so far.
Also reports time elapsed since start of download.
Has been relocated to the top right hand corner of the Desktop.
Has smaller and realigned text to be less intrusive.
“Downloads” button removed.
Adviser dialog should no longer show error text when user chooses to download despite the error.
Updating the youtube-dl python script should no longer encounter an “internal server error”.
When an http error is reported user is advised to try again later.
“Operation not permitted” error when installing FFmpeg should no longer occur.
Was caused in certain macOS Catalina installs when the Desktop folder was protected.
FFmpeg is now installed from Zip file downloaded to “usr/local/bin”.
Utilities dialog can now install FFmpeg when it has not yet been installed.
Fixed anomaly in Atomic Parsley installation if user decides to install FFmpeg later on.
Version 1.13 – fix for default downloads folder
A single bug fix. Default downloads folder caused an error on some Macs. This release should fix that.
Version 1.13 – Bug fixes and under the hood improvements
Successive Monitor dialogs are now positioned on the screen so that they do not completely obscure each other.
“Download complete” message now shows correctly for playlists.
Should no longer crash downloading a playlist when an item is not available.
The check for existing downloads should be more accurate.
The MacYTDL Service, Send-URL-To-MacYTDL, now only shows in web browsers.
The MacYTDL Service now works in Microsoft Edge.
Monitor dialog text is smaller to enable more to be shown on screen at same time.
iView single episode show downloads no longer have duplicated names (was due to series and episode name being the same).
The “--restrict-filenames” parameter removed from all calls to youtube-dl. Was causing problems with special characters that were needed in file names etc.
Monitor “Stop” function now removes partially downloaded files from playlists.
Monitor “Stop” function now removes partially downloaded files which have names ending in “-2”.
A new function added asks user what to do if download video already exists. Choices are for existing file to be deleted and a new copy downloaded; new download to have a different name; or to cancel the download.
The “--prefer-ffmpeg” parameter removed from all calls to youtube-dl. Was unnecessary as it’s the default and MacYTDL currently provides no alternative.
The “Check for MacYTDL update” function now downloads the latest version successfully.
MacYTDL will no longer display a notice when the download file name contains the word “warning”.
A new function added to check that user’s preferred file format is available for download. If not, user can ask to: download the best format available; download best format and remux to preferred format; or cancel the download.
The Batch file is cleared if videos were downloaded and no errors reported.
MacYTDL warns if any errors were reported with a download whether or not the download completed successfully.
The file extension of a “description” file saved for a video is changed from “.description” to “.txt” when download folder path name has spaces.
Version 1.12.1 - Bug fixes
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer now works more often – again.
Warning that subtitles are not available is more accurate for multiple downloads.
MacYTDL warns when preferred subtitles language is not available and provides a list of languages which are available.
Version 1.12 – Mostly bug fixes
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer now works (bug was hard coded file names) – again.
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer on first run of MacYTDL now works better and should produce fewer errors.
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer uses the downloads folder. Error when that folder is not available has been fixed.
Improved layout of Utilities dialog including showing current versions of youtube-dl and FFmpeg.
Previously, when the MacYTDL Service was automatically updated an old copy already in Trash would cause an error. That has been fixed.
Improved logic for downloading subtitles. See Help for more detail.
Error caused by dismissing admin credentials during youtube-dl install no longer occurs.
User can now request subtitles in “lrc” and “dfxp” format.
MacYTDL Service now works with the Chrome and Chromium browsers.
Past download URLs should no longer affect new downloads.
Changed call to youtube-dl to reduce error in which youtube-dl interprets single quotes around URLs as double-quotes. Now only using single quotes when URL contains an ampersand, “&”.
“Check for MacYTDL Updates” now reports when user has current version.
Updates to youtube-dl are now downloaded using the more secure “https” instead of “http” protocol.
“Show settings” function now works when user requests existing copy of video download to be overwritten.
Fixed Blank line in “Show Settings” dialog when AtomicParsley not installed.
Adviser dialog now shows in all cases – previously did not show when user’s volume name had a space e.g. “Macintosh HD”.
“.description” files are not renamed to “.txt” when there are two or more downloads in one process.
Version 1.11 – Bug fixes and new features
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer now works (bug was hard coded file names).
“Show download settings before starting download” no longer causes a crash (bug was a “B” instead of a “b”).
If user repositions the main window the new position is saved and used when the window is opened again in the same session or future sessions.
Dialog Toolkit Plus customised and renamed to DialogToolkitMacYTDL
MacYTDL is Notarized and Code Signed.
MacYTDL moved to GitHub – “About” box and Help file updated.
Function to check for new versions of MacYTDL and download if user wishes.
Version 1.10.1
• FFmpeg install now downloads Zip format file instead of dmg.
• MacYTDL dmg file is formatted MacOS Extended instead of APFS.
• Better coding practice might increase speed slightly.
• Should be no errors on first run.
Version 1.10
• Simplified and renamed dialogs.
• New "Show settings before downloading" function.
• Bug fixes:ABC iView shows dialog improved; iView "Extras" available for download, embedding subtitles should work, enabled "Keep original file" function to apply to subtitles file.
Version 1.9
• Code signing added.
• New version of browser service.
• Bug fixes:ABC iView URLs should all work; URLs with unusual endings should work; path to downloads folder can have spaces and special characters.
This release has bug fixes and Spanish language improvements:
Fixed the crash when “Check yt-dlp version on startup” is turned on.
Added some Spanish translations that were missing and improved others – many thanks to Michel.
Default settings should be translated correctly when switching between English and other languages then back again.
The “Utilities” dialog should no longer trim longer text labels in non-English languages.
Simplified wording of the update YT-DLP facility in “Utilities”.
Version 1.26 – New features, options and bug fixes
Version 1.26 has a new formats listing dialog, can download multiple files in parallel and has a number of new options.
The names of log files now start with “ytdl_log-” instead of “youtube-dl_log-”. MacYTDL no longer installs youtube-dl which has not been updated since December 2021.
The “Settings” dialog has been split into two separate dialogs. The “Settings” dialog continues to handle settings which relate more to particular downloads. The second dialog is called “Admin” and handles settings which are more related to ongoing functions and control over how MacYTDL operates. Previously the “Settings” dialog could extend below the bottom of the screen on low resolution screens thus preventing new settings being added. This split enables more new settings to be added to MacYTDL.
It is now possible to download multiple videos in parallel. This can speed up downloads when individual downloads do not use all the available bandwidth. Parallel downloads are available for multiple URLs, playlists and batches.
A setting has been added to restrict resolution of downloaded videos. YT-DLP defaults to the best resolution available. This setting sets a maximum resolution to be downloaded which can make watching those videos more viable on slow/old Macs or low resolution screens.
A setting has been added to disable use of “.part” files. YT-DLP can use “.part” files during a download to indicate more clearly that the download is not complete. But, those files are not usually immediately playable.
A new setting to choose whether partially downloaded files should be deleted. If “part” file names are not used, however, a playable partially downloaded file is retained.
A “Suppress warnings” setting is now available which causes YT-DLP to ignore all warnings.
There is now a setting to discard or keep a URL after download. Previously MacYTDL would always discard URLs after download has started. The default is now to keep URLs available in Main dialog text box.
The “Formats List” dialog has been redesigned and is now scrollable on low resolution screens instead of extending below the bottom of the screen. Also, the list displays more quickly if the user needs to return to the dialog e.g. after pressing “Download” without selecting a format. The new dialog is formed with the Myriad Tables Lib by Shane Stanley.
Note: This function is problematic. If MacYTDL crashes, it can be worth trying the same URL again.
The “Formats List” now reports average bitrate. This should help distinguish more formats.
The “Formats List” no longer crashes:
if a Return is pressed on the warning issued when no formats have been selected; and
on videos from Dailymotion and 9Now.
Automatic downloads should work more often. It turns out that it has not worked much since version 1.23 of MacYTDL.
Note: I’ve not been to find a cure for the faults in this function and so it may result in an error.
Embedding subtitles no longer require specific file format or remux settings. However, some combinations will fail, depending on the codecs contained by the source download.
Downloading a batch now respects the user’s subtitle settings.
Adding two or more URLs to a batch should now work.
Installing a YT-DLP nightly build no longer crashes MacYTDL if the credentials dialog is cancelled.
The Monitor and Adviser dialogs should now show the playlist name when MacYTDL is downloading a playlist.
The Adviser dialog should play the downloaded file, if requested, more reliably.
Pressing the “Esc” key no longer closes the Monitor dialog and cancels a download. The only way to cancel a download is to click on the “Stop” or “Pause” buttons. Previously, a download could be accidentally cancelled by pressing the “Esc” key.
Code which previously worked around problems with downloading from SBS Australia has been removed. The workarounds are no longer needed.
MacYTDL no longer reports old stable YT-DLP builds as being more recent than current nightly builds.
Version 1.25 – One new feature and quite a lot of bug fixes
This release includes a facility to install “nightly” releases of YT-DLP. The nightly builds provide quick access to the latest fixes and changes. The installed version can be switched to the latest stable release as desired. All the other changes in this release are bug fixes.
Users can now install “nightly” releases of YT-DLP using the Utilities dialog. The nightly releases are the most up-to-date available and include all changes made to YT-DLP to that point. There can be a number of nightly builds each week.
The gap between the title bar and window content of all windows has been reduced to provide some more screen real estate.
The MacYTDL Service now prefers the URL of the active web browser window to any URL stored in the Clipboard. Previously, URLs remaining in Clipboard from earlier actions could be preferred even though they were invalid and/or did not relate to any video download.
The automatic updates to the MacYTDL Service will now function. There were bugs in the update code which prevented the Service from being updated.
Automatic downloads with subtitles should now work instead of causing an error.
“Get formats list” should now work with YouTube, ABC iView and SBS OnDemand videos instead of crashing.
Utilities dialog should be wide enough to show all contents.
Utilities dialog should show the actual installed YT-DLP version number instead of an old version.
MacYTDL should now record live streams from SBS Australia.
Attempting an auto-download when download folder not available should no longer cause a crash.
It’s now more likely that the MacYTDL Service will be removed from the Services menu when the Service is removed using the Utilities dialog.
All kinds of downloads from SBS Australia should now work – enabled by fixes to YT-DLP.
The SBS “Chooser” should now work again – code was searching for the wrong text.
The “Adviser” dialog should show more reliably.
Text in the “Monitor” dialog is less likely to overlap with the MacYTDL logo.
Version 1.24.1 – Bug fix release
This release is mainly to attend to a fatal bug in the Homebrew code. MacYTDL should now respect a Homebrew install if it pre-dates a MacYTDL install. Problems with SBS downloads and rare errors with the auto-download function remain. Changes in this release include:
Should no longer crash when Homebrew users first start MacYTDL.
Should no longer crash if downloads folder is not available during an auto download.
Should no longer crash if user chooses to return the “Main” on a warning dialog during an auto download.
Minor change to code which checks for Homebrew installs of YT-DLP on Intel Macs.
The “Show settings before download” dialog has been updated to include recently added settings.
A dialog is shown asking if the cookies location should be emptied if the “Use cookies” setting is turned off.
Improved position and reduced size of the MacYTDL logo in the “Monitor” progress dialog.
Simulate stage now respects “Use custom settings” setting for playlists.
Version 1.24 – New features and bug fixes
Release 1.24 adds a few new features and, as usual, attempts to deal with bugs:
All users can now use YT-DLP.
Users on macOS 10.13 and 10.14 no longer need to use the two dylib files in order to use YT-DLP.
Users currently using youtube-dl can continue to do so or switch to YT-DLP – highly recommended.
New users will be given YT-DLP by default.
Homebrew and MacPorts installs of YT-DLP, FFmpeg and FFprobe will be used if MacYTDL installs are not in place.
A new “Formats chooser” provides the option of choosing which file formats are to be downloaded.
Note that the layout of the dialog is a work-in-progress and may not be ideal for all cases.
MacYTDL should not crash on showing the Utilities dialog after the first installation.
Code has been added to help diagnose “end of file” errors which currently cannot be reliably reproduced.
Preparing to download playlists for which playlist item specifications have been entered in “Use custom settings” should be faster.
Updating YT-DLP should work again. The layout of the YT-DLP releases page was changed causing the macOS releases to be hidden.
MacYTDL should no longer crash when SBS Australia changes URLs.
A custom file name template than is empty or a single space character will cause an error.
Downloads from SBS OnDemand in Australia should generally work. This has been achieved by a workaround which may be broken by a future release of YT-DLP.
Items in the “Settings” dialog have been squeezed closer together to ensure the dialog is fully visible on low resolution screens.
MacYTDL no longer crashes if the preferences plist file is deleted while MacYTDL is open.
“Check for yt-dlp update” in “Utilities” now checks the version number of the currently installed YT-DLP instead of using the version number stored in the MacYTDL.plist file.
On multi-user setups, this should ensure every user has the same version number stored in MacYTDL.plist.
The “Check for FFmpeg update” function in “Utilities” now checks the installed FFprobe version as well as the FFmpeg version. A full update is done if either are out-of-date.
Version 1.23.1 – Bug fixes
Release 1.23.1 fixes a few critical bugs that were entirely developer error:
MacYTDL should now trap errors caused by URLs from which videos cannot be downloaded.
The delay before download commences should be shorter – code which checks for live streams has been made faster by combining with the simulate stage.
Batch functions should now be working normally. Bug was a missing variable in all the calls to batch functions.
The file names of certain downloads from ABC, ITV and 7Plus will no longer start with “NA-”.
The facility for playing completed live streams should be working again.
Version 1.23 – New settings, Pause/Resume & yet more bug fixes Latest
Release 1.23 adds some new features and has work on quite a number of bugs:
Added a “Pause/Resume” function to the “Monitor” dialog. A download can be resumed for as long as the Monitor dialog is displayed.
Added a “Force overwrite” setting. By default, MacYTDL will not delete an existing download file. This setting forces MacYTDL to look for an existing file and if found, offers to delete the file.
Added a “QT compatible video” setting which converts downloaded video into a format which can be shown in Quicktime Player – NOTE: the re-encoding can take a very long time.
MacYTDL should no longer crash when checking playlists.
Change naming of log files from “response” to “log”.
Changed shortcut for “Cancel” from [command-c] to [command-.]. This enables [command‑c] to be used to copy text in dialogs.
There should no longer be an errant full stop in the log file name when downloading a video which has a four character file name extension.
Progress text in Monitor dialog should be centre aligned in all versions of macOS.
Only the first item of audio-only playlists will be checked for available formats. Previously used to check all items which took a long time. There was no need as formats are usually the same for all items.
The “Cookies” file text box is larger to accommodate longer file names.
The window position is now saved if the “Utilities” or “Settings” dialogs are moved.
Should no longer get this warning on some YouTube videos: “yt_dlp/jsinterp.py:346: FutureWarning: Possible nested set at position 3”.
There should no longer be a crash if “Force overwrites” and “Auto download” are on, the download file already exists and user chooses “Return”.
MacYTDL is now released in “Run-Only” format – which is slightly smaller and faster. This means that its AppleScript code cannot be opened. However, text copies of each script are published on GitHub.
MacYTDL now identifies YouTube “Handle URLs” as channels.
YouTube channels, including “tabs”, are now handled in the same way as playlists.
The rare case of warning text showing in log file names should no longer occur.
MacYTDL should no longer crash if choosing not to download from a channel when auto-download is invoked.
MacYTDL now warns if there are more than 20 items in a playlist or channel (previously would warn if there were more than 35 items).
Downloading from YouTube channels using youtube-dl is no longer supported.
There should be fewer problems with ABC iView URLs.
Version 1.22 – New platform switcher + more bug fixes
This release primarily addresses problems related the the SBS OnDemand web site in Australia. It includes these changes:
A facility to switch between Intel and ARM versions of FFmpeg and FFprobe has been added to Utilities.
Restoring the current settings file to itself should no longer cause a crash.
Auto-gen subtitles are now found when using YT-DLP.
Installation now warns gently if user is offline or uses outgoing firewalls such as LittleSnitch.
Many changes to enable downloads from SBS OnDemand including from “Show” pages.
Downloads from SBS live pages not working at present. Waiting on a fix for YT-DLP.
A more gentle warning is issued when attempting to download from generic OnDemand and iView web pages instead of an error.
Attempting to automatically download from an Australian commercial “Show” page no longer causes a crash.
Preparing to download single playlist items should be significantly faster.
“srv3” has been added to list of available subtitle formats.
Version 1.21.2 – More bug fixes + ARM64 native code
With this release MacYTDL no longer requires Rosetta 2 to be used. It also has a number of classic bug fixes. In summary:
MacYTDL no longer requires use of Rosetta 2. This has been achieved by:
sourcing Apple Silicon builds of FFmpeg and FFprobe from https://ffmpeg.martin-riedl.de/;
using Homebrew to build an ARM64 version of AtomicParsley then merging that with an x86-64 version with lipo to make a Universal 2 version; and
using the same procedure to build a Universal 2 version of ets.
The “Settings” dialog should no longer show missing values in drop down boxes for non-English languages.
Timestamps should now be correctly provided in log files. There was a bug in the path to ets in MacYTDL code.
MacYTDL should function normally when the path to its location includes a space or special character.
The “Adviser” should display correctly when the path to MacYTDL’s location includes a space or special character.
Apostrophes should show correctly in the “SBS Chooser” dialog.
MacYTDL should no longer show an error when subtitles are specified for more than one episode in the “SBS Chooser”.
There should be no permission error when using the “Adviser” to open a log file after a download encountered an error.
Auto-downloads should now work when subtitles are specified.
MacYTDL no longer crashes if downloading a new version of MacYTDL when downloads folder is not available.
The "Show settings before download" setting is ignored if "Auto download" is operating.
Version 1.21.1 – More critical bug fixes
This release only contains bug fixes. I have had a lot of trouble with more stringent permissions controls since macOS 12.3. Some of these fixes, hopefully, have solved most of the problems:
Trying to change download folder when saved location not available should no longer crash MacYTDL.
Remux formats now include “mov”.
“Edit” batch file should no longer cause a permission denied error.
“Download” from batch file should no long crash MacYTDL.
Saving settings when MacYTDL Service is not installed should no longer cause an error.
MacYTDL should no longer crash when batch file is empty and “Download” is chosen in batch functions dialog.
Opening the “Help” file should not produce a permissions error – didn’t completely solve this in v1.21.
Version 1.21 – New features and more bug fixes
Version 1.21 has some new features, some better behaviours and bug fixes. Alas, as in the past, there are still some bugs which are proving difficult to squash. This version took a lot of work and the new "Auto download" function is particularly fragile. Normally it will work but sometimes, not. I'm researching why this is so. Just a reminder, that the "Use custom settings" feature enables any youtube-dl/YT-DLP settings to be used.
macOS 12.3, released earlier this month, does not contain Python. Thus, for the time being, MacYTDL cannot use youtube-dl in that version of macOS.
List of changes in v1.21:
The MacYTDL Service can now download videos directly without opening the MacYTDL Main dialog – “Auto download”. When Auto downloads are on, the name shown for the Service in the Services menu changes to “Download Video Now” (macOS 10.15+).
Settings can now be saved and restored and returned to the default.
MacYTDL now starts more quickly and the Main dialog shows more quickly when returning from “Settings” and “Utilities”. The slow startup and slow Main dialog were due to running youtube-dl/YT-DLP to get their version every time the Main dialog was displayed. The version of those tools are now stored in the MacYTDL preferences file.
MacYTDL is now compiled in macOS 12 Monterey. That has enabled the AppleScript Unix executable to be compiled into Universal format. Thus, MacYTDL now runs with either x86_64 or ARM64 code according to the architecture of the Mac.
Because they can involve hundreds of videos, a warning is issued for YouTube channel URLs.
The Monitor now shows more useful detail towards the completion of a download. It can show that the download is being merged, converted or being fixed.
The dialog reporting that there was a warning in the simulated download no longer provides the option to check for youtube-dl/YT-DLP updates. This is because such warnings rarely if ever relate to using an old version of those tools.
The Adviser should no longer report the the download is incomplete when the video has already been downloaded and not replaced.
The AtomicParsley executable has been updated to the latest provided by “Wez” on GitHub.
Successive Monitor dialogs should be correctly positioned according to the number of downloads currently underway instead of the number of downloads in the current session.
The various processes started for each download are now more likely to be correctly stopped when the user stops a download. This includes stopping the Adviser process first.
New code used to get screen resolution (suggested by Shane Stanley). Addresses crashes in OS X 10.11 and 10.12.
A few coding improvements including using a better way to get the MacYTDL version.
Code which used to look for and delete an old version of the Dialog Toolkit has been removed.
There should no longer be a crash due to YT-DLP not being installed.
The names of the localisation tables have been changed to be compatible with Script Debugger 8.
The name of the file containing the MacYTDL logo has been changed to be compatible with Script Debugger 8.
All code now refers to the YT-DLP executable in lower case to be consistent with the form provided by the YT-DLP developer.
Live streams from SBS OnDemand in Australia should be correctly identified and recorded.
The Adviser should now provide the option of playing a recorded live stream after download is stopped.
Some re-jigging of code to reduce errors caused by performing calls not supported by “System Events”.
The warning issued by YT-DLP when subtitles are being ignored is now suppressed. This is an issue in YT-DLP which might not be addressed for some time.
“Category” URLs for ABC iView are now treated as unsupported.
The “Episode Chooser” is now shown for ABC iView shows when downloading is done by YT-DLP. This also prevents an extractor error when YT-DLP miss-categorises certain iView URLs as playlists.
[Last minute change] The FFmpeg installer does not check for trusted certificates when MacYTDL is running on OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
Version 1.20 – New features and more bug fixes
Version 1.20 has some new features, some better behaviours and bug fixes. Alas, there are still some bugs which are proving difficult to squash.
New option to add timestamps to response log files using the ets tool.
New option to include custom youtube-dl/YT-DLP settings.
Fixed a bug in which an Alert during components install might not automatically close.
Fixed a bug in which users on macOS 10.14 and earlier switching to YT-DLP would get youtube-dl installed instead.
MacYTDL should not quit if checking for MacYTDL updates while offline.
“Keep original video and/or subtitles file” is now available in all post-processing cases. Previously it was only available if user specified a remux or required a subtitles conversion.
The Service should behave more elegantly if a web browser is active but with no window open.
The Service should show the MacYTDL logo in its warning dialogs.
An alert is displayed reminding the user to wait when download of a playlist has being requested.
The Monitor no longer closes if the “Logs” button is clicked.
Text shown in the Monitor has been reduced – previously advice Monitor showed was obvious.
The Monitor shows a “Logs” button for live stream downloads.
Clicking on the “Play” button after stopping a live stream recording should work.
Monitor no longer shows a warning dialog if the “Stop” button is clicked after a download has been completed.
Recording SBS live streams should be more reliable.
Playlists are no longer checked for live stream status – by definition a playlist should not contain a live stream as that would prevent later playlist items from being played. This should speed up playlist processing somewhat.
Version 1.19.4 – Another critical bug fix
Bug in code used to install YT-DLP/youtube-dl when MacYTDL is used for the first time. The code wasn't reporting which tool was installed.
Version 1.19.3 – More bug fixes
This release has one bug fix. The "Monitor" dialog could produce an error in a non-English language if the response file was empty. The fix was a workaround which uses the size of the response file instead of the text of the error.
Version 1.19.2 – More bug fixes
This release focused on bugs, particularly those in the Batch function.
Enabled the MacYTDL Service to work in the Brave web browser.
Batch downloads should work rather than crashing MacYTDL.
Monitor should no longer encounter an error because the response file name is too long. If the name is too long, any custom output template is removed.
A warning is displayed if the format of the “BatchFile.txt” file is incorrect – usually because of manual edits.
“Show settings before download” is now implemented for batch downloads.
An error should no longer be caused by non-UTF-8 characters in a file name saved in “BatchFile.txt”.
Batch downloads now respect the runtime option for downloads folder set in Main dialog.
Progress monitor for a batch download no longer shows a redundant return character after the file name.
Python version has been removed from the “Show settings” dialog. It was pointless as all Macs still have Python 2.7 installed and YT-DLP is packaged with Python 3.8.
The “Remove last item” function no longer raises an error if there is only one URL in the batch.
The progress monitor dialog no longer shows a URL after the file name.
It is no longer possible to dismiss the “download folder is not available” warning without making the folder available, returning to the Main dialog or quitting MacYTDL.
Changes to Settings cannot be saved if the downloads folder is not available.
MacYTDL can now use an NAS as the download folder. This has been tested on a basic
Netcomm modem. Results may vary with the make and arrangement of NAS.
Code used to get the current date and time has been fine-tuned.
Some old code has been removed.
Version 1.19.1 – Bug fixes
MacYTDL no longer crashes if the most recent version of YT-DLP is not available.
MacYTDL no longer crashes on start if “Check [youtube-dl/YT-DLP] version on startup” is specified.
SBS OnDemand “Show” and “movie” pages are now correctly parsed and downloads succeed rather than crashing MacYTDL.
Note that on some show pages, “Season 1” may appear in the MacYTDL “Chooser” dialog instead of the season name shown by SBS (e.g. “2021”).
Version 1.19 – YT-DLP and bug fixes
MacYTDL can now use YT-DLP as well as youtube-dl. YT-DLP works for Macs running macOS 10.15 Catalina and higher. It also has been tested to work on Macs running macOS 10.13 High Sierra and macOS 10.14 if two library files can be sourced. Some detail on the two library files is provided on page 41 of the Help.
YT-DLP has many additional features that are not yet implemented in MacYTDL. Those features can be added by using a ".config" file. See page 28 of Help. Detail on YT-DLP is available here: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp.
Version 1.19 needed a lot of work to use YT-DLP. So, there may be bugs that testing has not yet found. Please report any bugs or bad experiences in an issue here or send an email to macytdl@gmail.com.
In addition to implementing YT-DLP, in version 1.19:
MacYTDL now works better on M1 Macs (with high resolution Retina screens).
Batch functions dialog is now correctly positioned.
Multiple downloads now working again.
The “Play” function of the “Adviser” can now play the first video in a completed batch download.
Fixed the bug in which the SBS “Episode Chooser” incorrectly referred to “Season 1” for all downloads.
Fixed another bug in the SBS “Episode Chooser” in which errant numbers were sometimes shown before episode detail.
The “Alerter” tool is now used for all component installations.
A preference file maintained by macOS is now deleted by the “Uninstall” process.
MacYTDL no longer crashes on Quit if there is a non-null URL.
Version 1.18 – New options and bug fixes
Version 1.18 has: two new options, uses macOS notifications to advise downloads are finished and the usual range of bug fixes:
New option to specify a custom file name template. This powerful option can create new folders and include a large variety of keywords in the file name, e.g. auto-numbering multiple downloads and create folder for a playlist. Detail on how to use custom templates is provided here: youtube-dl/output template.
New option to specify a “cookies” file to provide credentials for downloads (e.g. the YouTube “Watch Later” playlist).
MacYTDL now uses macOS notifications via a separate tool, Alerter, to notify when download is completed.
Includes option to play the completed download in default video player.
If downloading a playlist or multiple videos, the first video downloaded will be played.
Notification settings can be changed in “System Preferences”.
MacYTDL behaves better with YouTube playlists:
Warns user if a playlist has more than 35 items – MacYTDL will seem to be not responding and downloading can take a very long time.
YouTube URLs which link to a playlist item will cause MacYTDL to download just that item.
The “Monitor” dialog cannot be closed for URLs which link to a live stream. The only option is “Stop”. That prevents accidentally closing the Monitor while a stream is being downloaded.
Note: MacYTDL can’t reliably identify all live streams. This is because some web sites do not report the “is_live” parameter. Beware of accidentally closing the Monitor dialog in such cases.
MacYTDL no longer shows a warning if the title of a download file contains the word “warning”.
MacYTL no longer shows an error if the last character of a URL is a space.
The “Embed thumbnails” now only applies to m4a and mp3 audio files and the setting is always visible (even if Atomic Parsley is not installed).
The Monitor dialog is positioned closer to the right end edge of the main display.
The Monitor dialog could fail to display after the download had started but before any relevant detail had been posted to the response file. It now should display in all circumstances.
The MacYTDL Service should produce fewer errors when there is no URL copied or selected.
The MacYTDL Service will look for MacYTDL’s bundleID instead of the app short name when checking whether MacYTDL is running.
The MacYTDL Service should be less likely to paste a previously used URL into the Main dialog.
MacYTDL should work better with file names containing non-ASCII characters (e.g. é).
The default location on the screen for the Main, Utilities and Settings dialogs is set to 50x50 on the Main display when an error is encounter with the System Profiler call.
The “Play” option provided when a download is finished should work when download has been remuxed and/or when youtube-dl merges downloads into “mkv” format.
Version 1.17 – New options and bug fixes
Version 1.17 has a couple of new features, a significant restructuring of code and yet more bug fixes:
Added option to supply a proxy URL for video downloads.
The Send-URL-To-MacYTDL service can now recognise URLs which have been copied to the Clipboard or selected in the text of any document. If both apply, any URL in text selected is used. If neither apply and a web browser is active, the URL in the active tab is used.
To reduce crashes in IDE used to create MacYTDL, a major restructure of handlers. Approximately 30% of code is now in a separate script file.
Installation process on first use of MacYTDL simplified: user is asked for agreement to install all components once instead of separately for each component.
Fixed a number of bugs in the SBS and ABC episode choosers including:
crashes when user chooses “All episodes”;
crash if an SBS OnDemand search URL was used;
failing to show last column of episodes in the ABC and SBS episode choosers;
episode chooser instructions sometimes overlapped the dialog heading.
A late change to the SBS episode chooser due to recent changes to the SBS web site. For the time being, the episode chooser can only provide episodes in season 1 for each show.
MacYTDL no longer crashes if user cancels the Uninstall at credentials stage.
FFmpeg and FFprobe are now required installs. Previously they could be installed later on which was pointless as youtube-dl needs to use FFmpeg for many downloads.
If the user chooses a file for the download folder, MacYTDL assumes the parent folder is intended. Previously, this was not checked and would cause a crash when MacYTDL tried to download a video ‘into a file’.
Made a note to self to always publish MacYTDL in a disk image file. Versions released in a Zip archive caused the Update MacYTDL function to crash.
Updates to the localisations (using Google Translate). Also, some words in drop-down boxes are now localised.
Dialogs and response files now include the name of more YouTube playlists.
Minor changes to layout of some dialogs.
Fixed the problem in which some partly downloaded files were not deleted when download was stopped.
Clicking on the “Help” button should now show the Help file instead of causing an error.
MacYTDL copes more elegantly when the Service is called while any dialog other than the Main Dialog is showing.
Monitor should no longer crash when progress is reported in GiB instead of MiB.
A “User cancelled” dialog is no longer shown when the “Download might not have completed” dialog is cancelled.
Version 1.17.b.1 - alpha test
Test copy of v1.17 with new proxy setting implemented, restructured code, debugged SBS/ABC Choosers and changes to Service. This version has the old Help file.
Most likely there are bugs in the new proxy settings – as the Developer has no proxy facility to enable testing. Any feedback would be welcome.
Version 1.16 – New options and bug fixes
Version 1.16 adds new options and more bug fixes:
New option to limit download speed – download rate specified in MB/sec.
Does not work if downloading is delegated to FFmpeg e.g. some HLS downloads
New option to download auto-generated subtitles (or “captions”) from YouTube.
MacYTDL respects youtube-dl behaviour – if both author and auto-generated subtitles are available, author is downloaded.
Australian SBS “OnDemand” show pages are now parsed – provides a list of episodes from which to choose.
Implemented Spanish localisation.
Main, Utilities and Settings dialogs reformatted to more suit Spanish.
New option to set the codec format for audio-only downloads.
Audio format options removed from File format chooser as they are not supported by youtube-dl.
Container can now be remuxed when audio-only is specified. However, audio codec is automatically changed to be compatible with the container.
MacYTDL can now be renamed without crashing e.g. “MacYTDL v1.16”. However, not all functions perform ideally so, it's best not to change the name.
Better handling of YouTube playlists.
Simulate stage waits till end of simulation before reporting errors.
Playlist name shown in response file name, Monitor dialog and Adviser dialog for most downloads.
The “Adviser” script, when requested, opens the user’s default text editor instead of TextEdit.
Removed duplicated code which checked for install of youtube-dl and FFmpeg.
Better handling of warnings and errors in the simulation step.
Handles more gently attempts to download from the Australian 7Plus, 10play and 9Now show pages.
Monitor dialog more often shows name of download instead of “the-error” or “the-warning”.
“avi” and “mkv” removed from File format chooser as they are not supported by youtube-dl.
Minor code changes to reduce errors.
Utilities dialog should work properly for users who install a custom brewed version of FFmpeg.
“IOError: CRC check failed” cases handled more elegantly.
Version 1.15 – Bug fixes
This release fixes some localisation mistakes and some bugs especially in the youtube-dl and FFmpeg installs. youtube-dl is now sourced from GitHub. The release also tests changes to improve usage in dual monitor setups.
Version 1.14.3 – FFmpeg update/install fix again
FFmpeg should now reliably install or update.
Users with system language set to German or Italian might notice some dialogs are translated from English. This indicates under-the-hood work to implement localization. Please send raise an issue is this causes any problems.
Version 1.14.2 – Expired certificate workaround
Due to an expired external CA root certificate, attempting to download the youtube-dl executable caused an error in "curl". For this release the SSL verification in curl has been suppressed. A permanent fix would involve Apple releasing an updated version of curl. For MacYTDL, the download source might be moved from yt-dl.org to GitHub.
Version 1.14.1 – Urgent bug fixes
Collection of urgent and other bug fixes:
All dialogs should now respect dark mode settings.
Subtitles downloads now works when more than one format of subtitles is available for download.
Debugging dialog removed from “Check for MacYTDL update”.
Using batch functions no longer causes errors.
Under the hood changes to facilitate localization in a future version.
Version 1.14 – Progress meter and bug fixes
Changes to the Monitor dialog:
Now reports on download progress with either percentage of total or amount downloaded so far.
Also reports time elapsed since start of download.
Has been relocated to the top right hand corner of the Desktop.
Has smaller and realigned text to be less intrusive.
“Downloads” button removed.
Adviser dialog should no longer show error text when user chooses to download despite the error.
Updating the youtube-dl python script should no longer encounter an “internal server error”.
When an http error is reported user is advised to try again later.
“Operation not permitted” error when installing FFmpeg should no longer occur.
Was caused in certain macOS Catalina installs when the Desktop folder was protected.
FFmpeg is now installed from Zip file downloaded to “usr/local/bin”.
Utilities dialog can now install FFmpeg when it has not yet been installed.
Fixed anomaly in Atomic Parsley installation if user decides to install FFmpeg later on.
Version 1.13 – fix for default downloads folder
A single bug fix. Default downloads folder caused an error on some Macs. This release should fix that.
Version 1.13 – Bug fixes and under the hood improvements
Successive Monitor dialogs are now positioned on the screen so that they do not completely obscure each other.
“Download complete” message now shows correctly for playlists.
Should no longer crash downloading a playlist when an item is not available.
The check for existing downloads should be more accurate.
The MacYTDL Service, Send-URL-To-MacYTDL, now only shows in web browsers.
The MacYTDL Service now works in Microsoft Edge.
Monitor dialog text is smaller to enable more to be shown on screen at same time.
iView single episode show downloads no longer have duplicated names (was due to series and episode name being the same).
The “--restrict-filenames” parameter removed from all calls to youtube-dl. Was causing problems with special characters that were needed in file names etc.
Monitor “Stop” function now removes partially downloaded files from playlists.
Monitor “Stop” function now removes partially downloaded files which have names ending in “-2”.
A new function added asks user what to do if download video already exists. Choices are for existing file to be deleted and a new copy downloaded; new download to have a different name; or to cancel the download.
The “--prefer-ffmpeg” parameter removed from all calls to youtube-dl. Was unnecessary as it’s the default and MacYTDL currently provides no alternative.
The “Check for MacYTDL update” function now downloads the latest version successfully.
MacYTDL will no longer display a notice when the download file name contains the word “warning”.
A new function added to check that user’s preferred file format is available for download. If not, user can ask to: download the best format available; download best format and remux to preferred format; or cancel the download.
The Batch file is cleared if videos were downloaded and no errors reported.
MacYTDL warns if any errors were reported with a download whether or not the download completed successfully.
The file extension of a “description” file saved for a video is changed from “.description” to “.txt” when download folder path name has spaces.
Version 1.12.1 - Bug fixes
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer now works more often – again.
Warning that subtitles are not available is more accurate for multiple downloads.
MacYTDL warns when preferred subtitles language is not available and provides a list of languages which are available.
Version 1.12 – Mostly bug fixes
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer now works (bug was hard coded file names) – again.
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer on first run of MacYTDL now works better and should produce fewer errors.
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer uses the downloads folder. Error when that folder is not available has been fixed.
Improved layout of Utilities dialog including showing current versions of youtube-dl and FFmpeg.
Previously, when the MacYTDL Service was automatically updated an old copy already in Trash would cause an error. That has been fixed.
Improved logic for downloading subtitles. See Help for more detail.
Error caused by dismissing admin credentials during youtube-dl install no longer occurs.
User can now request subtitles in “lrc” and “dfxp” format.
MacYTDL Service now works with the Chrome and Chromium browsers.
Past download URLs should no longer affect new downloads.
Changed call to youtube-dl to reduce error in which youtube-dl interprets single quotes around URLs as double-quotes. Now only using single quotes when URL contains an ampersand, “&”.
“Check for MacYTDL Updates” now reports when user has current version.
Updates to youtube-dl are now downloaded using the more secure “https” instead of “http” protocol.
“Show settings” function now works when user requests existing copy of video download to be overwritten.
Fixed Blank line in “Show Settings” dialog when AtomicParsley not installed.
Adviser dialog now shows in all cases – previously did not show when user’s volume name had a space e.g. “Macintosh HD”.
“.description” files are not renamed to “.txt” when there are two or more downloads in one process.
Version 1.11 – Bug fixes and new features
FFmpeg and FFprobe installer now works (bug was hard coded file names).
“Show download settings before starting download” no longer causes a crash (bug was a “B” instead of a “b”).
If user repositions the main window the new position is saved and used when the window is opened again in the same session or future sessions.
Dialog Toolkit Plus customised and renamed to DialogToolkitMacYTDL
MacYTDL is Notarized and Code Signed.
MacYTDL moved to GitHub – “About” box and Help file updated.
Function to check for new versions of MacYTDL and download if user wishes.
Version 1.10.1
• FFmpeg install now downloads Zip format file instead of dmg.
• MacYTDL dmg file is formatted MacOS Extended instead of APFS.
• Better coding practice might increase speed slightly.
• Should be no errors on first run.
Version 1.10
• Simplified and renamed dialogs.
• New "Show settings before downloading" function.
• Bug fixes:ABC iView shows dialog improved; iView "Extras" available for download, embedding subtitles should work, enabled "Keep original file" function to apply to subtitles file.
Version 1.9
• Code signing added.
• New version of browser service.
• Bug fixes:ABC iView URLs should all work; URLs with unusual endings should work; path to downloads folder can have spaces and special characters.