I'm Elior, a video editor. Every week, I need to grab something from YouTube, whether it's a sound effect, a music track, or a video clip. I also like having a few videos available offline, for instance, when I'm on a plane.
At first, I used online YouTube downloaders to get these assets, but I quickly realized their limitations: tons of ads, countdown timers before the download starts, and getting whatever quality they decided to provide...
After some digging, I found the best downloader out there: yt-dlp. This open-source, actively maintained tool is incredibly powerful, so it quickly became a staple of my daily workflow. However, I'm not a huge fan of CLI tools. I can never seem to remember the commands or the syntax, to be honest lol! That's why I used Apple's Shortcuts app to create a shortcut that downloads whatever link is currently in my clipboard.
I used that setup for over a year, but as I learned more about development and agentic coding tools improved, I thought: why not build my own tool?
I really love Apple apps: their design and, above all, their system integration. That's why I chose Swift and SwiftUI to build this front-end for yt-dlp. I included all the features I considered essential, since I'm my own primary daily user.
And so, TBD (To Be Downloaded) was born. It's a native app with a minimalist design. No ads, no sign-ups, it's truly the YouTube downloader that just works. It also seems right to me to release this application as open source, given that the engine is.
I look forward to your feedback, and please don't hesitate to contribute to the app's development by creating issues or PRs on GitHub.
Hi HN,
I'm Elior, a video editor. Every week, I need to grab something from YouTube, whether it's a sound effect, a music track, or a video clip. I also like having a few videos available offline, for instance, when I'm on a plane.
At first, I used online YouTube downloaders to get these assets, but I quickly realized their limitations: tons of ads, countdown timers before the download starts, and getting whatever quality they decided to provide...
After some digging, I found the best downloader out there: yt-dlp. This open-source, actively maintained tool is incredibly powerful, so it quickly became a staple of my daily workflow. However, I'm not a huge fan of CLI tools. I can never seem to remember the commands or the syntax, to be honest lol! That's why I used Apple's Shortcuts app to create a shortcut that downloads whatever link is currently in my clipboard.
I used that setup for over a year, but as I learned more about development and agentic coding tools improved, I thought: why not build my own tool?
I really love Apple apps: their design and, above all, their system integration. That's why I chose Swift and SwiftUI to build this front-end for yt-dlp. I included all the features I considered essential, since I'm my own primary daily user.
And so, TBD (To Be Downloaded) was born. It's a native app with a minimalist design. No ads, no sign-ups, it's truly the YouTube downloader that just works. It also seems right to me to release this application as open source, given that the engine is.
I look forward to your feedback, and please don't hesitate to contribute to the app's development by creating issues or PRs on GitHub.
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