MacYT
ProductivityMar 2026Download video and audio from any URL: no terminal required.
Why I built this
I use yt-dlp constantly, saving conference talks, podcast episodes, and music for offline listening. But every time, it meant opening a terminal, remembering flags, and checking available formats. I wanted a native Mac app that made downloading simple: paste a URL, pick your options, and save.
There are a few GUI wrappers out there, but none of them felt like a real Mac app. MacYT is free, open-source, built with SwiftUI, runs natively on macOS, and looks like it belongs on your dock.
yt-dlp GUI features and download options
Downloading video and audio from any supported URL
Paste any URL supported by yt-dlp: YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and hundreds more. Choose to download the full video or extract just the audio in MP3 with configurable bitrate presets: Best, 320k, 256k, 192k, or 128k.
Format selection and custom quality controls
Pick the exact video format and quality you want before downloading. No more guessing what -f bestvideo+bestaudio actually gives you.
Subtitle downloading and automatic format conversion
Download subtitles, including auto-generated tracks, and convert between SRT and VTT formats automatically.
SponsorBlock integration to skip in-video ads
Mark or remove sponsored segments from YouTube videos. No more manually scrubbing past ads in downloaded content.
Embedding metadata, thumbnails, and chapter splitting
Embed metadata, chapters, and thumbnails into your downloaded files. Split downloads into separate files by chapter if you prefer individual tracks.
Sparkle auto-updates without manual downloads
Built-in auto-update mechanism via Sparkle. You will always have the latest version without checking GitHub manually.
Quick start
- Download the DMG from GitHub Releases
- Make sure yt-dlp is installed (
brew install yt-dlp) - Launch MacYT, paste a URL, and hit download
Downloads go to ~/Downloads/MacYT/ by default. You can change the output directory in settings.
Local security and privacy
MacYT is a local-only app. It shells out to yt-dlp on your machine to do the actual downloading. No accounts, no analytics, no telemetry. The only network requests are to the sites you're downloading from and to check for app updates.