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 1.18b2 – Beta test – 17/5/21

This has a fix for the Batch Download bug and updated "Show settings before download" dialog.

Version 1.18 – Beta test

Has new features and bug fixes. Still has bugs though. Changes are listed in the version history.

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 1.17 – 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 1.16.1 - Bug fixes

This release is all bug fixes:

• Restored post-processor argument to speed up remuxes by FFMpeg. Remuxes now copy the audio and video codecs to the desired container rather than decoding and re-encoding (which takes a considerable amount of time). Note, that this can result in audio or video codecs which are not playable with macOS Quick Look and other software.
• The DialogToolkitMacYTDL script library is now updated automatically as necessary.
• Using the “Delete logs” function in Utilities should no longer cause a crash when there are a large number of files.
• Users who do not have a display connected to their Mac will be able to run MacYTDL.
• Some dialog buttons are smaller to more closely match the amount of text in the button label.
• Auto subscripts and download speed limit settings now shown in the “Show settings before download” dialog.

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 1.15.b.1 – Localisation and yet more bug fixes

This is a beta test release. Implementing localisation involved over 400 lines of code. So, there must be bugs I've not found. Please report any bugs on GitHub or send an email to macytdl@gmail.com.

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.