2.7 KiB
shellTube is a collection of (pretty POSIX) shell scripts to browse YouTube quickly, efficiently, and without the bloat most command-line clients require.
shellTube is written in pure shell; its only dependencies are any modern shell (pdksh, bash, zsh), curl/wget, and vlc/mplayer/kaffeine.
Even these dependencies, though, can easily be changed. If, for example, you don't have vlc, you can just modify a single line and be good-to-go using another player.
Also, shellTube doesn't use the YouTube API at all. This avoids the annoying red-tapey stuff that goes with it -- IDs, registration, quotas -- but has some disadvantages. We'll power through the downsides, though! :)
Usage
shellTube is quite simple to use; this tutorial will go over
the usage of the wrapper script, shelltube.
When running the script, you'll see a prompt:
>>
In this prompt you can type any of the following commands:
| (short) command syntax | description |
|---|---|
(!) about |
View the about page. |
(cls) clear |
Clear the screen. |
(dl) download [URL] |
Download the selected/specified video. |
exit |
Exit Shelltube. |
(?) help |
Display this message. |
(md) metadata [URL] |
Display selected/specified video's metadata. |
(//) playlist URL playlist ID |
View playlist based on URL or ID. |
(/) search TERM |
Perform a search for TERM. |
(str) stream [URL] |
Stream the selected/specified video. |
(sel) video URL video ID |
Select video based on URL or ID. |
In [brackets], optional arguments are written.
You can use shellTube in one of two ways (or both):
- By selecting a video and then doing something with it
- By doing something and specifying the video
Method A entails using either the video or search
command to select a video, which will then be displayed
before the prompt like so:
$VIDEO-ID-HERE >>
When a video is selected, you use the download, stream,
or metadata commands without arguments to act on the
video.
Method B entails just using the download, stream, or
metadata commands while using a URL or video ID as an
argument.
For example:
>> download $VIDEO-ID-HERE
You could opt to not use this interactive wrapper script and
instead just use the yt-down, yt-search, and
yt-metadata scripts on their own.
They are each pretty simple, and you can read their USAGE messages at the top of each script.
Licensing
All of ST is released under the ISC license.
Except for the yt-down script, which is released under the
GPLv2.