YAYVD (Yet Another Youtube Video Downloader)

YAYVD is a developer-friendly Ruby wrapper for yt-dlp. It simplifies the process of downloading videos and audio from YouTube, providing a clean Ruby API while leveraging the power and stability of yt-dlp.

Designed for both Humans (simple API, sensible defaults) and AI Agents (structured metadata, predictable errors).

• Simple API: Download video or audio with a single line of code.
• Smart Audio: Automatically extracts high-quality audio, converts to MP3, and embeds metadata (Artist, Title, Cover Art).
• Rich Metadata: Fetch video details (views, duration, upload date) without downloading the file.
• Reliable: Built on top of yt-dlp, the industry standard for video extraction.
• Configurable: Customize paths and binary locations easily.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'yayvd'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

YAYVD requires yt-dlp and ffmpeg (for audio conversion) to be installed on your system.

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install yt-dlp ffmpeg

Python (Universal):

pip install yt-dlp

require 'yayvd'

# Initialize with a YouTube URL
video = Yayvd::Video.new("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ")

# 1. Get Metadata (Fast, no download)
info = video.info
puts "Title: #{info.title}"       # => "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up"
puts "Views: #{info.views}"       # => 123456789
puts "Date:  #{info.upload_date}" # => <Date: 2009-10-25>

# 2. Download Audio (High Quality MP3 + Metadata + Cover Art)
# Saves to current directory by default
video.download_audio

# 3. Download Video (Best Quality MP4)
video.download_video

You can configure download paths and binary locations globally:

Yayvd.configure do |config|
  config.default_download_path = "/home/user/Downloads"
  config.yt_dlp_path = "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp" # Optional: Custom binary path
end

video.download_audio(path: "/tmp/music")
video.download_video(path: "/tmp/videos")

If you are an AI agent using this library, here is the mental model:

1. Class: Yayvd::Video is the main entry point.
2. Initialization: Yayvd::Video.new(url) is lightweight. It does not make network requests.
3. Metadata: .info returns an OpenStruct. It caches the result, so calling it multiple times is safe.
4. Blocking: .download_audio and .download_video are blocking operations. They shell out to yt-dlp.
5. Errors:
   • Yayvd::ExecutionError: Raised if yt-dlp fails (e.g., invalid URL, network error).
   • Yayvd::Error::Messages::YT_DLP_NOT_FOUND: Raised if the binary is missing.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/Lusqinha/YAYVD.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.