How to Download YouTube Videos on Mac via Keyboard Shortcut with Youtube-dl

Youtube-dl is an awesome tool that lets you download videos from the most popular video platforms. When we combine it with Mac’s Automator we can set a keyboard shortcut to download the video we currently have open in our browser tab.

Requirements:

• homebrew – a nice packet manager
• youtube-dl – to download videos
• ffmpeg – to transcode files
• recommended: nodejs, osx-notifier*

*used for nice notifications in user interface

In Terminal, run:

brew install youtube-dl ffmpeg node; npm install -g osx-notifier

Next, open the Automator app on Mac and create a new service. Then from the Actions library choose Utilities and Run Applescript.

Change Service receives dropdown to no input and paste the script below into the Run AppleScript area.

on run {input, parameters}
	
	tell application "Safari" to set currentTab to current tab of window 1
	tell application "Safari" to set currentURL to URL of currentTab
	tell application "Safari" to set currentTitle to name of currentTab
	tell application "Finder" to set homeFolder to path to home folder
	do shell script "/usr/local/bin/node /usr/local/lib/node_modules/osx-notifier/bin/osx-notifier.js --type info --title \"Video Download\" --subtitle \"New video download started\" --message " & quoted form of currentTitle
	do shell script "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl -o \"" & POSIX path of homeFolder & "Desktop/%(title)s.%(ext)s\" --ffmpeg-location /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg --recode-video mp4 " & currentURL
	do shell script "/usr/local/bin/node /usr/local/lib/node_modules/osx-notifier/bin/osx-notifier.js --type pass --title \"Video Download\" --subtitle \"Video download successful\" --message " & quoted form of currentTitle
	
	return input
end run

Once you’re done you can save the service, I chose Download video using youtube-dl as the name.

Next we need to bind the service to a keyboard shortcut. This is very handy as we’ll just need to hit the keyboard shortcut in the browser with a YouTube video open to kickstart the download service.

Open up System Preferences then Keyboard.

Within the keyboard preferences pane click the Shortcuts tab. Then select Services from the left pane and make sure the service you created earlier is checked in the right pane. All that’s left is to select a preferred keyboard shortcut, which is entirely up to your preference. I chose [ctrl] + [alt] + [cmd] + [D].

Hope you found that useful. Automator really is a nifty tool and I look forward to experimenting with it in other ways in the future.