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Video and audio

yoinks

by pablostanley

yoinks is a command-line tool that downloads videos from YouTube, X/Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and more than 1,800 other sites. You paste a link, choose a resolution or audio-only MP3, and it saves the file to your Downloads folder.

Worth a lookEstablished, with a few things to check (listed below).

View on GitHub

Stars
6.3k
Licence
MIT
Runs on
Your computer
Setup
Easy
Language
TypeScript
Age
103 days

What you can do with it

  • Download a video from a pasted link at a resolution you choose
  • Extract audio-only MP3 files from online videos
  • Switch between light and dark terminal themes, using the keyboard or mouse

Make money with it

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An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.

Ways a business could use it

  • Save your own published videos from social platforms to keep local backups of your content
  • Download footage you have permission to use, such as client or partner material, for editing offline

Can you use it commercially?

Free to use, change and sell, including in paid products. Keep the copyright notice.

Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.

Getting it running

Install it with `npm install -g yoinks` or run it with `npx yoinks`; it needs Node 18+ and fetches yt-dlp and ffmpeg automatically.

Follow the official instructions in the project README.

Things to check

  • Downloading videos may breach the terms of service of the platforms involved
  • Copyright risk if you download content you do not have the right to keep or reuse
  • Relies on yt-dlp, which can break when sites change
  • No options yet to choose the output folder, download playlists or use scriptable flags

Who's talking about it

Checked 27 Oct 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.

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