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https://github.com/grastello/ytel

Youtube "front-end" for Emacs
https://github.com/grastello/ytel

emacs youtube youtube-search

Last synced: 3 months ago
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Youtube "front-end" for Emacs

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# ytel

`ytel` is an experimental YouTube "frontend" for Emacs. It's goal is to allow the user to collect the results of a YouTube search in an elfeed-like buffer and then manipulate them with Emacs Lisp. The gif below shows that `ytel` can be used to play videos in an external player, to learn how to emulate it refer to the [usage](#usage) section below.





  




This project was inspired by [elfeed](https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed/) and [Invidious](https://github.com/omarroth/invidious) (it does indeed use the Invidious APIs).



## Installation

This project is on [MELPA](https://melpa.org/): you should be able to `M-x package-install RET ytel`. Another option is to clone this repository under your `load-path`.



### Dependencies

While `ytel` does not depend on any Emacs package it does depend on `curl` so, if you happen not to have it, install it through your package manager (meme distros aside it is probably in your repos).



## Usage

Once everything is loaded `M-x ytel` creates a new buffer and puts it in `ytel-mode`. This major mode has just a few bindings (for now):



| key          | binding                     |

|--------------|-----------------------------|

| n | `next-line`                 |

| p | `previous-line`             |

| q | `ytel-quit`                 |

| s | `ytel-search`               |

| > | `ytel-search-next-page`     |

| < | `ytel-search-previous-page` |



Pressing `s` will prompt for some search terms and populate the buffer once the results are available. One can access information about a video via the function `ytel-get-current-video` that returns the video at point. Videos returned by `ytel-get-current-video` are cl-structures so you can access their fields with the `ytel-video-*` functions. Currently videos have four fields:



| field       | description                                |

|-------------|--------------------------------------------|

| `id`        | the video's id                             |

| `title`     | the video's title                          |

| `author`    | name of the author of the video            |

| `authorId`  | id of the channel that updated the video   |

| `length`    | length of the video in seconds             |

| `views`     | number of views                            |

| `published` | date of publication (unix-style timestamp) |



With this information we can implement a function to stream a video in `mpv` (provided you have `youtube-dl` installed) as follows:

```elisp

(defun ytel-watch ()

    "Stream video at point in mpv."

    (interactive)

    (let* ((video (ytel-get-current-video))

     	   (id    (ytel-video-id video)))

      (start-process "ytel mpv" nil

		     "mpv"

		     (concat "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" id))

		     "--ytdl-format=bestvideo[height<=?720]+bestaudio/best")

      (message "Starting streaming..."))

```



And bind it to a key in `ytel-mode` with

```elisp

(define-key ytel-mode-map "y" #'ytel-watch)

```



This is of course just an example. You can similarly implement functions to:

- open a video in the browser,

- download a video,

- download just the audio of a video,



by relying on the correct external tool.



It is also possible to customize the sorting criterion of the results by setting the variable `ytel-sort-criterion` to one of the following symbols `relevance`, `rating`, `upload_date` or `view_count`.

The default value is `relevance`.



## Potential problems and potential fixes

`ytel` does not use the official YouTube APIs but relies on the [Invidious](https://github.com/omarroth/invidious) APIs (that in turn circumvent YouTube ones). The variable `ytel-invidious-api-url` points to the invidious instance (by default `https://invidio.us`) to use; you might not need to ever touch this, but if [invidio.us](https://invidio.us) goes down keep in mind that you can choose [another instance](https://github.com/omarroth/invidious#invidious-instances). Moreover the default Invidious instance is generally speaking stable, but sometimes your `ytel-search` might hang; in that case `C-g` and retry.



Currently some wide unicode characters (such as Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters) are *very likely* to mess up the `*ytel*` buffer. The messing up is not that bad but things will not be perfectly aligned. Fixing this problem will most likely require a rewrite of how the ytel buffer is actually drawn. We're (somewhat) working on it.



## Extra

There's an [extension](https://github.com/xFA25E/ytel-show) to browse comments and video information.



## Contributing

Feel free to open an issue or send a pull request. I'm quite new to writing Emacs packages so any help is appreciated.



## FAQ



#### Why?

One can easily subscribe to YouTube channels via an RSS feed and access it in Emacs via [elfeed](https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed/) but sometimes I want to search YouTube for videos of people I don't necessarily follow (e.g. for searching a tutorial, or music, or wasting some good time) and being able to do that without switching to a browser is nice.



#### What about [helm-youtube](https://github.com/maximus12793/helm-youtube) and [ivy-youtube](https://github.com/squiter/ivy-youtube)?

First of all those packages require you to get a Google API key, while `ytel` uses the [Invidious](https://github.com/omarroth/invidious) APIs that in turn do not use the official Google APIs.



Moreover those packages are designed to select a YouTube search result and play it directly in your browser while `ytel` is really a way to collect search results in an `elfeed`-like buffer and make them accessible to the user via functions such as `ytel-get-current-video` so the user gets to decide what to to with them.