yoinks

yoink any video. paste. yoink. done.

Download videos from YouTube, X/Twitter, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and 1,800+ other sites — right from your terminal. Paste a url, pick a resolution (or audio-only mp3), done. No popups, no fake download buttons, no sketchy redirects.

Install

npm install -g yoinks

Or try it without installing anything:

npx yoinks

Requires Node 18+. Everything else (yt-dlp, ffmpeg) is fetched or bundled automatically.

Usage

$ yoinks https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ    # straight to the format picker
$ yoinks                                 # prompts for a url
$ yoinks --theme light                   # force the light palette

yoinks takes over the terminal (full-screen, centered — and restores your scrollback on exit). Pick a format with ↑/↓ (or j/k, or number keys) and hit enter. esc goes back, ^c quits. Or just use the mouse — the yoink button, the format list and the footer hints are all clickable, and clicking the logo takes you back home. Files are saved to ~/Downloads, and the file path is printed to your terminal when you're done.

The default auto theme uses your terminal's own foreground and background, so it follows light and dark terminal themes without guessing. Press ^t or click the theme control in the footer to cycle through auto, light, and dark for the current session. Use --theme auto, --theme light, or --theme dark to choose the starting theme for one launch.

How it works

• Powered by yt-dlp. On first run, yoinks downloads the standalone yt-dlp binary to ~/.yoinks/bin — no Python required. If you already have yt-dlp installed, it uses yours.
• ffmpeg (needed for merging high-res streams and mp3 extraction) is found on your PATH, with ffmpeg-static as a bundled fallback.
• The UI is Ink — React for the terminal.

Development

npm install
npm run build        # bundle to dist/ with tsup
npm run dev          # rebuild on change
node dist/cli.js <url>
npm run typecheck

To try it as a global command without publishing: npm link, then run yoinks anywhere.

Roadmap

• --best / --mp3 flags to skip the picker (scriptable mode)
• -o <dir> to choose the output folder
• Playlist / thread-with-multiple-videos support
• Clipboard detection: launch bare and auto-suggest the url you copied
• Self-update for the bundled yt-dlp binary (yt-dlp -U)
• Publish to npm (npm i -g yoinks / npx yoinks)
• curl yoinks.sh | sh installer

A note on fair use

yoinks is a personal-archiving tool. Downloading content may violate a platform's terms of service — only download what you have the right to keep, and be excellent to creators.

License

MIT