MeTube

MeTube is a self-hosted web UI for yt-dlp. Paste a link from YouTube or hundreds of other sites, and it downloads to your server:

• Video, audio, subtitles and thumbnails — from single videos, whole playlists or entire channels.
• Subscriptions to channels and playlists, which queue new uploads as they appear.
• Per-download choices of quality, format and folder, plus server-wide yt-dlp options and presets.

📖 Guides, recipes and a troubleshooting FAQ live in the wiki — many feature requests are already a recipe there, so check it before filing one.

Quick start

docker run -d -p 8081:8081 -v /path/to/downloads:/downloads ghcr.io/alexta69/metube

Or with Docker Compose:

services:
  metube:
    image: ghcr.io/alexta69/metube
    container_name: metube
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8081:8081"
    volumes:
      - /path/to/downloads:/downloads

Then open http://<host>:8081 in your browser. Images are multi-arch (amd64/arm64), and also published on Docker Hub as alexta69/metube.

Configuration

MeTube is configured with environment variables: -e NAME=value on the docker run command line, or the environment: section in Compose. Defaults are the Docker image's; outside Docker, the directories default to the working directory.

Runtime and permissions

Variable	Default	Description
PUID / PGID	1000	User and group MeTube runs as and writes files with. Legacy UID/GID also work.
UMASK	022	Umask for the files MeTube creates.
CHOWN_DIRS	true	Make PUID:PGID the owner of the download, state and temp directories at startup. With false, MeTube's user must already have access.
LOGLEVEL	INFO	DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL or NONE.
ENABLE_ACCESSLOG	false	Log every HTTP request.
DEFAULT_THEME	auto	UI theme: light, dark, or auto to follow the system.

Downloads

Variable	Default	Description
MAX_CONCURRENT_DOWNLOADS	3	Downloads that run at once; the rest wait their turn.
DEFAULT_OPTION_PLAYLIST_ITEM_LIMIT	0	Default for the Items Limit field: how many entries of a playlist or channel to download (0 = all).
CLEAR_COMPLETED_AFTER	0	Seconds before finished and failed downloads leave the Completed list (0 = never).
DELETE_FILE_ON_TRASHCAN	false	Also delete the file from disk when its entry is removed from Completed. ask prompts each time.
SUBSCRIPTION_DEFAULT_CHECK_INTERVAL	60	Default minutes between checks of a subscription.
SUBSCRIPTION_SCAN_PLAYLIST_END	50	Newest entries fetched each time a subscription is checked.
SUBSCRIPTION_MAX_SEEN_IDS	50000	Video IDs remembered per subscription, to bound the state file's size.

Directories

Variable	Default	Description
DOWNLOAD_DIR	/downloads	Where downloads are saved.
AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR	same as DOWNLOAD_DIR	Where audio-only downloads are saved, to keep them apart from video.
TEMP_DIR	/downloads	Where files are written while downloading. An SSD or tmpfs is faster, but on a RAM disk interrupted downloads can't resume.
STATE_DIR	/downloads/.metube	Where MeTube keeps its queue, history, subscriptions and uploaded cookies.
CUSTOM_DIRS	true	Show a Download Folder field under Advanced Options, to save into a subfolder of the download directory.
CREATE_CUSTOM_DIRS	true	Let that field create folders that don't exist yet.
CUSTOM_DIRS_EXCLUDE_REGEX	(^|/)[.@].*$	Folders left out of the field's suggestions; the default hides names starting with . or @. Empty hides none.
DEFAULT_FOLDER		Folder the field starts with, relative to the download directory. Requires CUSTOM_DIRS.
DOWNLOAD_DIRS_INDEXABLE	false	Serve browsable listings of the download directories.

File naming

Templates use yt-dlp's output template syntax. How MeTube applies them is explained in Output templates.

Variable	Default	Description
OUTPUT_TEMPLATE	%(title)s.%(ext)s	Filename for downloads.
OUTPUT_TEMPLATE_PLAYLIST	%(playlist_title)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s	Filename for items added from a playlist. Empty means OUTPUT_TEMPLATE.
OUTPUT_TEMPLATE_CHANNEL	%(channel)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s	Filename for items added from a channel. Empty means OUTPUT_TEMPLATE.
OUTPUT_TEMPLATE_CHAPTER	%(title)s - %(section_number)02d - %(section_title)s.%(ext)s	Default filename for each chapter when Split by chapters is on.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗