averygan/reclip

Download videos from almost any website. Lightweight, self-hosted media downloader with a clean web UI

Summary

ReClip is a self-hosted video and audio downloader with a small Flask backend and a vanilla HTML/CSS/JavaScript interface. It uses yt-dlp and ffmpeg to support YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter/X, and other sites, while providing MP4 or MP3 output, quality selection, bulk downloads, and URL deduplication.

What it is useful for

ReClip gives engineers a local web tool for saving media from websites handled by yt-dlp. A practical example is pasting several YouTube or TikTok links, fetching their information and thumbnails, choosing MP4 for video or MP3 for audio, and downloading each result or the whole batch. The quality picker is useful when a source exposes multiple resolutions.

It is also a compact example of building a service around yt-dlp: the README describes a roughly 150-line Python/Flask backend, a single-file frontend with no build step, and only Flask and yt-dlp as dependencies. That makes the project approachable as a small self-hosted utility or a reference implementation for a more specific workflow. The README says support extends to 1,000+ sites through yt-dlp, including Reddit, Vimeo, Twitch, SoundCloud, Loom, Pinterest, Tumblr, Threads, and LinkedIn.

The README documents personal use only and asks users to respect copyright law and each platform’s terms of service. Availability and available formats also depend on what the source site and yt-dlp support.

How engineers can use it

The project displays a Python 3.8+ badge and gives two setup paths.

For a local installation, install yt-dlp and ffmpeg, then run the repository script:

brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg    # or apt install ffmpeg && pip install yt-dlp
git clone https://github.com/averygan/reclip.git
cd reclip
./reclip.sh

Open http://localhost:8899 after the server starts. In the UI, paste one or more URLs, choose MP4 or MP3, click Fetch, select a quality/resolution if available, and click Download or Download All.

If you prefer a container, the README documents:

docker build -t reclip . && docker run -p 8899:8899 reclip

For production or team use, verify the sites you need are supported by yt-dlp and review the personal-use and copyright guidance before deploying. The README does not specify authentication, persistent storage, scheduling, or a public API, so engineers would need to design those pieces separately rather than assume they are included.