This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by oheyek
Hello Devs! 👋
We've all been there. You need to download a video for offline viewing or archiving. You search on Google, click on the first result, and...
🚨 Popups everywhere.
🚨 "Allow notifications to continue."
🚨 Sketchy redirects.
I recently faced a challenge: I needed to create a practical application for my Engineering Thesis (Bachelor's final project). I didn't want to build something that would just sit in a drawer. I wanted to solve a real annoyance.
So, I combined my academic requirements with a practical solution and built VidGrabber – an open-source tool written in Python to grab videos easily.
🚀 What is VidGrabber?
VidGrabber is a desktop utility that allows you to download videos from popular platforms. It was designed as a diploma project to demonstrate Python capabilities in handling media streams and GUI applications.
No ads, no tracking, just code.
oheyek
/
VidGrabber
Desktop application for downloading and processing YouTube content
VidGrabber
A powerful desktop application for downloading and processing YouTube content with an intuitive interface.
✨ Features
- Multi-Format Downloads: Download videos (MP4), audio (MP3/WAV), thumbnails (JPG), and tags (CSV).
- Quality Selection: Choose from available video qualities (144p to 2160p) with automatic detection.
- Queue Management: Add multiple downloads to queue and process them in batch (up to 5 concurrent downloads).
- Smart Path Management: Customize download locations for each file type with persistent settings.
- Theme Customization: Switch between Dark, Light, and System themes.
- Tag Extraction: Extract video tags and copy them directly to clipboard.
- Cross-Platform: Works seamlessly on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- Auto-Updates: Automatically downloads and updates yt-dlp and ffmpeg binaries.
- Progress Tracking: Real-time download progress with visual indicators.
🛠️ Installation
Using the Pre-built Release
- Download the appropriate executable for your platform from
the Releases page
- Windows:
VidGrabber.exe - macOS:
VidGrabber-macOS.zip - Linux:
VidGrabber-Linux.tar.gz
- Windows:
- Extract…
🛠️ Tech Stack
Since this was an engineering project, I focused on clean structure and efficiency:
- Language: Python 3.x 🐍
- Core:
yt-dlp(for robust video extraction) - GUI:
customtkinter(for a modern look) /tkinter
✨ Key Features
- User-Friendly Interface: Designed to be intuitive (a key requirement for my thesis).
- High Quality: Downloads the best available resolution.
- Audio Extraction: Option to grab just the audio (MP3).
- Open Source: Fully transparent code.
💻 How to run it
If you want to test my thesis project, you can clone the repo and run it locally.
-
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/oheyek/VidGrabber.git cd VidGrabber -
Install dependencies:
pip install -r requirements.txt -
Run the app:
python main.py
🤝 Contributions
Even though the thesis is the main milestone, I'd love to keep this project alive! If you have ideas for improvements, feel free to:
- Fork the repository.
- Create a feature branch.
- Submit a Pull Request!
🔗 Links
- GitHub Repo: https://github.com/oheyek/VidGrabber
If you find this tool useful or just want to support a student/developer, please consider starring the repo ⭐ on GitHub. It really helps!
Thanks for reading! Happy coding! 💻
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by oheyek
oheyek | Sciencx (2025-11-27T11:11:22+00:00) I built a Python Video Downloader for my Engineering Thesis 🎓🎥. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/11/27/i-built-a-python-video-downloader-for-my-engineering-thesis-%f0%9f%8e%93%f0%9f%8e%a5/
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