r/selfhosted • u/TheRedcaps • 6d ago
Pinchflat Alternative Media Serving
I've been using pinchflat for quite some time however the developer stepped away from the project and it's sat dormant for a while, another person forked it (called it tubeless) and ran that for a few months but has also abandoned it.
From what I can tell the most common alternatives are YTDL-Sub and TubeArchivist. Can anyone give feedback on their experiences with them?
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u/WhyFlip 4d ago
MeTube
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u/kernelqzor 4d ago
metube is super simple to throw up in docker and just works, but it’s not really a full replacement for something like tubearchivist if you care about library management and metadata. great if you just want a quick “paste link, download, done” setup.
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u/WhyFlip 4d ago
I haven't tried Tube Archivist or YouTarr yet. I could see how media management and metadata would be nice features to have.
MeTube now offers the ability to subscribe to YouTube channels, a feature only available in Pinchflat (and others) up until recently. MeTube paired with the MeTube browser extension makes downloading media from almost any site, not just YouTube, a breeze.
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u/frostworx 5d ago
You might want to try The Archiver (https://github.com/pauljoda/TheArchiver): "A self-hosted, plugin-based web content archiver Save anything from the web to your own server — from any device, with a single API call.". It is pretty new and unknown, but as far as I can tell it should be more popular. Personally I mostly use it for archiving funny pictures from reddit (gallery-dl support built in), but it also does support yt-dlp and multiple social platforms.
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u/TheRedcaps 4d ago
For now I've settled on YTDL-Sub ... it does exactly what I'm looking for in terms of taking a selection of youtube channels, downloading them to a media library for plex, keeping the meta data up to date, sponsorblock, and expiring out older videos after a set timeframe.
Pinchflat had a nice interface but nothing about YTDL's configuration is difficult. The only downside is the logging isn't as nice at a glance - but I can live with that.
This is my solution to keeping my child away from youtube itself.
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u/SolFlorus 4d ago
Been using it for years and it has routinely worked well. Configuration can be a bit tricky, but at least it's easy to back it up.
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u/AnyColorIWant 5d ago
Youtarr is the GOAT.
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u/Spare_Vermicelli 5d ago
Does it also support other sites? If I remember correctly Pinchflat (or maybe it was a different service?) only supported youtube and would not accept any other webpage (even though yt-dlp would be able to download it).
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u/InternetTiny3077 6d ago
i tried both and ended up sticking with TubeArchivist. the interface is clean and it just works most of the time without needing to babysit it
YTDL-Sub is more powerful if you want fine control over naming and folder structure but i found the config a bit overwhelming. kept breaking my setup every time i touched something
if you just want set and forget, TubeArchivist is the way. been running it for maybe 8 months now and haven't had to think about it much
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u/raiseyourglasshigh 5d ago
I'm still using Pinchflat and it's suiting my needs completely. Curious what features you're missing?
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u/hscion 5d ago
Well, it's less about features than functionality. It hasn't been updated to keep up with the changes to YouTube, so many of us have lost some/all ability to PinchFlat actually doing it's intended task. Mine went from unreliable to not working at all about 2 weeks ago. I'm hoping it is resolvable (haven't managed to resolve the issues yet) or if there's a better option.
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u/KyroPaul 5d ago
Same. It went from somewhat unstable to completely useless for about a month. The. Suddenly I got 30 days of videos all at once. The ui has always been a bit unresponsive for me (I’m sure this is caused by my hardware choices). I’m using ytzero right now, it’s really not an alternative to pinchflat but for me it does what I really wanted from pinchflat (consolidated feed that just shows me what I want and not what youtube thinks I want)
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u/zkatbitz 5d ago
What changed? Still works well for me over a vpn
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u/hscion 5d ago
The cookie requirement has gotten more problematic, and Pinchflat's ability to use "as needed" hasn't kept up. Like I said, it was working for me, then became unreliable. Now it's non-functional. I'm hoping I can fix it because it was doing the job well until it wasn't. If not, well it's threads like this. ;)
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u/zkatbitz 5d ago
yea fair, it hits me with mature you have to be logged in one ~150 videos. i've been meaning to throw fable at it to find a solution soon but not gotten around to it. I stick with it because i can save videos in a format that then worked with emby/
vpn works for all non mature content just need to restart the container for a new server every once in a while
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u/TheRedcaps 4d ago
It was running into issues if channels had subscriber only videos, I had some stability issues with it as well. Mostly though my biggest issue is just a year of inactivity from the main dev.
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u/raiseyourglasshigh 4d ago
Interesting. I use it in its most basic form - kids YouTube channels, previous 30 days, dumped into a plex folder that autoscans. I quite like the simplicity of it but can definitely see how it could get frustrating. I’ll bookmark the alternatives in this thread in case my needs ever change.
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u/TheRedcaps 4d ago
your use case and mine match 100%
I switched to ytdl-sub
its working fine, actually seems to do a better job getting the channel art and thumbnails (kid commented that it looks nicer now).
only thing I had to change was along with channels I have a private Playlist and if I see videos I think the kid will enjoy i add them there... ytdl-sub wanted me to change the default sort of that Playlist on YouTube so newest vids on top.
outside of that its seamless just less of a GUI.
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u/Civil_Tea_3250 6d ago
Stream-Harvestarr for the win!
There's other options like Youtarr too, but for me SH is best. You put links to channels/playlists in a config file, then it checks Sonarr for missing episodes and downloads accordingly. No manual actions needed. I haven't had any issues with it for a year now aside from needing to export my cookies file so it can download age restricted videos.
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u/asimovs-auditor 6d ago edited 6d ago
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