Pinchflat

Pinchflat is a self-hosted web application for downloading and managing YouTube videos (and other sites supported by yt-dlp) as a local media library. It focuses on automation and organization: you define sources and rules, and Pinchflat keeps your downloads up to date and stored in a predictable structure.

Key Features

• Web-based UI to configure and manage downloads powered by yt-dlp
• Supports channels/playlists and ongoing “keep in sync” style downloading
• Template-based file/folder naming for consistent library organization
• Metadata enrichment and sidecar files (where supported) for better media library integration
• Per-source download options (quality/format, audio-only, etc. via yt-dlp options)
• Container-friendly deployment and persistent configuration storage
• Job/queue style processing to manage download tasks and updates

Use Cases

• Build a personal offline archive of favorite channels and playlists
• Maintain a curated YouTube library structured for Plex/Jellyfin ingestion
• Download audio-only versions of talks/podcasts for local playback

Limitations and Considerations

• Feature scope depends on yt-dlp site support and ongoing upstream changes
• Downloading from YouTube may require additional configuration when rate-limited or blocked

Pinchflat is a practical choice for users who want a simple web UI around yt-dlp with library-oriented organization. It fits well alongside media servers by producing consistently named files and metadata for long-term local collections.