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by marmaduke 2824 days ago
On iOS I’ve installed Pythonista with Stash, pip installed YouTube-dL, set up a script to take a link and download it to mp4 and share it an app (usually VLC).

This can be triggered from YouTube app by pressing Share, then Pythonista script then the custom script, wait for download then select VLC.

It’s not great for big videos but was extremely satisfying to set up.

3 comments

This is great! Does it also support play background music that you download as a .m4a ?
VLC does yes. That said the real issue is that the download part can’t run in background for more than 4 minutes, so you can’t download big videos.
Anything you can share code wise, curious to learn more.
Here's an example:

  #!python3
  """Open url in VLC — Pythonista for iOS app extension.
  
  1. take media url from appex(share)/clipboard/command-line
  2. open it in VLC iphone app
  
  e.g., to listen to Youtube video in the background.
  
  It accepts a media url from any site supported by youtube_dl 
  https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html
  """
  import sys
  from urllib.parse import quote
  
  import youtube_dl
  
  import appex
  import clipboard
  import console
  
  import appex_webbrowser as webbrowser
  
  def open(webpage_url):
      """Play media on *webpage_url* in VLC"""
      with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(dict(forceurl=True)) as ydl:
          r = ydl.extract_info(webpage_url, download=False)
          media_url = r['formats'][-1]['url']
      # play the url in VLC
      # vlc:// + url leads to a popup
      # https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:IOS/#x-callback-url
      webbrowser.open('vlc-x-callback://x-callback-url/stream?url=' + quote(media_url) )
      
  
  def main():
      if not appex.is_running_extension():
          if len(sys.argv) == 2:
              url = sys.argv[1]
          else:
              url = clipboard.get()
      else:
          url = appex.get_url() or appex.get_text()
      if url:
          open(url)
          console.hud_alert('Done.')
      else:
          console.hud_alert('No input URL found.')
  
  if __name__ == '__main__':
      console.show_activity()
      try:
          main()
      finally:
          console.hide_activity()
where appex_webbrowser.py is:

  """webbrowser.open() replacement for app extensions in Pythonista for iOS.
  """
  from objc_util import nsurl,UIApplication
  
  
  def open(url):
      app = UIApplication.sharedApplication()
      app.openURL_(nsurl(url))
Wow that’s way better than mine. I still find coding with two thumbs on an iPhone se does not fully make use of Pythonista. But there’s no way I’d buy an iPad that doesn’t have BT mouse support.
you could pass a video url retrieved by youtube-dl to VLC instead of downloading the video.