[Adverblessly]

For a similar usecase I settled on writing a bash script along the lines of

  PARAM=`xclip -o -selection clipboard`
  notify-send downloading $PARAM
  youtube-dl $PARAM

And setting a keyboard shortcut to invoke it, so downloading is just

  CTRL+L (select URL)
  CTRL+C (copy selection)
  CTRL+ALT+D (trigger download script)

[jeegsy]

Damn Son! I have had the same issue and your solution is so face palm simple! Excellent.