[flowless]

No need to download, I was using youtube-dl piped to mplayer, now using mpv which has youtube-dl integrated.

Works wonders on old and not-so-old hardware that can't play 1080p or 4k in browser.

[foepys]

I'm using mpv with youtube-dl, too. It's also working on Windows and makes watching videos on dual monitor setups easier. Just place the youtube-dl.exe side-by-side with the mpv.exe.

youtube-dl supports a lot more websites than only YouTube, which makes it (in combination with mpv) a very nice tool that you just put all your videos into.

[glomph]

Do you have your browser set up to open youtube links like that? If so could you explain how you set it up?

[karatchov]

Ive been using Openwith on firefox and chrome, and it works flawlessly

It needs a launcher (aka native host client) to start the 3rd party app, in this case mpv with the correct arguments.

The launcher is technically only started (then immediatly terminates) when you trigger the openwith action, so no memory/cpu overhead.

The official openwith solution is a python script (requires python), for windows there is a native and lightweight launcher: owclauncher

With this setup, you can launch any action with a simple right click: play in mpv, play in low resolution in mpv, download video/audio with youtube-dl, play in 2nd screen ...

[ftk_]

There's also play-with extension which doesn't require native client. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/play-with/

[foepys]

I just put mpv into my PATH, open CMD/terminal, and copy and paste the video link. This takes maybe 5 seconds.

[atomi]

> mpv ... youtube-dl

I thought that was a fight club type secret that we're not supposed to share.