Nimcoon

Play videos from YouTube and PeerTube from the command line using your preferred desktop media player.

Similar apps for other platforms:

• NewPipe is a light-weight YouTube frontend for Android
• FreeTube is a GUI client for desktop platforms (uses electron)

This is a minimal application implemented in Nim language using only the standard library.

Logo

A Maine Coon cat wearing a golden crown.
Logo contributions/suggestions welcome.

Maybe I would've just called this project Maine Coon had I written it in Python, but I wanted to use this opportunity to make Nim popular.

Motivation

No similar existing tool

I tried all kinds of alternative YouTube players for the desktop. Most are either electron apps or slow web proxies. There was one cool bash script that did most of what I wanted called ytview but it had no way of copying the URL. I added this feature to the bash script but was still unsatisfied. There were CLI players written in Python but are usually a pain to install. They depend on a hard-coded YouTube API token and suffer from rate-limiting. I use youtube-dl with mpv usually (mostly because I like MPV over the YouTube JavaScript player). These tools have hundreds of options and I can't remember them. I needed a wrapper for them that does what I want, is easy to install(portable) and has a simple interface. I am not a big fan of Golang and its fat binaries. I discovered Nim around the same time I had this problem and decided to write this tool using just the standard library.

Digital Minimalism

YouTube's business incentive is to make you watch as many videos as possible. If you open the YouTube website and are logged into it, you will just get distracted by recommendations and forget why you opened it in the first place. You might have wanted to watch a conference talk but end up going down a rabbit hole of other "interesting" videos customized for you.

Nimcoon has a spartan design. It doesn't even show images of the search results. It doesn't let you browse YouTube. You have to explicitly search for something.

I have had better success with managing my YouTube consumption after shifting to this tool. Settings inspired by Pinafore's wellness settings.

Why no issues or merge requests?

I made this just for myself. The development is completely based on my needs and wants. I am not going to put a lot of work into this project. But feel free to use it if it works for you.

Features

• Search for videos using keywords
• Stream videos and music from YouTube
• Play direct links from YouTube and PeerTube
• Stream video and music from magnet links and hyperlinks to torrent files
• Download music
• Download video
• Play YouTube playlists (MPV only)
• Download YouTube playlists
• Stream video from torrent file URLs
• BitTorrent is preferred for PeerTube video links
• Search PeerTube (3.0 or later)
• YouTube Autoplay (music only)
• Configuration options

	YouTube	PeerTube (HTTP)	PeerTube (WebTorrent)
Music Streaming	✅	✅	✅
Video Streaming	✅	✅	✅
Music Download	✅	✅
Video Download	✅	✅
Stream Music from URL	✅	✅
Stream Video from URL	✅	✅	✅
Download Music from URL	✅	✅
Download Video from URL	✅	✅
Stream Music Playlist	✅
Stream Video Playlist	✅
Download Music Playlist
Download Video Playlist
Play Recommended Music	✅

Installation

Nim Coon depends on the following:

• yt-dlp
• mpv (recommended) or vlc
• webtorrent (for magnet links)

Install MPV or VLC using your distribution's package manager.

Install yt-dlp

pip3 install --user yt-dlp

Install WebTorrent

npm install --global webtorrent-cli

(Optional) If you want your YouTube downloads to be faster, install aria2 download manager.

Installing using Nimble

Nimcoon can be installed from Nimble repositories:

nimble install nimcoon

You can also install from source by running the following command:

nimble install

Installing binary

Download the latest build from GitlabCI (amd64 GNU/Linux only).

wget https://gitlab.com/njoseph/nimcoon/-/jobs/artifacts/master/download?job=compile -O artifacts.zip
unzip artifacts.zip

Copy the binary to somewhere on your path like /usr/local/bin

Usage

nimcoon "emacs"

# If your search query has multiple words, use quotes
nimcoon "nim lang"

# Play audio of the first search result
nimcoon -m -l "counting stars"

# Download audio of the first search result
nimcoon -mld "counting stars"

# Play direct video link
nimcoon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEMv0S8AcA

# Add -d to download or -m to select only audio or both
nimcoon -md https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_nvWreIhg

After the search results are displayed, you can enter a number to play one result, "all" to play all the results or "q" to quit the program.

If a number is entered, after the selected search result is played, the results are redisplayed, so that you can play the other results without having to search again.

Command line arguments

Nimcoon provides both interactive and non-interactive arguments with significant overlap. But some arguments might only be present in one mode.

Non-interactive arguments are specified to the nimcoon program and apply globally to all search results in that session. These can be overriden on a case-by-case basis using the interactive arguments.

Non-interactive Arguments	Explanation
-m, --music	Play Music only, no video
-l, --lucky	Try your luck with the first search result
-f, --full-screen	Play video in full screen
-d, --download	Download video or music
-a, --auto-play	Play the next search result (YouTube only)

Feel free to use these options in any combination. Nimcoon will show a helpful error message if you pick incompatible options.

Interactive arguments are provided during selection of a search result. These options allow you to change your mind after performing the search. For example, you might have searched for a music video, watched it and want to download the music only. In this case, you can specify the search result followed by the options as single characters. i.e

"1" plays the video "1 md" downloads the music of the video

Interactive Arguments	Explanation
-m, --music	Play Music only, no video
-f, --full-screen	Play video in full screen
-d, --download	Download video or music
-a, --auto-play	Play the next search result (YouTube only)

Auto-playing videos leads to binge watching. The default option in Nimcoon is to support auto-play for music only.

Development

One-liner for compiling and running

nim c -d:ssl -r src/nimcoon.nim 'nim lang'

Privacy

To avoid storing your nimcoon searches in zsh history, run this command

setopt histignorespace

Then, add a space before typing nimcoon in the shell, like " nimcoon"

 nimcoon "this is private"

The same can be achieved in bash by setting an environment variable

export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth