YouTube → your MeTube,
in one right-click.

Keyboard

• SpaceKplay / pause
• ←→seek 5 seconds
• Ffullscreen (or double-click the picture)
• Csubtitles on / off
• Mmute
• Deldelete from MeTube
• Escclose (YouTube stays paused)

Play/pause, seeking, volume, speed (0.5× to 2× in the ⋯ menu), subtitles, picture-in-picture and fullscreen are in the control bar. The overlay also closes when you navigate to another video.

Deleting a video

The player is for watching a video once, while YouTube streaming is out of reach. Once watched, the file can go:

• Trash button or Del: a confirmation shows the title, quality, size and subtitles. Cancel is selected, so Enter never deletes by accident.
• When the video ends (unless turned off in the settings): Delete from MeTube, Watch again, or Keep and close. Nothing is deleted without a click.

After deleting, the extension checks whether the file is really gone from the server and says so. MeTube only erases files when it's set up for it: see Server setup.

Subtitles

MeTube only writes subtitle files if yt-dlp is told to. Add this to MeTube's environment, with the same languages as in the extension's settings. yt-dlp then saves <video>.<lang>.vtt next to each video, and the player loads each one it finds. Only videos downloaded after this change have subtitles.

YTDL_OPTIONS={"writesubtitles": true, "writeautomaticsub": true, "subtitleslangs": ["fr","en"], "subtitlesformat": "vtt"}

Deleting files

MeTube's default (DELETE_FILE_ON_TRASHCAN=false) only removes the entry from its list and keeps the file. For the player's delete button to erase files, add the line below. true also works, but then MeTube's own trash button always erases files too. With the default, the player tells you the file was kept.

DELETE_FILE_ON_TRASHCAN=ask

HTTPS

YouTube is an HTTPS page, and browsers won't load http:// video inside it. MeTube must be reachable over https://, for example through Traefik with a certificate. localhost is the only exception.

Default download URLs

The player expects MeTube's standard file URLs: {MeTube URL}/download/…, or /audio_download/… for audio. If you changed PUBLIC_HOST_URL to serve files from elsewhere, the player won't find them.

One entry per video

MeTube keeps one history entry per video URL. Downloading the audio or the subtitles of a video that's already downloaded replaces its entry (the video file stays on disk); the player then no longer finds the video and would download it again. For subtitles to watch with, prefer YTDL_OPTIONS; use the menu's subtitles block to get the files themselves.

Formats

The browser must be able to play the file. MP4 (H.264/AAC) and WebM play everywhere. If you get can't play this file, set the default video format to MP4 in the settings.

Test and build

git clone https://github.com/CostardRouge/metube-extension.git
cd metube-extension
node --test              # unit tests
scripts/build.sh         # dist/metube-sender-<version>.zip
scripts/build.sh 1.2.0   # or with a given version

The CI workflow runs the tests and builds the zip on every pull request and push to main. The zip stays attached to the run for 14 days, to try a change before it's released.

Releasing

git checkout main && git pull
git tag v1.1.0
git push origin v1.1.0

Releases are only created from a version tag on main. The Release workflow runs the tests, builds the zip with that version written into its manifest.json, and publishes a GitHub release with the zip, its SHA-256 checksum and notes from the merged pull requests.