HomeTube

HomeTube is a self-hosted web app that helps you download single videos or playlists from many supported sites and organize them into a media-server-friendly library structure. It is designed for homelabs where downloads should land directly in folders scanned by Plex, Jellyfin, or similar tools.

Key Features

• Web-based UI to download individual videos and playlists
• Playlist synchronization with ID-based tracking to handle renames and reordering
• Automatic organization and configurable destination folder structures
• SponsorBlock integration to skip or mark sponsor/ads segments on supported sources
• Cookie-based authentication support for improved reliability and access to restricted content
• Advanced processing options such as clipping, format conversion, subtitle embedding, and audio extraction
• Quality selection strategies with modern codec prioritization and fallback profiles
• Support for custom yt-dlp arguments and network options (for example proxies and rate limits)

Use Cases

• Build a personal, curated offline video library managed by Plex or Jellyfin
• Keep educational or reference playlists mirrored locally with incremental updates
• Download and post-process videos (clip, convert, add subtitles) for archiving or playback

Limitations and Considerations

• Download reliability and available formats depend on upstream platforms and often require cookies for best results
• Sponsor skipping/marking depends on community-provided SponsorBlock segments and is primarily effective for YouTube

HomeTube is a practical tool for homelabs that want a simple UI on top of yt-dlp with strong library organization and playlist tracking. It fits well when you want downloads to be automatically placed and named for seamless media server ingestion.