# Tyrrrz/YoutubeExplode

Abstraction layer over YouTube's internal API

Repository: https://github.com/Tyrrrz/YoutubeExplode
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/youtubeexplode
Homepage: https://nuget.org/packages/YoutubeExplode
Language: C#
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: youtube, download, reverse-engineering, dotnet, dotnet-core, dotnet-standard, downloader, parser
Last push: 2026-08-25T13:40:04+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 99, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3676, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": 8, "gap_med": 28.0, "n_releases_24m": 15}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3717, forks 591 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:15.369239+00:00)

## What it is
A .NET library providing an abstraction layer over YouTube's internal API to query metadata for videos, playlists, and channels, and to resolve and download video streams and closed caption tracks. It works by scraping raw page data and exploiting reverse-engineered internal endpoints.

## Use cases
- download youtube videos in c#
- get youtube video metadata programmatically
- download youtube closed captions or subtitles
- fetch youtube playlist and channel info in dotnet
- resolve youtube video stream urls
- convert downloaded youtube videos with ffmpeg

## When to choose
- you need programmatic YouTube access from .NET without an official API key
- you want to download video streams or captions in a C#/F# application
- you need fine-grained control over stream selection and metadata queries

## When to avoid
- you need a supported, ToS-compliant way to access YouTube (official Data API)
- your project is not on the .NET platform
- you need guaranteed long-term stability, since YouTube changes can break the library at any time

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: web-scraping, parser, http-client, reverse-engineering
- domain: media, developer-tools, crawlers
- platform: dotnet, cross-platform
- tags: youtube, video-downloader, stream-download, metadata, closed-captions, ffmpeg

## Member repositories
- Tyrrrz/YoutubeExplode (main) score 99

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:15.369239+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:29:21.833803+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/Tyrrrz/YoutubeExplode (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:15.369239+00:00, sha 0beb0ed5d2ea)
  - homepage: https://nuget.org/packages/YoutubeExplode (fetched 2026-08-29T09:24:08.818876+00:00, sha 04cfafa6e286)
  - site_page: https://www.nuget.org/policies/About (fetched 2026-08-29T09:24:08.828335+00:00, sha a113b8a074c9)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.