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Documentation Index

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YouTube Rip is a lightweight macOS utility that gives you a native dialog-based interface for ripping audio from YouTube videos. Powered by yt-dlp under the hood, it converts any YouTube URL to an MP3 file and saves it straight to your ~/Downloads folder — no terminal required.

Installation

Install Homebrew, yt-dlp, and get the AppleScript ready to run on your Mac.

Quickstart

Rip your first YouTube video to MP3 in under a minute.

Running the Script

Learn how to launch YouTube Rip and navigate its dialog interface.

Troubleshooting

Fix common errors including 403s, missing dependencies, and path issues.

How it works

1

Paste a YouTube URL

YouTube Rip shows a macOS dialog box prompting you to enter any YouTube video URL.
2

yt-dlp extracts the audio

The script passes the URL to yt-dlp with the -x --audio-format mp3 flags, stripping out the audio track and converting it to MP3.
3

File saved to ~/Downloads

The finished MP3 lands in your ~/Downloads folder, named automatically by yt-dlp based on the video title.
4

Shell output shown

A second dialog displays the shell stdout from yt-dlp so you can confirm success or diagnose any issues.

Key features

No terminal required

The entire workflow runs through native macOS dialogs — just paste a URL and go.

MP3 output

Audio is automatically extracted and converted to MP3 format using yt-dlp’s built-in post-processor.

403-error resistant

Uses --extractor-args "youtube:player_client=default,-android_sdkless" to avoid common YouTube 403 errors.

Homebrew-powered

Relies on a standard Homebrew yt-dlp install, making updates simple with brew upgrade yt-dlp.

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