<ahref="https://www.tubearchivist.com/discord"target="_blank"><imgsrc="https://tiles.tilefy.me/t/tubearchivist-discord.png"alt="tubearchivist-discord"title="TA Discord Server Members"height="50"width="190"/></a>
Once your YouTube video collection grows, it becomes hard to search and find a specific video. That's where Tube Archivist comes in: By indexing your video collection with metadata from YouTube, you can organize, search and enjoy your archived YouTube videos without hassle offline through a convenient web interface. THis includes:
- [Browser Extension](https://github.com/tubearchivist/browser-extension) Tube Archivist Companion, for [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/tubearchivist-companion/) and [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tubearchivist-companion/jjnkmicfnfojkkgobdfeieblocadmcie)
For minimal system requirements, the Tube Archivist stack needs around 2GB of available memory for a small testing setup and around 4GB of available memory for a mid to large sized installation. Minimal with dual core with 4 threads, better quad core plus.
This project requires docker. Ensure it is installed and running on your system.
If you are using Podman, Unraid, TrueNAS, and Synology, visit [https://docs.tubearchivist.com](https://docs.tubearchivist.com) for more dedicated instructions for those systems. Otherwise, continue on.
Here are the configuration options that you will need to set to start TubeArchivist:
To start, `cd` into the directory where the `docker-compose.yml` file is located and run `docker compose up --detach` in terminal. The first time you do this it will download the appropriate images, which can take a minute.
You can follow the logs with `docker compose logs -f`. Once it's ready it will print something like `celery@1234567890ab ready`. At this point you should be able to go to `http://your-host:8000` and log in with the `TA_USER`/`TA_PASSWORD` credentials.
You can bring the application down by running `docker compose down` in the same directory.
If you want more advanced options, or more detailed instructions on how to set up the containers, you can visit [https://docs.tubearchivist.com/installation/docker](https://docs.tubearchivist.com/installation/docker) or [https://github.com/tubearchivist/docs/tree/master/mkdocs/docs](https://github.com/tubearchivist/docs/tree/master/mkdocs/docs).
1. Go through the **settings** page and look at the available options. Particularly set *Download Format* to your desired video quality before downloading. **Tube Archivist** downloads the best available quality by default. To support iOS or MacOS and some other browsers a compatible format must be specified. For example:
2. Subscribe to some of your favorite YouTube channels on the **channels** page.
3. On the **downloads** page, click on *Rescan subscriptions* to add videos from the subscribed channels to your Download queue or click on *Add to download queue* to manually add Video IDs, links, channels or playlists.
4. Click on *Start download* and let **Tube Archivist** to it's thing.
- Video files created by Tube Archivist need to be playable in your browser of choice. Not every codec is compatible with every browser and might require some testing with format selection.
- Every limitation of **yt-dlp** will also be present in Tube Archivist. If **yt-dlp** can't download or extract a video for any reason, Tube Archivist won't be able to either.
- There is currently no flexibility in naming of the media files.
If you have a collision on port `8000`, best solution is to use dockers *HOST_PORT* and *CONTAINER_PORT* distinction: To for example change the interface to port 9000 use `9000:8000` in your docker-compose file.
If you see a message similar to `Unable to access 'path.repo' (/usr/share/elasticsearch/data/snapshot)` or `failed to obtain node locks, tried [/usr/share/elasticsearch/data]` and `maybe these locations are not writable` when initially starting elasticsearch, that probably means the container is not allowed to write files to the volume.
The Elasticsearch index will turn to ***read only*** if the disk usage of the container goes above 95% until the usage drops below 90% again, you will see error messages like `disk usage exceeded flood-stage watermark`.
Similar to that, TubeArchivist will become all sorts of messed up when running out of disk space. There are some error messages in the logs when that happens, but it's best to make sure to have enough disk space before starting to download.
We have come far, nonetheless we are not short of ideas on how to improve and extend this project. Issues waiting for you to be tackled in no particular order:
- [ ] Implement [Apprise](https://github.com/caronc/apprise) for notifications ([#97](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/97))
- [ ] User created playlists, random and repeat controls ([#108](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/108), [#220](https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist/issues/220))
This is a selection of places where this project has been featured on reddit, in the news, blogs or any other online media. Sorted by newest on the top.
* **console.substack.com**: Interview With Simon of Tube Archivist, [2023-01-29] [[link](https://console.substack.com/p/console-142#%C2%A7interview-with-simon-of-tube-archivist)]
* **reddit.com**: Tube Archivist v0.2 - Now with Full Text Search, [2022-07-24] [[link](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/w6jfa1/tube_archivist_v02_now_with_full_text_search/)]
* **noted.lol**: How I Control What Media My Kids Watch Using Tube Archivist, [2022-03-27] [[link](https://noted.lol/how-i-control-what-media-my-kids-watch-using-tube-archivist/)]
* **thehomelab.wiki**: Tube Archivist - A Youtube-DL Alternative on Steroids, [2022-01-27] [[link](https://thehomelab.wiki/books/news/page/tube-archivist-a-youtube-dl-alternative-on-steroids)]
* **linuxunplugged.com**: Pick: tubearchivist — Your self-hosted YouTube media server, [2021-09-11] [[link](https://linuxunplugged.com/425)] and [2021-10-05] [[link](https://linuxunplugged.com/426)]
* **reddit.com**: Introducing Tube Archivist, your self hosted Youtube media server, [2021-09-12] [[link](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/pmj07b/introducing_tube_archivist_your_self_hosted/)]
