Yoinks

Yoinks is a command-line video downloader that saves clips from YouTube, X/Twitter, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and more than 1,800 other sites straight to your Downloads folder. It is aimed at anyone who has given up on web-based download pages — the ones stacked with fake download buttons, popups and redirects — and who is comfortable running one npm command in a terminal. The project is written in TypeScript, published under the MIT license, and has gathered roughly 2,600 stars and 250 forks since it appeared on GitHub in July 2026.

What it does

The whole flow is three steps: paste a link, pick a format, wait for the file. You can hand Yoinks a URL as an argument and land directly in the format picker, or run it bare and let it prompt you for one.

Around that flow, the tool offers:

• A format list showing available resolutions with estimated file sizes, plus an audio-only mp3 option.
• A full-screen, centered terminal interface that takes over the window and restores your scrollback when it exits.
• Keyboard navigation with arrow keys, j/k or number keys, enter to confirm, esc to go back and ^c to quit.
• Mouse support: the yoink button, the format list and the footer hints are all clickable, and clicking the logo returns you to the home screen.
• A theme system whose default auto mode borrows your terminal's own foreground and background colors, so it follows a light or dark terminal without guessing. ^t or the footer control cycles auto, light and dark for the session, and --theme sets the starting palette for one launch.

Files go to ~/Downloads, and the full path is printed to the terminal when the download finishes, so you are never left hunting for the result.

How it works

Yoinks does not implement site extraction itself. It is powered by yt-dlp, the long-running downloader project, and on first run Yoinks fetches it for you; ffmpeg, needed for muxing and audio conversion, is fetched or bundled automatically as well. That means the list of supported sites is yt-dlp's list, and the "1,800+ sites" figure comes from the same place.

What Yoinks adds is the layer on top: a readable interface instead of a wall of command-line flags. Choosing a resolution becomes a list you scroll, with sizes attached, rather than a format-selector string you have to compose. The theming, the mouse targets and the scrollback restoration are all part of making a one-off download feel like using an app rather than reading a manual page.

The requirement is Node 18 or newer. There is nothing else to install by hand.

Getting started

Install it globally:

npm install -g yoinks

Or run it once without installing anything:

npx yoinks

Then either of these works:

yoinks https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
yoinks

The first jumps straight to the format picker; the second asks for a URL. Add --theme light or --theme dark if you do not want the automatic palette. Expect the first run to take slightly longer, since that is when the yt-dlp binary is pulled down.

When to use it / when not

Yoinks is a good fit when you download videos occasionally and want the act to be boring: one command, a picker, a file in ~/Downloads. It is also the easy answer when you want audio only — the mp3 option is right there in the list, with no flag to remember. And for people who already have yt-dlp installed but never remember its format syntax, this is a friendlier front door to the same engine.

It is less of a fit in a few cases. It is an interactive, full-screen tool, so it is not the thing to reach for inside a script or a cron job; plain yt-dlp handles that better. The materials describe a single-URL flow with a fixed download directory, so if you need batch jobs, playlist handling or custom output paths, check before committing. And if Node is not something you want on the machine, the underlying tool is available on its own.

One practical caution the project does not raise but you should: downloading from a platform may conflict with its terms of service or with the rights on the video. The tool removes the friction, not the responsibility.

Alternatives

The honest alternative is yt-dlp itself, since that is what runs underneath — more flags, more control, no interface. The other option most people currently use is a browser-based converter site, which is exactly the experience Yoinks exists to replace: those sites are where the fake buttons and redirects live.

Anyone who regularly saves videos from the web and has a terminal open should take this seriously. It is a thin, well-shaped wrapper over a tool that already works, and its value is almost entirely in the interface — the sizes next to resolutions, the theme that matches your terminal, the path printed at the end. It is also very young, created and pushed within a couple of days in mid-2026, so treat the sharp edges as expected and the 2,600 stars as early enthusiasm rather than a long track record.