YouTarr
Youtarr is a YouTube video manager that automatically organizes videos from your channels or specific URLs. With optional Plex/Jellyfin/Emby integration, it can refresh your media library for a seamless, ad-free viewing experience.
Save your videos to external storage, and play them back with Plex!
Get a 7-day trial of ElfHosted YouTarr! 
🤔 Why Youtarr?
- No Ads or Tracking: Watch YouTube content without interruptions
- Offline Viewing: Access your videos anytime, even without internet
- Archive Content: Preserve videos before they're deleted or made private
- Family-Friendly Option: Create a curated, safe YouTube experience for kids
- Works Standalone: Full functionality without requiring any media server
- Plex-Ready: Seamlessly integrates with Plex if desired, but never requires it
🎯 Key Features
Core Features (No Plex Required)
- 📥 Smart Management: Pre-validate YouTube URLs with metadata preview before organizing (powered by yt-dlp)
- 🎯 Custom Quality Settings: Per-video resolution control with support from 360p to 4K
- 📺 Channel Subscriptions: Subscribe to channels and automatically organize new videos
- 🚫 SponsorBlock Integration: Automatically remove or mark sponsored segments, intros, outros, and more using the crowdsourced SponsorBlock database
- 🗂️ Smart Organization: Videos organized by channel with metadata and thumbnails
- ⏰ Scheduled Processing: Configure automatic organization on your schedule (cron-based)
- 📱 Web Interface: Manage everything through a responsive web UI
- 🔍 Browse Channels: View all videos from subscribed channels before organizing
- 📊 Processing History: Track what you've organized with smart duplicate prevention
- 🔐 Secure Access: Local authentication system with admin controls
- ☁️ Platform Flexible: Configurable storage paths for Kubernetes/Elfhosted deployments
Optional Plex Integration
- 🔄 Auto Library Refresh: Automatically update Plex after processing videos
- 📁 Plex-Ready Format: Videos organized and named for perfect Plex compatibility
- 🎬 Metadata Support: Full descriptions, thumbnails, and video info display in Plex
How do I access YouTarr?
YouTarr will be available from your dashboard (https://<username>.elfhosted.com>), or directly, at https://<username>-youtarr.elfhosted.com
Info
YouTarr is an open-source tool. ElfHosted provides hosting infrastructure only. Users are responsible for their use of this service in compliance with applicable laws and third-party terms of service.
How to use YouTarr
Setup external storage
Since YouTarr organizes content to external storage rather than just streaming it, a pre-requisite is that you attach your own, external cloud storage. ElfHosted users can "magically" mount any rclone-compatible storage.
Your rclone-mounted storage will appear in /storage/rclone/<something> - use FileBrowse to confirm the path, and then set the DATA_PATH ENV var using ElfBot, like this example (yours will be different, depending on path):
Setup cookies
YouTarr utilizes on yt-dlp, which needs a cookie file with valid Google account credentials, in order to access YouTube.
It is possible that excessive use of yt-dlp with this cookie may flag your account for automated abuse, so it's sensible to create a separate Google account, just for YouTarr (a "throwaway" account).
Methods may vary per-browser, but here is a solution which works in Firefox.
- Install the cookies.txt extension into Firefox, or the Get cookies.txt LOCALLY addon in Chrome
- Open a Private Browser Window, and navigate to https://youtube.com. Log in with your throwaway account.
- Once logged into YouTube, launch the extension, and save all cookies from your current window to a
cookies.txtfile - Examine the cookies.txt file, ensure it contains only Google-related cookies
- Upload the
cookies.txtfile into YouTarr.
Sensitive cookies ahead
Your cookies.txt file can be used to gain access to the associated Google account. Use a throwaway account for this purpose, and protect your cookies.txt file as you would your password.
YouTarr also works with
How do I get support for YouTarr?
- For general use of YouTarr, refer to the official site or to one of the links below.
- For specific support re your ElfHosted configuration / account, see the ElfHosted support options!
Sponsor YouTarr ❤️
You can contribute directly to the development of YouTarr using the following:
YouTarr resources
Your content, your responsibility
ElfHosted provides YouTarr as a hosted application — we do not supply content, accounts, or third-party credentials. You are responsible for ensuring that your use of this app complies with applicable laws and our Acceptable Use Policy. If you have questions about what is or isn't permitted, please reach out — we're happy to help.
What users say..
We're rocking some excellent 
TrustPilot Reviews, and here's what some of our usersfriends say..
I am new here, but today I learned realized that Elfhosted is one of the best free and open source software communities I've seen, and FOSS communities have been at the center of my life since the 90s (Perl, PHP, Symfony, Drupal, Ethereum, etc.). Great open software built by great people who care = great community, and that is something special.
You've done an amazing job @Funky Penguelf with the platform you provide and this place has an awesome mix of active community caretakers and software creators that I've seen here so far like BSM, Spoked, LayeZee and other elf vengers. Keep up the energy, productivity and community and take time to enjoy it and appreciate each other!
I self host and share a fully automated ‘arr stack with Plex. Been doing so for around 4 years. Also recently got into real debrid and hosting a Comet and Annatar for Stremio. The amount of time and head banging I’ve put into it is in the hundreds to thousands of hours. From setting it up to keeping it running smoothly. Let’s not forget the cost of my server and how much it cost to keep it running.
Anyway I wanted to see what ElfHosted was about to compare. Yeah I had the whole thing setup in just a few hours. It also passes the headache of maintaining it to ElfHosted. Will I keep it no because nerdy things and maintaining my server are my hobby and quirky passion project. Will I recommend it to my friends who don’t have the money up front to buy a server, the knowledge to maintain it or desire.
Just my server alone was $2k. Power cost to keep it on yearly is $250ish, annual memberships to RD, Usenet and indexers are around $100. Then whatever a value my free time at. Which is currently at minimum my hourly pay at work or more. Yeah so take the monthly cost of all that and compare to ElfHosted Ultimate Stream package at $39 monthly, add RD to the cost and get nearly all your time back is incredibly cheap.
Lastly it seems like a lot of people forget how quickly an ultimate cable package used to cost. Or how quick paying for every stream service would add up to. Which when using ElfHosted with RD is essentially and more what you get. Quick hint it’s far above the asking price.
As a happy Elfhosted customer—who also self hosts MANY things across about 10 severs (dedicated, VPSes, and VMs running on Synology), I wouldn’t switch to self hosting the services I get from Elfhosted. They just work with very little effort configuring things, and the support the owner and his team provides is second to none. Plus I love being part of a fledgling—but quickly growing—enterprise.
I recently found ElfHosted and decided to start out with the Infinite Starter Kit. Within a week I realized that this was for me and upgraded to the Hobbit plan. Give it another week and I was up to the Ranger plan.
I just love the simplicity and the fact that things just work. For years I've ran a home server and between the constant maintenance and always upgrading harddrives, it became apparent I wanted to make it easier on my self. Enter ElfHosted.
Setup was super easy with the guided documentation and the discord community. It seems that somebody is available at all hours of the day to help with questions. I started with the Aars, which I knew from my prior hosting... but saw a newer product called Riven. I decided to jump in feet first. I enjoy being on the front end of an up and coming replacement for the Aars and will soon be upgrading to the annual plan!
I’ve been using this service for a while now, and honestly, it’s a game-changer compared to anything else I’ve tried for managing my media library. The support is fantastic—super quick, and if the staff aren’t around (which rarely happens), the community steps up right away. I can’t imagine going back to any other platform.
Before this, I had my own setup with a NUC, NAS, and tools like Sonarr and Radarr. It worked pretty well for a while, and my internet speed was high enough to stream without any buffering. But in the end, it wasn’t worth the time or headache of managing all the storage and keeping everything running smoothly.
Now, with this service, everything runs smoothly in 1080p+ with no buffering issues. The interface is really easy to use, which makes managing everything a breeze. Plus, having a whole community of smart people available for guidance is a huge bonus.
I was sold from the start, which is why I quickly upgraded from a 1-month to a 3-month subscription, and I’m planning to switch to a 1-year plan soon. This service totally pays for itself, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. It’s been really impressive.
Best possible options for anyone looking for the do-it-all option along with the best customer service ive experienced in this space so far. Id rate it a 6 if I could but its limited to 5/5...
(responding to a Reddit thread re the cost of ElfHosted vs mainstream streaming / self-hosting):
I didn't know that the goal of this project was to compete with large companies running/renting entire DCs. I was under the impression that the goal of this project was to manage the updating of almost selfhosted applications on a shared platform with other users. Basically, be my sysadmin for me.
That being said, paying for services is the 'easy button'. There is a real world cost incurred for the time saved. Time is money. Time is the most valuable currency that exists. Once time is spent, it's forever lost, one cannot retrieve it again (yet). In my mind, there are 3 options for use of time with respect to: mainstream, selfhosting, elfhosted.
mainstream - my time is valuable and I don't want curated content and I don't care what content that I have the ability to consume. I only like what's popular.
elfhosted - my time is valuable, I want my own curated content without being forced to browse past the same damn entry 500 times just to find out that I can't watch the movie I want because it's not available in my current location or was removed last week from mainstream providers.
selfhost - I care about costs and I have nothing but time to waste or I want to learn about the backend of the systems involved. I'll pay for my own VPS/homelab, electricity, manage the OS, manage app updates, figure out how to make the apps talk nice to each other, create my own beautiful frontend.
I know how much my time is worth, does that reddit poster know how much their time is worth? Without knowing what you are worth, you can't make effective capital expenditures with respect to the time it will take to recoup the capital.
I know I don't need elfhosted at all for my use case. I choose to stay with elfhosted because it's my 'easy button'. It's an efficient capital expense for the amount of time it saves me managing my own hardware, apps and saves me electricity costs. I'm also in a situation where I don't have upload bandwidth from my home to serve HD content to myself remotely. If I lived back in a city, I would still be here. My time is worth $$/hr.
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Now I essentially have the exact same access to content as I had before, but even better. Superior support and community involvement. Content is available almost immediately after being identified. A plethora of tools at my fingertips that give me more control and automation than ever before. Wonderfully well done and impressive! I am looking forward to being a customer for a very long time! Massive kudos to @funkypenguin 🤟
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@tjelite (Discord)
"What an amazing support system these guys have Chris and Layzee i think it was! Both are very patient with me even though I am a newbie at all this. Very thorough and explained everything step by step with me
I couldn’t ask for anything better than the service I have received by these guys! Happy happy client❤️"
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