QuickTube

Search, watch and download videos and music from YouTube and 1,800+ sites. Open source, no ads, no account.

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Important

Only download content you own or have permission to save, and respect each site's terms of service. QuickTube doesn't bypass DRM and isn't affiliated with YouTube, Google or any other site.

Screenshots

Install

1. Open the latest release on your phone and download QuickTube-vX.Y.Z-arm64-v8a.apk (almost every phone from the last 8 years), …-armeabi-v7a.apk for older 32-bit phones, or the larger QuickTube-vX.Y.Z.apk that runs on both.
2. Open it and allow "Install unknown apps" for your browser when Android asks.
3. Optional: check the file against the .sha256 next to it.

Releases are signed with the same key every time, so updates install over the previous version. After the first install, QuickTube tells you when a new version is out and can update itself (Settings → Check for updates).

Features

Area	What it does
Download tab	Search: search box, "download copied link" chip, quick sites. YouTube: regional trending feed (music, gaming, movies, podcasts, live mixed). Music: song and playlist rows. More: per-platform "How to download" guides.
Search	Live suggestions, recent searches, hot searches, results with All / Videos / Playlist / Channels / Music filters, plus Google / TikTok / Facebook / Instagram web search.
Video page	Inline 720p player, Download button, play-in-background (audio only), About sheet (likes, share, watch later), comments, "Up next". Channel and playlist pages.
Playlists & channels	Download all, or Select videos (with select all) and download them together, or download one by one. One quality for the batch (M4A / 360p / 720p / 1080p / best); each video gets its closest format, in the background.
Download sheet	"Download video as" with Music (M4A / Opus) and Video (144p–4K) choices, plus a More formats page. Video-only streams are merged with audio on-device (no re-encoding).
Share to download	"Download with QuickTube" appears in every app's share sheet. The format picker pops up over YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and other apps, and the download continues in the background.
Browser	Built-in WebView for any site. On a video page a Download bar appears under the page (even before you press play) from the page's own player data; on listing pages it stays hidden. It offers every quality the page has, plus an audio-only M4A. Pasting or sharing a link opens the download sheet directly. This works with plain MP4 players, HLS (.m3u8, including AES-128 encrypted) behind blob: players, iframe-embedded players and shadow-DOM players. HLS is converted to MP4 on the phone. YouTube videos open the native page. Sites list (add/delete), history, saved pages.
Download engine	Each file is split into 4 MB pieces fetched over up to 8 connections at once, and video and audio download together. Pieces are remembered, so pause, retry or even a killed app resume where they were. Merging runs in-process with Media3 on private storage (a 10-minute 720p video takes a few seconds). Formats are chosen by codec so they can always be saved (H.264 first, AV1 only on Android 14+, VP9 as WebM); if a site still serves one that can't, or a link expires, the page is re-extracted and the download carries on. Queue, Wi-Fi vs mobile task limits, speed limit, notifications.
Play tab	Downloading card, downloaded list with filter (music / video / pictures), search, multi-select (share, vault, delete). Item menu: vault, play as audio, convert to audio, share, open with, rename, delete. Remembers playback position.
Player	Speed, previous / next, seek, double-tap ±10 s, fullscreen landscape, "All videos" queue, Listen (audio-only) mode, shuffle / repeat, mini player, lock-screen and notification controls.
In-app updates	New releases are announced inside the app with their release notes. One tap downloads, verifies (SHA-256 and the same signing key) and installs the update; Android asks once for the "install unknown apps" permission.
Settings	Download path, max tasks, speed limit, mobile data, notification toggles, Appearance (System/Light/Dark, 7 accent palettes, pure-black AMOLED, Material You wallpaper colours on Android 12+), content region, feedback, share, about.
Tools	Recycle bin (30-day recover), deleted download history with "Download again", WhatsApp status saver, PIN-locked Vault, storage clean, large files clean, app uninstaller.

Site support

Extraction runs in three layers, cheapest first:

1. NewPipe Extractor: YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp (native pages, fastest).
2. Page reader (PageMediaParser + StreamResolver): reads the player data the page ships with (quality lists, HLS playlists, JSON-LD, Open Graph) from the live WebView, using the user's session.
3. yt-dlp (core:ytdlp, bundled Python): about 1,800 site extractors, updated daily straight from the yt-dlp release URL.

On-device check against yt-dlp's own example URLs for 118 popular sites (SiteSupportTest):

./gradlew :app:connectedDebugAndroidTest -Pandroid.testInstrumentationRunnerArguments.class=com.edureminder.quicktube.SiteSupportTest

End-to-end check of the real share flow on a release build (R8 and resource shrinking on, like a published APK): scripts/share_bot.py sends each link the way an app's Share button does, picks a format in the sheet, waits for the download and checks the file with ffprobe and a full ffmpeg decode. Put one name<TAB>url per line in a text file (copy links with each app's Share → Copy link):

./gradlew :app:installQa

python3 scripts/share_bot.py links.txt --fresh --report bot-report.json

Last run: 34/118 downloaded end to end. Failures broke down as: dead or removed example links (17), region/IP blocks (13), login-only (7, which work in the in-app browser once signed in), DRM/DASH-only/live (7), sites whose yt-dlp extractor was broken that day (18, fixed by its updates), and network/other (12).

Design

• Font: Plus Jakarta Sans (SIL OFL), bundled in core/designsystem/src/main/res/font.
• Icons: Google Material Symbols (Rounded) and Simple Icons brand logos, generated into core/designsystem/.../icon/QtIcons.kt by scripts/gen_icons.py. To add an icon, add it to the table there and re-run:

python3 scripts/gen_icons.py /tmp/qt-icons core/designsystem/src/main/java/com/edureminder/quicktube/core/designsystem/icon/QtIcons.kt

• Touch feedback: Modifier.pressable() (spring press-scale, accent ripple, optional haptics). Loading: Modifier.shimmer() skeletons.

Permissions by Android version

Permission	When it's asked
Storage (write)	Android 7–10 only, at first launch and again just before a download if it was denied
Notifications	Android 13+, at first launch; Settings → Notifications shows an "Allow" banner if it's off
Photos/videos/audio	Android 13+ (partial access handled on 14+); storage read on 12 and older. Only for Large files clean
Storage (read)	Android 10 and older, for WhatsApp status saver; Android 11+ uses the system folder picker instead

Build from source

./gradlew :app:installDebug

./gradlew testDebugUnitTest

Release-optimised build for testing on a device (R8 on, signed with the debug key, installs next to the debug app):

./gradlew :app:installQa

Live extractor tests (hit the network) only run when asked:

NETWORK_TESTS=1 ./gradlew :core:extractor:testDebugUnitTest

See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the module layout and how to add a feature.

Known limits

• MP3: Android has no built-in MP3 encoder, so audio comes out as M4A (AAC) or Opus. Both play everywhere MP3 does. True MP3 needs a native encoder (e.g. LAME) added as a library.
• DRM: DRM-protected streams (Widevine, as used by Netflix and paid platforms) and DASH-only players can't be downloaded.
• Facebook / Instagram: public videos work from shared links and from the browser. Private or login-only posts need you to sign in inside the QuickTube browser first.
• Not replicated: SnapTube's "Boost" and "Battery saver", which don't do anything real on modern Android, plus its ads and account sign-in. Storage clean, large files clean and the app uninstaller are implemented for real.
• Store policy: Google Play and the App Store don't allow apps that download YouTube videos. Ship through other channels (direct APK, alternative stores) or remove the YouTube download path before submitting.
• License: NewPipe Extractor is GPLv3, so distributing this app means distributing it under GPL-compatible terms.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Read CONTRIBUTING.md to get started, and the Code of Conduct. All changes go through pull requests to main; releases are published by the maintainer (see docs/RELEASING.md).

Privacy

No accounts, no servers of our own. Official releases send crash reports and anonymous usage counts through Firebase, and you can turn that off in Settings → Privacy. Details in PRIVACY.md.

Credits

• NewPipe Extractor (GPL-3.0): YouTube support
• yt-dlp (Unlicense) via youtubedl-android (GPL-3.0): site support
• AndroidX (Compose, Media3, Room, Navigation, DataStore), Koin, Coil, OkHttp (Apache-2.0)
• Material Symbols (Apache-2.0), Simple Icons (CC0), Plus Jakarta Sans (OFL-1.1)

License

QuickTube is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.