UnityYoutubePlayer

Play and download youtube videos in Unity using youtube-dl and Unity's VideoPlayer, and uses youtube-dl-server to fetch metadata from youtube-dl.

Please note that WebGL is not supported because of CORS

Preview

Play youtube videos without this package

⚠️ https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com is a demo server that you were able to use in the past, but now is no longer available. This is due to Heroku getting rid of their free tier plan. See comment

That's right, you don't even need to install this package to play youtube videos in Unity.

Just change the url you want to play from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo

To

https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo&cli=yt-dlp

And use it directly in a VideoPlayer component. It will automatically redirect to the raw video format that can be played in Unity (in most cases)

But for a better reliability, you might want to host your own youtube-dl-server

If you are targetting desktop platforms, it is recommended that you use the package, since it will be faster, and does not need a server.

How To Install

This package uses the scoped registry feature to import dependent packages. Please add the following sections to the package manifest file (Packages/manifest.json).

To the scopedRegistries section:

{
  "name": "iBicha",
  "url": "https://registry.npmjs.com",
  "scopes": [ "com.ibicha" ]
}

To the dependencies section:

"com.ibicha.youtube-player": "2.0.2"

After changes, the manifest file should look like below:

{
  "scopedRegistries": [
    {
      "name": "iBicha",
      "url": "https://registry.npmjs.com",
      "scopes": [ "com.ibicha" ]
    }
  ],
  "dependencies": {
    "com.ibicha.youtube-player": "2.0.2",
    ...

Usage

• A minimalistic example:

public class SimpleYoutubeVideo : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Start()
    {
        GetComponent<VideoPlayer>().PlayYoutubeVideoAsync("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo");
    }
}

Or,

• Add a YoutubePlayer component on a GameObject with a VideoPlayer. Set the url in the inspector. The YoutubePlayer will follow the Play On Awake setting of the video player. You can also call YoutubePlayer.PlayVideoAsync.

• In addition, you can call YoutubePlayer.DownloadVideoAsync to download the video to a file instead. See the DownloadYoutubeVideo as an example.

• VideoPlayerProgress allows to display the progress of the video, as well as seeking.

• See Assets\YoutubePlayer\Scenes for more examples.

Dependencies

UnityYoutubePlayer uses youtube-dl and yt-dlp for parsing webpages and getting a raw video url that Unity's VideoPlayer can play. To allow maximum platform compatibilty (e.g. mobile, desktop) and to be able to update the library without rebuilding the game, we're using youtube-dl-server web API.

The package uses a free instance of the server hosted on heroku (shared between everyone). For better reliability and performance, it is recommended to host this on your own.

Starting with 1.5.1, this package downloads and uses youtube-dl locally on Desktop platforms.

Starting with 1.7.0, this package downloads and uses yt-dlp locally on Desktop platforms, in addition to youtube-dl.

How do I host my own youtube-dl server?

• Go to youtube-dl-server
• Click the Deploy to Heroku purple button
• Finish the setup on Heroku.
• Make YoutubePlayer use your newly hosted instance: To make YoutubePlayer use your instance of the server, make sure to set the ServerUrl before making calls to youtube APIs, e.g.

YoutubeDl.ServerUrl = "http://your-self-hosted-server.com";

For reference, the default instance is

YoutubeDl.ServerUrl = "https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com";

And you can test it in the browser: https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com/v1/video?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo&schema=url

or https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo

Older version

For the version used with YoutubeExplode, see the legacy/youtube-explode branch. Please note that it has a different license than the current version.