Yoink It is a free, open-source-based, local-only video downloader for YouTube, X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, Twitch, and Rumble — plus roughly 1,800 more sites via yt-dlp. It runs yt-dlp and ffmpeg on your own computer, so nothing is uploaded to any server, with no ads and no account required.
Yoink It is a personal, local-only downloader for YouTube, X, Instagram, and more —
TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, Twitch, Rumble (plus ~1,800 sites via yt-dlp). The Chrome
extension drops a Yoink it button right on the page; a small helper runs
yt-dlp + ffmpeg on your machine.
No account, no upload, no waiting in someone else's line — the opposite of the sketchy
"online downloader" sites.
Plus ~1,800 more sites via yt-dlp.
Facebook works best logged in · Twitch clips & VODs (not live) · Reddit video posts.
Free, local, and ad-free — no company, no account, no catch.
Yoink It drops a Download button right where you already are, and a power-user popup for everything else.
Open a YouTube watch page, an X post, an Instagram reel, or a TikTok / Reddit / Facebook / Twitch / Rumble video — the button appears in YouTube's action row or as a floating pill on the others. Or just paste any link into the popup.
Click once. Or open the popup to paste any link, pick quality up to 4K — or audio-only MP3/M4A — and watch a live queue with progress bars.
Files land in a local folder with a "Show in Finder" button. Want the words too? Get a clean Markdown transcript — from captions, or local speech-to-text when there are none.
No — it's private by design, not by promise. The opposite of an "online video downloader": there is no server to trust, because there isn't one.
No account, no upload, no third-party servers — there are none. The download engine runs locally and writes only to your Downloads folder.
Powered by yt-dlp, the open-source engine that ships fixes within days when sites change their players — and already supports ~1,800 sites.
Turn any video into clean, timestamped Markdown — de-duplicated from captions, or transcribed locally with Whisper when captions don't exist. It never blocks your download.
The extension only touches the handful of sites it supports — no <all_urls>, no tracking. Just nativeMessaging and those hosts.
There's no company here — nothing to sell, no ads, nothing to harvest. Yoink It rides on
open-source yt-dlp and ffmpeg,
which patch almost weekly as sites change, and keeping pace with that is real, ongoing work.
If this saved you time — or a trip to a sketchy downloader site — a small contribution keeps
it free, current, and clean for everyone.
No pressure, ever — the tool is yours either way.
| Half | What it does |
|---|---|
The extensionyoinkit/ |
A Manifest V3 Chrome extension. Drops a one-click Yoink it button onto YouTube, X,
Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, Twitch, and Rumble, plus a popup that takes any of ~1,800
yt-dlp sites — with quality/format options, a live queue, and Markdown transcript export. |
The native hostyoinkit-host/ |
A tiny local program the extension talks to over Chrome's Native Messaging channel.
It runs yt-dlp + ffmpeg to actually
fetch and mux the media into ~/Downloads/yoinkit/. |
yt-dlp is the
battle-tested engine that handles all of that and ships fixes within days — and because it
supports ~1,800 sites, Yoink It reaches well beyond its eight first-class ones.
yt-dlp and
ffmpeg for you (via Homebrew, which it installs if missing).python3. You don't need to install it yourself.yt-dlp.exe
and ffmpeg.exe (standalone, no Python). If your PC has no Python,
the installer fetches a small portable copy automatically.
Click Download above to get yoinkit-<version>.zip, then unzip it somewhere you'll keep it — for example
~/Applications/yoinkit/ or your home folder.
C:\Users\you\yoinkit\ or your Documents folder.
The zip includes a README.txt that points back to this guide.
~/Library/Application Support/ automatically, so it's fine to keep
the unzipped folder in Documents or Downloads even though Chrome can't execute from there directly.
Chrome requires this step to be done by hand once — it can't be automated.
yoinkit/ folder
inside what you unzipped.You'll see Yoink It (local) appear as a card. Note its ID — you may need it in the next step. Leave this tab open.
Open Terminal, then run this from inside the unzipped folder. It installs
yt-dlp + ffmpeg, auto-detects your
extension ID from Chrome, copies the helper to a safe location, and registers it.
cd ~/Downloads/yoinkit # wherever you unzipped it chmod +x yoinkit-host/bootstrap.sh ./yoinkit-host/bootstrap.sh
If auto-detection can't find the extension, pass the ID shown on its card in chrome://extensions/:
./yoinkit-host/bootstrap.sh <EXTENSION_ID>
Open PowerShell (no admin needed), then run this from inside the unzipped folder.
It ensures yt-dlp.exe + ffmpeg.exe (and a
portable Python if needed) are present, auto-detects your extension ID, copies the helper to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\yoinkit-host\, writes the manifest, and adds the
registry key Chrome reads.
cd $env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\yoinkit # wherever you unzipped it powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\yoinkit-host\bootstrap.ps1
If auto-detection can't find the extension, pass the ID from its card:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\yoinkit-host\bootstrap.ps1 -ExtensionId <EXTENSION_ID>
yt-dlp,
ffmpeg, the helper, and the manifest. If you see those four lines,
registration succeeded.
The native manifest is read fresh on each connection, so you usually don't need to reload —
but if you just changed a file under yoinkit/, click the
reload icon on the extension card. Then open a YouTube video and click Yoink it.
Fully restart Chrome (close every window, not just the tab) so it re-reads the registry, then open a YouTube video and click Yoink it.
That's it — enjoy. If Yoink It earns a spot in your toolkit, tossing a few bucks its way → keeps it fast and up to date.
Two ways to grab anything — both fully local.
On a YouTube watch page the Yoink it button sits in the native action row.
On X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, Twitch, and Rumble it appears as a floating pill on a single
post/video page — and on X you can also yoink straight from a post's ··· menu.
One click starts the download. For anything else, paste the link into the popup.
Click the toolbar icon to open the popup: paste any supported link, pick quality (up to 4K, or audio-only MP3/M4A), and watch a live queue with progress bars. Transcripts run as their own background job, so a video download never waits on speech-to-text.
··· menu item).
Confirm the helper works before involving the extension. This downloads a short clip straight from the command line.
./yoinkit-host/test_host.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqz-KE-bpKQ" --720
# Uses the same interpreter the installer set up: & "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\yoinkit-host\host.bat" < $null # Or drive it like the extension does: .\yoinkit-host\test_host.ps1 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqz-KE-bpKQ" --720
Expect framed started → progress… →
done with code: 0, and a file in
~/Downloads/yoinkit/.
%USERPROFILE%\Downloads\yoinkit\.
Other flags: --audio-mp3, --audio-m4a,
--1080, --transcript,
--transcript-only.
The manifest isn't registered, points at the wrong path, or your extension ID changed (it changes if you remove and re-add the unpacked extension). Re-run the installer.
./yoinkit-host/bootstrap.sh cat /tmp/yoinkit-host.log
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\yoinkit-host\bootstrap.ps1 Get-Content "$env:TEMP\yoinkit-host.log" -Tail 40
~/Library/Application Support/, outside the
protected Documents/Desktop/Downloads folders).
On Windows that means the registry key or manifest path is wrong — re-run
bootstrap.ps1 and fully restart Chrome.
YouTube uses the native action row; X and Instagram show a floating pill that only
appears on a single post/status page (/status/,
/p/, /reel/,
/tv/) — not in the feed. If you changed extension files, reload the
extension at chrome://extensions/.
Lots of content on these sites needs you to be logged in — Facebook in particular works best when logged in, and some TikTok content is region- or age-gated. Make sure Use my login (cookies) is checked in the popup, and that you're logged into that site in your Default Chrome profile — the helper reads cookies from the Default profile only. macOS may show a one-time Keychain prompt ("Chrome Safe Storage") — click Allow.
Almost always a stale yt-dlp. Update it:
brew upgrade yt-dlp
& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\yoinkit-host\yt-dlp.exe" -U
Harmless. Chrome may sleep the extension's background worker mid-download; the helper runs as its own process and finishes regardless. Reopen the popup to re-sync the queue.
Yoink It is local-only. It is not on the Chrome Web Store and talks to no servers of ours
— there are none. The extension can only see its supported sites (no
<all_urls> access). The helper accepts input only from this one
extension (pinned by ID) over a pipe Chrome owns; it's not a network service and writes only to
~/Downloads/yoinkit/.
When Use my login is enabled, yt-dlp reads your local Chrome
cookies and presents your session only to the source site — exactly as your browser already
does. Nothing is transmitted to any third party.
Downloading content may violate a site's terms of service. Clear-cut exceptions are content you uploaded yourself or that is Creative Commons / public domain. You are responsible for the legality of each download. This tool is for personal local use only.
Yes. Yoink It is local-only: it runs entirely on your own computer, is not on the Chrome Web Store, and talks to no servers of ours because there are none. The extension can only access the handful of sites it supports, and the helper that does the downloading only accepts input from this one extension over a private channel Chrome controls.
No. Nothing you download is ever uploaded. Yoink It runs yt-dlp and ffmpeg locally and writes files only to your Downloads folder. There is no cloud, no queue on someone else's machine, and no third-party server involved at any step.
Yes. Yoink It is free, has no ads, and never asks you to create an account or sign in to use it. There is no company behind it and nothing to sell. If it earns a spot in your toolkit, an optional contribution helps keep it maintained, but the tool is fully yours either way.
Yoink It is built on the open-source tools yt-dlp and ffmpeg, which are public, audited, and updated almost weekly as sites change. Local-only means the browser extension simply hands a link to a small helper program installed on your machine; that helper runs yt-dlp and ffmpeg to fetch and combine the media, then saves it to your Downloads folder. No data leaves your computer.
Open a YouTube watch page and click the Yoink it button that appears in YouTube's native action row, or open the popup and paste the link. Pick your quality up to 4K, or choose audio-only, and the file saves straight to your Downloads folder.
On a single post, status, reel, or video page, a floating Yoink it pill appears; click it to download. On X you can also yoink straight from a post's ··· menu. Paste the link into the popup for anything you can't reach with the on-page button. Some Instagram and TikTok content is private, region-gated, or age-gated, so enable "Use my login" and stay signed in to that site in your Default Chrome profile.
Yes, with a few honest caveats. Facebook works best when you are logged in, so enable "Use my login." Twitch supports clips and VODs, not active live streams. Reddit supports video posts. Rumble videos download directly. Beyond these, yt-dlp adds support for roughly 1,800 more sites you can use through the popup.
You can download video quality up to 4K when the source provides it. You can also grab audio only as MP3 or M4A, which is handy for music, podcasts, and talks where you don't need the picture.
Yes. Yoink It can produce a clean, timestamped Markdown transcript. When a video already has captions it de-duplicates them into readable text; when there are no captions it can transcribe the audio locally using Whisper speech-to-text. Transcripts run as their own background job, so they never delay your download.
Browser-only and online downloaders break constantly because sites use ciphered, expiring, and split audio/video streams, and online sites also see every link you paste. yt-dlp is the battle-tested engine that handles those streams and ships fixes within days, and running it locally means your links and downloads stay entirely on your machine.
Yoink It runs on macOS 11 or newer and on Windows 10 or 11, alongside a current version of Google Chrome. The installer sets up yt-dlp and ffmpeg for you on both platforms; on Windows it can fetch a small portable Python automatically if your PC doesn't have one.
That depends on the content and the site's terms of service. Clear-cut safe cases include content you uploaded yourself or material that is Creative Commons or public domain. You are responsible for the legality of each download, and Yoink It is intended for personal, local use only.