FlightTube

A desktop app that merges all your YouTube subscriptions into one newest-first feed, downloads the videos you pick, and — when you have no connection — shows only what you already downloaded. Built for the flight.

Tauri 2 · Rust · React · Tailwind CSS 4 · SQLite

Styled to DESIGN-SYSTEM.md: slate and sky, a 9–15px type ladder, outline-first controls, borders for separation and shadows only for elevation, with light and dark both designed rather than one derived from the other.

How it works

Subscriptions come from Google Takeout, not the API. Export YouTube subscriptions from Takeout and import the subscriptions.csv in Settings — which carries a seven-step walkthrough with the exact URLs. No OAuth, no API key, no Google Cloud project, nothing secret on disk.

Importing replaces your subscription list: the CSV becomes the whole truth. Channels no longer in it are removed along with their videos and downloaded files. A confirmation dialog names exactly what will be deleted before anything happens.

Video metadata comes from YouTube's public Atom feed — one request per channel to youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=…, fetched 8 at a time and merged into a single feed sorted by publish date. Thumbnails are mirrored to local disk so the feed still renders with no network.

Undownloaded videos stream in-app. YouTube's iframe embed refuses a Tauri window — its origin is tauri://localhost, not an http(s) origin, which produces "Error 153" — so yt-dlp resolves YouTube's HLS master playlist instead. Its variants are H.264 + AAC up to 1080p, which AVFoundation plays natively in WKWebView with adaptive bitrate. One player element serves both local files and streams.

Downloads shell out to yt-dlp, pinned to H.264 video + AAC audio in an MP4 container. That caps quality at 1080p — YouTube only serves H.264 that high, and anything above it is VP9 or AV1, which the app's own player cannot reliably decode. The tradeoff is deliberate: every download is guaranteed to play inside FlightTube.

Requirements

brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg

Both are checked at startup; Settings shows their versions and this command if either is missing. ffmpeg is required because best-quality H.264 and AAC arrive as separate streams that must be merged.

Running it

npm install && npm run tauri dev

Build and install a real app bundle:

npm run tauri build -- --bundles app && cp -R src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/FlightTube.app /Applications/

Using it

Settings — follow the seven-step Takeout guide, then Import subscriptions.csv.
Refresh — pulls the latest videos from every channel.
Download on any video — progress shows live on the button; click again to cancel.
Click any video to play it in the app — a downloaded one from disk, anything else streamed. Nothing hands off to a browser.
List or Tiles — switch layouts in the top bar; the choice is remembered.
Offline — the app detects a lost connection and collapses the feed to your downloads. The connectivity pill also toggles a forced offline mode for testing.

Videos land in ~/Movies/FlightTube (changeable in Settings). Appearance follows the system by default; Settings offers System / Light / Dark.

Limitations

The Atom feed returns only the ~15 most recent videos per channel. There is no backfill and no pagination — this is a rolling recent window, not an archive.
Quality tops out at 1080p, by the deliberate choice described above.
yt-dlp needs occasional updating (brew upgrade yt-dlp) as YouTube changes.
Downloading videos is contrary to YouTube's Terms of Service.

Tests

cd src-tauri && cargo test

42 unit tests cover the three places malformed input actually bites: Takeout CSV parsing, Atom feed parsing (against a captured real response), and yt-dlp progress-line parsing — plus the database rules that a refresh must never clobber download state and that a replacing import drops exactly the right channels.

Two network-dependent tests are excluded by default:

cargo test --test pipeline -- --ignored --nocapture      # full pipeline vs. live feeds
cargo test --test seed_real_db -- --ignored --nocapture  # populate the installed app's db

Layout

src-tauri/src/
  takeout.rs     subscriptions.csv -> channels        (pure, tested)
  feed.rs        Atom XML -> videos, plus fetching    (parse is pure, tested)
  downloader.rs  yt-dlp arguments and progress lines  (pure, tested)
  db.rs          schema and every SQL statement
  thumbs.rs      local thumbnail cache
  net.rs         reachability probe
  commands.rs    Tauri command surface — delegates only
src/
  components/    Sidebar, TopBar, VideoRow, VideoTile, DownloadButton, Player, Settings
  components/ui.tsx        the design system's component vocabulary, in one place
  components/TakeoutGuide  the seven-step export walkthrough
  hooks/         useFeed, useDownloads, useConnectivity, useAppearance

Design notes and the implementation plan are in docs/superpowers/.

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