Yoink — Media Downloader for Windows

Yoink is a medvia downloader for Windows that wraps the power of yt-dlp and FFmpeg in a clean, native WPF app — grab video or audio from thousands of sites, then keep it all organized in one place.

Point it at a URL, pick your quality and format, and go. Yoink handles playlists, follows channels for new uploads, queues concurrent downloads, and keeps a searchable library and history of everything you've saved — no command line, no browser extensions, no ads.

It provisions its own copies of yt-dlp and FFmpeg on first launch, so there is nothing to install separately: download the app and start yoinking.

Screenshots

Download

Inspect a URL, choose the quality and format, configure subtitles and metadata, then start the download.

Queue and playlists

Manage active downloads with live progress, or inspect a playlist and selectively queue its entries.

Queue	Playlists

Library, channels, history, and settings

Keep downloads organized, follow channels for new uploads, review past activity, and customize the app from one place.

Library	Channels

History	Settings

Features

• Download — paste a URL, inspect available streams, pick quality/format, and download video or audio.
• Queue — manage concurrent downloads with pause/resume/retry and live progress.
• Playlists — expand and selectively download playlist entries.
• Channels — follow channels and browse/download their uploads.
• Library — browse everything you've downloaded, filtered by media type.
• History — full record of past downloads with re-download and export.
• Settings — configure download folder, concurrency, speed limits, preferred containers/quality, filename templates, proxy, cookies, tool paths, appearance, and diagnostics.

Data (settings, the SQLite database, provisioned tools, and logs) is stored under %LocalAppData%\Yoink.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 (x64)
• To build from source: .NET 8 SDK

The published, self-contained build bundles the .NET runtime, so end users do not need .NET installed. yt-dlp and FFmpeg are downloaded automatically on first run.

Project structure

Clean-architecture layering:

Project	Responsibility
Yoink.Domain	Entities, media/settings models (no dependencies)
Yoink.Application	Abstractions and use-case contracts
Yoink.Infrastructure	yt-dlp/FFmpeg integration, SQLite persistence, settings, tool provisioning
Yoink.Presentation	WPF UI (MVVM via CommunityToolkit.Mvvm)
Yoink.Shared	Cross-cutting primitives (e.g. Result)

Building & running (from source)

:: Restore + build (Debug)
build.bat

:: Run
run.bat

Or with the .NET CLI directly:

dotnet build Yoink.slnx
dotnet run --project src/Yoink.Presentation/Yoink.Presentation.csproj

Tests

dotnet test Yoink.slnx

Publishing a release build

Produces a single self-contained Yoink.exe (no external dependencies):

publish.bat

Output: src\Yoink.Presentation\bin\Release\net8.0-windows\win-x64\publish\Yoink.exe

The same profile can be invoked via the CLI:

dotnet publish src/Yoink.Presentation/Yoink.Presentation.csproj -p:PublishProfile=win-x64

To build the Windows Installer (YoinkSetup.msi):

make_installer.bat

Output: dist\YoinkSetup.msi

To distribute, ship the YoinkSetup.msi installer or the standalone Yoink.exe. On first launch it creates its data folder, initializes the database, and downloads yt-dlp/FFmpeg into %LocalAppData%\Yoink\tools.

Troubleshooting

• "Tools unavailable" on startup — Yoink couldn't download yt-dlp/FFmpeg. Check your internet connection, or set explicit executable paths in Settings → Integrations.
• Logs — open Settings → Advanced → View Logs (or browse to %LocalAppData%\Yoink\logs). Enable Diagnostic logging for verbose output.

License

This project bundles/downloads third-party tools that carry their own licenses: yt-dlp (Unlicense) and FFmpeg (GPL/LGPL builds from yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds).