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PullDown

PullDown is a compact, fully native SwiftUI front end for yt-dlp. It downloads YouTube video or audio without requiring Terminal, and includes an optional menu-bar companion.

PullDown showing a selectable playlist

What works

  • Finds yt-dlp in standard macOS, Homebrew, MacPorts and Python installation paths, or installs a checksum-verified official build.
  • Cleans shared links and removes tracking, timestamp and fragment parameters before downloading.
  • Loads complete playlists, with Select all, Select none and individual video selection.
  • Offers video quality and container controls, audio format and bitrate controls, metadata, thumbnails, subtitles and filename templates.
  • Saves to Downloads by default or another folder chosen with the native macOS picker.
  • Shows download progress and ETA while data is transferring, then a clear finalising state.
  • Keeps a persistent download history with Finder actions, source-link copying, retrying and safe history clearing.
  • Provides the same core download controls from an optional menu-bar item, which can be disabled in Settings.
  • Includes the supplied Icon Composer artwork, with Liquid Glass rendering on macOS 26 and newer and a generated compatibility rendition on macOS 15.
  • Uses Liquid Glass on macOS 26 and newer, with native macOS materials on macOS 15.
  • Supports Command-1 for New Download, Command-2 for Activity and Command-Return to start with the current settings.
  • Checks GitHub Releases for signed updates and presents native options to install, postpone or skip a version.

PullDown is built with SwiftUI, AppKit integration and Foundation. It does not embed a browser or web interface, and it invokes yt-dlp directly without a shell.

Requirements

  • macOS 15 or later
  • yt-dlp, installed automatically if required
  • FFmpeg for audio conversion and merging separate high-quality video and audio streams
  • Xcode 26 or later and Swift 6.2 or later when building from source

Install

Download the appropriate ZIP from the latest GitHub Release: Apple Silicon for M-series Macs, or Intel for 64-bit Intel Macs. Unzip it, move PullDown to Applications and open it. PullDown then checks GitHub for signed updates automatically; this can be disabled in Settings. The automatic builds are ad-hoc signed rather than notarised, so on first launch you may need to Control-click the app, choose Open and confirm.

To build from source instead, clone the repository with:

gh repo clone j4ckxyz/PullDown

Open PullDown.xcodeproj in Xcode, choose the PullDown scheme, then Run. PullDown is not sandboxed because it must discover package-manager executables and run yt-dlp outside the app container.

Every push to main must increment the semantic version in VERSION. GitHub Actions builds Apple Silicon, Intel and universal applications, signs the Sparkle appcast, and publishes release vX.Y.Z with SHA-256 checksums. The universal archive supplies in-app updates for both Mac architectures.

URL handling

Shared links such as https://youtu.be/8CENhRZmRBc?si=… are reduced to the video URL. Playlist identifiers are retained, while tracking and start-time parameters such as &t=182s are removed.

Tests

Run the Swift Testing suite with:

swift test

The tests cover the supplied shared link, playlist link and timestamp link, full playlist metadata parsing and selection, command construction, executable discovery, installation verification, progress parsing and a mocked end-to-end download.