YouTubeKit

This package allows to extract the direct video url or audio url for any YouTube video. This therefore allows to play YouTube videos in native UI components.

Disclaimer: YouTubeKit is currently still a work in progress, so it might not work in all regions.

The structurce of the code is strongly aligned with the pytube project (written in Python). This should make future breaking changes (by the YouTube API) easier to fix.

Compatibility

It requires iOS 13, watchOS 6, tvOS 13 or macOS 10.15, since it's relying on the Swift 5.5 Concurrency module.

Usage

1. Create a YouTube object with the videoURL or videoID of your video:

let video = YouTube(url: videoURL)

or

let video = YouTube(videoID: videoID)

2. Extract all streams:

let streams = try await video.streams

This will return an array of Stream objects.

3. Filter for the stream you want by using a normal filter or with provided helper functions like:

let streamsAt1080 = streams.streams(withExactResolution: 1080)
let lowestResolution = streams.lowestResolutionStream()
let highestResolution = streams.highestResolutionStream()
let lowestAudioBitrate = streams.lowestAudioBitrateStream()
let highestAudioBitrate = streams.highestAudioBitrateStream()
let audioOnlyStreams = streams.filterAudioOnly()  // all streams without video track
let videoOnlyStreams = streams.filterVideoOnly()  // all streams without audio track

Example 1

To get the video url of type mp4 with the highest available resolution for a given YouTube url:

let stream = try await YouTube(url: youtubeURL).streams
                          .filter { $0.isProgressive && $0.subtype == "mp4" }
                          .highestResolutionStream()

let streamURL = stream.url                      

The isProgressive parameter is used to filter only streams that contain both video and audio.

Example 2

To get the best mp4 audio-only url for a given YouTube ID:

let stream = try await YouTube(videoID: "9bZkp7q19f0").streams
                          .filterAudioOnly()
                          .filter { $0.subtype == "mp4" }
                          .highestAudioBitrateStream()

let streamURL = stream.url

Example 3

To get the HLS url for a given YouTube ID of a livestream:

let hlsManifestUrl = try await YouTube(videoID: "21X5lGlDOfg").livestreams
                          .filter { $0.streamType == .hls }
                          .first