A YouTube CLI for Mac

Out of laziness, I mostly listen to music off YouTube these days. As a library it’s pretty unbeatable, and I don’t have to worry about plugging in an external HDD with a big library.

Using the browser for selecting songs is a drag, but I’ve always used visual interfaces (originally iTunes, then a combination of VLC and Vox). Also, Flash player munches on your battery pretty bad. And I generally try to avoid executing anything with Flash.

Turns out there’s a CLI for YouTube, youtube-viewer with vim-like keybindings no less! Since it requires a newer version of Perl than what’s bundled with OSX, you need to do a little work to get it running.

Perl 5.16.0

The Perl version bundled with OSX in /usr/bin/perl with Mac OSX 10.7.5, is 5.12.3. Considering Apple’s tendency to let the CLI tools bundled with OSX rot, I doubt newer versions have a more up-to-date version. It’s entirely possible that some system-level functionality depends on an old version of Perl, so updating at the root level would be a Very Bad Idea.

Fortunately, there’s a good setup tool available on learn.perl.org:

$ curl -L http://xrl.us/installperlosx | bash

This will install 5.16.0 in ~/perl5/perlbrew and add a line to your .bashrc, updating your env Perl version.

Mplayer

This one’s easy.

$ brew install mplayer

youtube-viewer

Snag the source:

$ git clone [email protected]:trizen/youtube-viewer.git

Follow the instructions, but drop the last sudo — provided you make sure to execute Build.PL with your perlbrew (rather than system) Perl, then it will be installed in a user-specific directory.

$ perl Build.PL
    $ ./Build
    $ ./Build test
    $ ./Build install

Usage

$ youtube-viewer
    =>> Search for YouTube videos (:h for help)

Or, if you don’t want an MPlayer window popping up outside your Terminal while a video is playing:

$ youtube-viewer -n
    =>> Search for YouTube videos (:h for help)

Enjoy!

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