Play and download youtube videos in Unity using youtube-dl and Unity's VideoPlayer, and uses youtube-dl-server to fetch metadata from youtube-dl.
Please note that WebGL is not supported because of CORS
That's right, you don't even need to install this package to play youtube videos in Unity.
Just change the url you want to play from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo
To
https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo
And use it directly in a VideoPlayer component. It will automatically redirect to the raw video format that can be played in Unity (in most cases)
But for a better reliability, you might want to host your own youtube-dl-server
If you are targetting desktop platforms, it is recommended that you use the package, since it will be faster, and does not need a server.
This package uses the scoped registry feature to import dependent
packages. Please add the following sections to the package manifest file
(Packages/manifest.json
).
To the scopedRegistries
section:
{
"name": "iBicha",
"url": "https://registry.npmjs.com",
"scopes": [ "com.ibicha" ]
}
To the dependencies
section:
"com.ibicha.youtube-player": "1.6.0"
After changes, the manifest file should look like below:
{
"scopedRegistries": [
{
"name": "iBicha",
"url": "https://registry.npmjs.com",
"scopes": [ "com.ibicha" ]
}
],
"dependencies": {
"com.ibicha.youtube-player": "1.6.0",
...
- A minimalistic example:
public class SimpleYoutubeVideo : MonoBehaviour
{
void Start()
{
GetComponent<VideoPlayer>().PlayYoutubeVideoAsync("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo");
}
}
Or,
-
Add a
YoutubePlayer
component on aGameObject
with aVideoPlayer
. Set the url in the inspector. TheYoutubePlayer
will follow thePlay On Awake
setting of the video player. You can also callYoutubePlayer.PlayVideoAsync
. -
In addition, you can call
YoutubePlayer.DownloadVideoAsync
to download the video to a file instead. See theDownloadYoutubeVideo
as an example. -
VideoPlayerProgress
allows to display the progress of the video, as well as seeking. -
See
Assets\YoutubePlayer\Scenes
for more examples.
UnityYoutubePlayer uses youtube-dl for parsing webpages and getting a raw video url that Unity's VideoPlayer can play. To allow maximum platform compatibilty (e.g. mobile, desktop) and to be able to update the library without rebuilding the game, we're using youtube-dl-server web API.
The package uses a free instance of the server hosted on heroku (shared between everyone). For better reliability and performance, it is recommended to host this on your own.
Starting with 1.5.1, this package downloads and uses youtube-dl
locally on Desktop platforms.
- Go to youtube-dl-server
- Click the
Deploy to Heroku
purple button - Finish the setup on Heroku.
- Make
YoutubePlayer
use your newly hosted instance: To makeYoutubePlayer
use your instance of the server, make sure to set theServerUrl
before making calls to youtube APIs, e.g.
YoutubeDl.ServerUrl = "http://your-self-hosted-server.com";
For reference, the default instance is
YoutubeDl.ServerUrl = "https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com";
And you can test it in the browser: https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com/v1/video?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo&schema=url
or https://unity-youtube-dl-server.herokuapp.com/watch?v=1PuGuqpHQGo
For the version used with YoutubeExplode, see the legacy/youtube-explode branch. Please note that it has a different license than the current version.