Yoink any video. Yours in one click.

One button, everywhere you watch

Yoink It drops a Download button right where you already are, and a power-user popup for everything else.

Does it upload my videos to a server?

No — it's private by design, not by promise. The opposite of an "online video downloader": there is no server to trust, because there isn't one.

How does it work under the hood?

Prerequisites

↓Install

1. Download & unzip the releaseDownload the installer

   Click Download above to get yoinkit-mac-<version>.zip, then unzip it. It extracts to a single folder named yoinkit — keep it in your Downloads folder (~/Downloads/yoinkit/). Inside you'll find two things you use: app/ (the Chrome extension) and host/ (the installer + helper), plus a README.txt with the exact commands below.

   Click Download for Windows above to get a single file: yoinkit-setup.exe. That's the whole installer — no zip to unpack, no folders to arrange. Just save it somewhere you can find it, like your Downloads folder.

   Downloads

   

   macOS note: the installer copies the helper out of this folder into ~/Library/Application Support/ automatically, so it's fine to keep the unzipped folder in Documents or Downloads even though Chrome can't execute from there directly.

2. Load the extension into Chrome

   Chrome requires this step to be done by hand once — it can't be automated.

   1. Open chrome://extensions/ (paste into the address bar).
   2. Turn on Developer mode (top-right toggle).
   3. Click Load unpacked and select the yoinkit/app folder inside what you unzipped (the app folder, not its parent).

   chrome://extensions

   

   You'll see Yoink It (local) appear as a card. Its ID is fixed (the extension ships a pinned key), so the installer already knows it — no need to copy it. Leave this tab open.

   Select the app folder

   

3. Run the installer

   Double-click yoinkit-setup.exe and click through the setup wizard — Install, then Finish. No terminal, no commands, and no admin password (it installs just for you). Behind the scenes it sets up the native helper plus a bundled copy of Python, yt-dlp, and ffmpeg — nothing else for you to install.

   Expect one extra confirmation. Because the installer is brand-new and not yet code-signed, Windows may show a blue "Windows protected your PC" screen. This is normal for new apps — click More info, then Run anyway, and the wizard opens. (We're working on a signed installer to remove this prompt.)

   yoinkit-setup.exe

   Screenshot slot

   Capture: the SmartScreen "Windows protected your PC" dialog with the More info → Run anyway path highlighted, plus a frame of the setup wizard.

4. Run the installer

   Open Terminal, then run this from inside the unzipped folder. It installs yt-dlp + ffmpeg, registers the extension's fixed ID, copies the helper to a safe location, and sets up the host.

   Terminal — macOS

   cd ~/Downloads/yoinkit        # wherever you unzipped it
   chmod +x host/bootstrap.sh
   ./host/bootstrap.sh

   Copy
   The installer prints where it placed yt-dlp, ffmpeg, the helper, and the manifest. If you see those four lines, registration succeeded.

   Terminal — bootstrap.sh

   Screenshot slot

   Capture: the installer's final output — the four "placed …" lines that confirm success.

5. Load the extension into Chrome

   When the wizard finishes, Chrome opens automatically to its Extensions page. There's one last step — the standard one Chrome requires for any side-loaded extension:

   1. Turn on Developer mode (top-right toggle).
   2. Click Load unpacked (top-left).
   3. Select the Yoink It\app folder the installer points you to — the wizard's final page shows the exact path, so you can copy it straight from there.
   Need to do this again later? The installer adds a Start-menu shortcut, "Yoink It - Load Extension in Chrome," that reopens the Extensions page and shows the folder path anytime.

   chrome://extensions

   

   Select the app folder

   

   You'll see Yoink It (local) appear as a card. Its ID is pinned, so the installer already targets it — nothing to copy or paste.

6. Finish

   The native manifest is read fresh on each connection, so you usually don't need to reload — but if you just changed a file under yoinkit/, click the reload icon on the extension card. Then open a YouTube video and click Yoink it.

   That's it — the helper is already wired up. Open a YouTube video (or any supported page) and click Yoink it. If it doesn't respond the very first time, fully restart Chrome once and try again.

   That's it — enjoy. If Yoink It earns a spot in your toolkit, tossing a few bucks its way → keeps it fast and up to date.

Using it

Two ways to grab anything — both fully local.

1 · The on-page button

On a YouTube watch page the Yoink it button sits in the native action row. On X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, Twitch, and Rumble it appears as a floating pill on a single post/video page — and on X you can also yoink straight from a post's ··· menu. One click starts the download. For anything else, paste the link into the popup.

2 · The popup manager

Click the toolbar icon to open the popup: paste any supported link, pick quality (up to 4K, or audio-only MP3/M4A), and watch a live queue with progress bars. Transcripts run as their own background job, so a video download never waits on speech-to-text.

Yoink It · popup

Yoink It · popup

Smoke test

Nothing to do here on Windows — yoinkit-setup.exe already installed and registered the helper for you. Just open a video and click Yoink it. If anything looks off, jump to Troubleshooting.

Confirm the helper works before involving the extension. This downloads a short clip straight from the command line.

./host/test_host.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqz-KE-bpKQ" --720

Expect framed started → progress… → done with code: 0, and a file in ~/Downloads/yoinkit/. Other flags: --audio-mp3, --audio-m4a, --1080, --transcript, --transcript-only.

Troubleshooting

"Error communicating with the native messaging host" / "Native host has exited"

The helper either never launched, or launched and crashed. The first thing to do is look at the log — every launch and every failure is recorded there:

macOS log: ~/Downloads/yoinkit/yoinkit-host.log Windows log: %USERPROFILE%\Downloads\yoinkit\yoinkit-host.log — it's right alongside your downloads. Re-run the installer, then read the log: If the helper never registered, just re-run yoinkit-setup.exe — it re-installs the helper and re-writes the native-host registry key. Then fully quit and reopen Chrome (it reads the native-host registration on startup), and check the log alongside your downloads.

./host/bootstrap.sh
cat ~/Downloads/yoinkit/yoinkit-host.log

Button doesn't appear on the page

YouTube uses the native action row; X and Instagram show a floating pill that only appears on a single post/status page (/status/, /p/, /reel/, /tv/) — not in the feed. If you changed extension files, reload the extension at chrome://extensions/.

X / Instagram / Facebook / TikTok download fails with a login error

Lots of content on these sites needs you to be logged in — Facebook in particular works best when logged in, and some TikTok content is region- or age-gated. Make sure Use my login (cookies) is checked in the popup, and that you're logged into that site in your Default Chrome profile — the helper reads cookies from the Default profile only. macOS may show a one-time Keychain prompt ("Chrome Safe Storage") — click Allow.

A site "suddenly stopped working"

Almost always a stale yt-dlp. Update it:

brew upgrade yt-dlp

& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\yoinkit-host\yt-dlp.exe" -U

"Saved ✓" never shows but the file is on disk

Harmless. Chrome may sleep the extension's background worker mid-download; the helper runs as its own process and finishes regardless. Reopen the popup to re-sync the queue.

Is it safe to download videos this way?

Frequently asked questions