Install youtubeuploader with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• youtubeuploader

Project history

The public repository was created in May 2015, in the period when YouTube Data API v3 and OAuth2 became the normal path for programmatic uploads. The README credits Google's Go YouTube API sample code and tokland/youtube-upload for playlist-update insight, placing the project in a lineage of CLI wrappers around the official YouTube API.

The project evolved around the operational details that make uploads hard to script: OAuth client secrets, token caching, resumable/chunked uploads, rate limiting, metadata JSON, thumbnails, captions, playlist IDs, subscriber notification flags, and headless-server token transfer.

Adoption history

youtubeuploader serves a narrower but durable automation niche: creators, archivists, CI jobs, and media pipelines that need repeatable uploads rather than browser sessions. Third-party tutorials document it as a practical way to batch or command-line upload videos, while Homebrew and Nix package it for workstation/server installation.

The README also tracks ecosystem constraints imposed by Google. It highlights the July 28, 2020 YouTube API policy that new unverified API projects have uploads restricted to private visibility, and notes quota limits that affect how many videos a default project can upload per day.

How it is used

At minimum, users run `youtubeuploader -filename blob.mp4`. First-run OAuth opens a browser and stores a request token; for a headless server, users generate the token locally and copy it with the binary and client_secrets.json.

More advanced usage supplies metadata through flags or a JSON file: title, description, tags, privacy status, publish time, made-for-kids flags, playlist IDs/titles, localizations, captions, thumbnail, language, chunk size, and rate-limit windows.

Why package nerds care

youtubeuploader is useful package lore because it packages a web-console workflow as a reproducible CLI. Its hard parts are not algorithms; they are OAuth, API policy, quotas, metadata shape, and robust streaming upload behavior.

It pairs naturally with schedulers, build systems, and media pipelines, which is exactly where a package-manager-installed binary beats a one-off browser session.

Timeline

• 2015-05-21: The public porjo/youtubeuploader GitHub repository is created.
• 2010s: The tool builds on Google's Go YouTube API sample code and earlier youtube-upload CLI ideas.
• 2020-07-28: Google changes YouTube Data API upload policy for new unverified API projects, affecting automated uploader workflows.
• 2020s: youtubeuploader remains packaged for scripted workstation and server uploads.

Related projects

• Google YouTube Data API v3 is the service API that youtubeuploader wraps.
• Google's Go API samples are credited as a base for the uploader.
• tokland/youtube-upload is an earlier command-line uploader credited for playlist-update insight.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/porjo/youtubeuploader
• https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/revision_history#july-28,-2020
• https://github.com/porjo/youtubeuploader
• https://marioyepes.com/blog/batch-upload-videos-to-youtube/
• https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/porjo/youtubeuploader
• https://transloadit.com/devtips/export-files-to-youtube-from-the-command-line/