Catch

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Paste a link. Catch the video.

Catch is a minimal macOS video downloader with one input and one download list. It supports YouTube, Bilibili, X/Twitter, and more than 1,800 other sites through yt-dlp, BBDown, and N_m3u8DL-RE.

Features

• Three ways to submit — paste into the input, press ⌘V anywhere in the window, or drag a link into the app.
• Clipboard suggestion — copy a supported video link and return to Catch for a one-click download prompt.
• Real titles — resolves the page title before downloading and uses it for the task and output filename.
• Automatic engine selection — Bilibili uses BBDown, HLS streams use N_m3u8DL-RE, and other sites use yt-dlp.
• Actionable failures — blocks obviously invalid links early and exposes the complete download log when an engine fails.
• Native macOS presentation — vibrancy, a hidden title bar, capsule controls, and light/dark appearance.
• No telemetry — upstream analytics and Sentry reporting have been removed.

Installation

Download the Apple Silicon DMG from Releases. The app is not notarized, so use right-click → Open the first time.

Build from source

Requirements: Node.js 20 or newer, pnpm 10 or newer, and Go 1.22 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/realruian/catch.git
cd catch
pnpm install
pnpm deps:download
pnpm dev:electron

Create a DMG with:

pnpm release:electron

Development checks

pnpm check

The project is a pnpm/Turborepo monorepo. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the package layout and development workflow.

Technology

• Electron and React 19 for the desktop experience.
• Tailwind CSS 4 and Ant Design 6 for the interface.
• Go, Gin, and SQLite for download orchestration.
• yt-dlp, BBDown, N_m3u8DL-RE, and ffmpeg as download and media engines.

Acknowledgements

Catch is a substantial customization of caorushizi/mediago under the MIT License. It replaces the interface and interaction model, narrows the product to a single download flow, adds title parsing and clipboard integration, and removes telemetry. The original copyright notice remains in LICENSE.

License and responsible use

MIT. Follow the terms of service of the source website and do not download material you are not authorized to use.