Ukrainian Python developer Vasyl Smutok has developed and made available the ytscrape library, a lightweight open-source tool for parsing YouTube. The solution allows you to obtain subtitles, comments, and detailed metadata of videos and channels without using official API keys and without involving resource-intensive browsers.
Ukrainian Python developer Vasyl Smutok has developed and made available the ytscrape library, a lightweight open-source tool for parsing YouTube. The solution allows you to obtain subtitles, comments, and detailed metadata of videos and channels without using official API keys and without involving resource-intensive browsers.
As Vasyl told on LinkedIn, the story of the project began with a practical task: he needed to implement in-depth analysis and create text summaries of YouTube videos. To do this, a short retelling was not enough - it required searching for specific information inside the videos, working with transcripts, analyzing comments, and collecting extended data about the channel itself.
While searching for ready-made tools, the developer faced three main limitations:
The YouTube Data API has strict quota restrictions;
most existing libraries only closed individual tasks (for example, subtitles separately or metadata separately);
Some tools required running headless browsers (Playwright or Selenium), which significantly complicated and slowed down development.
Striving to create a lightweight, free, and as easy-to-integrate solution as possible, Vasyl Smutok wrote his own library, ytscrape. It works by loading the InnerTube context once and interacting with it through internal queries, without the need for complex environment configuration.
The tool provides a full range of capabilities for collecting data from the platform:
quick navigation and collection of results by videos, channels and playlists;
extracting detailed information about videos and author pages;
parsing of comments and responses to videos;
receiving subtitles in a convenient format;
support for both synchronous and asynchronous API;
automatic pagination and parsing of responses into frozen data classes.
Currently, ytscrape is a personal pet project and experiment, created for the author's specific needs. However, the library is fully ready for use by other developers who need fast and free access to YouTube data.
You can check out the project on GitHub .
Масове автоматизоване збирання інформації (субтитрів, коментарів, метаданих) без використання офіційного YouTube API заборонено Умовами використання. Чи ви думаєте, платний API то для лохів?
Так.