Extension: Grabbit for YouTube videos - selectable multi-format.

Developer: Michael3185.

Latest Version:
1.1: Better icon added.
1.2: Cleaned up and simplified code. Renamed.

Download: Updated .crx file attached.

Description: Adds an icon to the Omnibar when you're viewing a YouTube 'watch video' page (regardless of FlashBlock). Clicking the icon creates a new tab with the URL fed to KickYouTube.com, where you can specify the video format or mp3 audio to download.

Browser Compatibility: Chrome Dev & latest Chromium only (needs access to Tabs API).

Additional Note: A first attempt at modifying one of Google's example extensions. Feel free to open it up and improve it. Makes a better starting place than Google's example, as it's stripped down to the bare bones. Beginners can just add their own code to create an Omnibar extension, have it appear on all or just certain sites, etc.

Just realised now I'm using Chrome Dev that FlashBlock allows video downloading with Ctrl + left-click. This one allows you to change the download format, eg., MP4, FLV, HD, MP3, etc., so can be useful.

thanks for sharing

Simple but useful. Hate the magic stick thing icon, CHANGE it! If that's not what it is, then what is it?

There you go Clouds; changed to an orange asterisk. It's like the RSS feed one in colouring, and stands out better than the wand (which I wasn't totally happy with myself).

@Michael ...

Thanks for this ...

Have been really lost since Blackcoil's YouTube downloader fell into disrepute ;-)

Yeah me too StevePaul, hence spending two full days getting to grips with the beginnings of extension writing. Looks relatively easy, but Google's documentation gives so few examples that it's a bit of a nightmare.

What I'd like it to do is download videos from any site in any format, but KickYouTube is the easiest way for now. I may have a hunt through various scripts to see what can be done.

I'm really glad you did ...

You might want to have a look on this forum, Waha did a video grabber some time ago that worked on different sites (I think) ...

Mind you, have to admit I'm like you, I like to experiment (I know you did a lot of work on Ad blocking) just about to download the latest version of Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) to see what Chrome looks like on Linux ...

In the meantime, thanks for Grabbit

I can't get Google Chrome to work on Ubuntu 9.04 installed with Wubi: http://wubi-installer.org/

Originally Posted by Clouds

I can't get Google Chrome to work on Ubuntu 9.04 installed with Wubi: http://wubi-installer.org/

Um, wrong thread, perhaps..?

@StevePaul: I've decided not to try and update this extension to work with all video sites. It does what it does perfectly well, and I don't have the enthusiasm for ongoing problems trying to make it do more than that. And no doubt Google will mess around with the API and stop more things working!