cobalt/README.md

cobalt

Best way to save what you love.
Main instance: co.wukko.me

What's cobalt?

cobalt is a social and media platform downloader that doesn't piss you off.

It's fast, friendly, and doesn't have any bullshit that modern web is filled with: no ads, trackers, or analytics.
Paste the link, get the video, move on. It's that simple. Just how it should be.

Supported services

Service	Video + Audio	Only audio	Only video	Additional notes or features
bilibili.com	☑️	☑️	☑️
Instagram	☑️	☑️	☑️	Ability to pick what to save from multi-media posts.
Instagram Reels	☑️	☑️	☑️
Reddit	☑️	☑️	☑️	Support for GIFs and videos.
SoundCloud	➖	☑️	➖	Audio metadata, downloads from private links.
TikTok	☑️	☑️	☑️	Supports downloads of: videos with or without watermark, images from slideshow without watermark, full (original) audios.
Tumblr	☑️	☑️	☑️
Twitter	☑️	☑️	☑️	Ability to pick what to save from multi-media tweets.
Twitter Spaces	☑️	☑️	☑️	Audio metadata with all participants and other info.
Vimeo	☑️	☑️	☑️	Audio downloads are only available for dash files.
Vine Archive	☑️	☑️	☑️
VK Videos	☑️	❌	❌
VK Clips	☑️	❌	❌
YouTube Videos & Shorts	☑️	☑️	☑️	Support for 8K, 4K, HDR, and high FPS videos. Audio metadata & dubs. h264/av1/vp9 codecs.
YouTube Music	➖	☑️	➖	Audio metadata.

This list is not final and keeps expanding over time, make sure to check it once in a while!

cobalt API

cobalt has an open API that you can use in your projects for free.
It's easy and straightforward to use, check out the docs and see for yourself.

How to contribute translations

You can translate cobalt to any language you want on cobalt's Crowdin. Feel free to ignore QA errors if you think you know better. If you don't see a language you want to translate cobalt to, open an issue, and I'll add it to Crowdin.

Translation guidelines:

• Text is ALWAYS stylized as lowercase unless it's STRESSED LIKE THIS or is an internal value like {ContactLink} or {appName}.
  • Example: "this is a live video, i am yet to learn how to look into future. wait for the stream to finish and try again!".
    Notice how everything is lowercase, no matter the punctuation marks? Yes, that's cobalt's style and you have to follow it.
• Avoid extremely formal language, leave it for big and classy tech companies. Use informal language wherever possible.
• You can (and should) rephrase sentences as long as they keep the same sense and send the same message as original.
• Do NOT use offensive or explicit vocabulary.
• Check if there are issues in UI with your localization and optimize it accordingly. If impossible, open an issue.
• Be nice.

Host an instance yourself

Requirements

• Node.js 18 or above
• git

Setup script installs all needed npm dependencies, but you have to install Node.js and git yourself.

1. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/wukko/cobalt
2. Run setup script and follow instructions: npm run setup
3. Run cobalt via npm start
4. Done.

Ubuntu 22.04+ workaround

nscd needs to be installed and running so that the ffmpeg-static binary can resolve DNS (#101):

sudo apt install nscd
sudo service nscd start

Docker

It's also possible to run cobalt via Docker, but you need to set all environment variables yourself:

Variable	Description	Example
selfURL	Instance URL	http://localhost:9000/ or https://co.wukko.me/ or etc
port	Instance port	9000
cors	CORS toggle	0

Disclaimer

cobalt is my passion project, so update schedule depends solely on my free time, motivation, and mood.
Don't expect any consistency in that.

License

cobalt is under AGPL-3.0 license.
Fluent Emoji used in the project is under MIT license.