Watch YouTube in MPV using yt-dlp and a local proxy

Introduction

YouTube doesn’t make it easy to watch videos outside the browser. But with the right tools, you can enjoy videos cleanly, ad-free, and directly in your terminal or in MPV. This guide walks through a small script I use, plus how to set up a local proxy with Tinyproxy and yt-dlp.

Prerequisites

Install the following packages:

sudo pacman -S mpv yt-dlp tinyproxy
# or on Ubuntu:
# sudo apt install mpv yt-dlp tinyproxy

Configure Tinyproxy

Create your Tinyproxy configuration file at ~/.config/tinyproxy/tinyproxy.conf:

Port 38888
Listen 127.0.0.1
Timeout 600
ConnectPort 443
ConnectPort 80
MaxClients 100
LogLevel Error
Logfile "/dev/null"
PidFile "/tmp/tinyproxy.pid"
Allow 127.0.0.1

Then start Tinyproxy with:

tinyproxy -c ~/.config/tinyproxy/tinyproxy.conf &

The Script

This simple Zsh function lets you watch a YouTube video directly in MPV by providing the video ID:

ytmpv () {
  local v_id=$1
  local b_url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$v_id"
  local f_url
  f_url=$(yt-dlp --proxy http://127.0.0.1:38888 -f 'best[ext=mp4]' -g "$b_url")
  if [[ -z "$f_url" ]]; then
      echo "❌ Failed to fetch stream. Check yt-dlp or proxy."
      return 1
  fi
  mpv --quiet --http-proxy=http://127.0.0.1:38888 "$f_url" > /dev/null 2>&1
}

Place it in your ~/.zshrc, reload with source ~/.zshrc, and you’re ready to go:

ytmpv dQw4w9WgXcQ

Notes

The URL fetched by yt-dlp is time-limited and typically expires after a few minutes (or hours, I’m not sure).
YouTube may occasionally serve formats that aren’t streamable via direct URL. In that case, try tweaking the format selector (-f) or remove the ext=mp4 constraint.
If you get HTTP 403/404 errors, it’s usually due to an expired URL or SABR fragment issues. Just try again or restart Tinyproxy.
You can also modify the script to use DASH audio/video split streams and let MPV stitch them automatically.

Conclusion

This is by no means a perfect solution, YouTube’s streaming behavior can change, and direct URLs can expire or fail. But for now, it works reliably enough, and it’s a lightweight, no-tracking, minimalist way to stream YouTube videos. Feel free to enhance the script, add support for DASH streams, or build something even wilder.