Cathode, a Gtk4 YouTube player based on mpv and yt-dlp
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
I've wanted this for years and didn't understand why no one had made one: a YouTube client that I can actually use daily.It has a queue of videos, it has local subscriptions, it downloads all the videos fully before playing, so no buffering ever (and downloads everything that is the queue), it has a restricted mode that works great for children, a bunch of other niceties for sane consumption of YouTube content in our age, written in Rust.
HN · launched Oct 22, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 90%) · 0 views
Niche: video players and display software · 91 launches, 7 in the last 7 days · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- Prosumer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 91 launches in video players and display software →
Could you build this?
Yes A GTK4 front end wrapping mpv for playback and yt-dlp for fetching and downloading is mostly glue code around mature tools.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 476 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #473 of 477 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 354 days after the earliest competitor.
- tubefast · github · 2026-10-07 · 15 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- VODForge · hn · 2026-09-06 · 38 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Kids Shelf, your kids' own little internet · hn · 2026-11-05 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- PicoPlayer · hn · 2026-10-30 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Personal-Video-Player---PVP · ph · 2026-10-25 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- YouTube-resp-Premium-Mod-2026 · github · 2026-11-05 · 62 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- I built a multiplayer game where you're an aerial fighter cat · hn · 2026-10-30 · 85 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- watchtogether.lapius7.com · ph · 2026-11-01 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.39
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.