Using Grablytic
Everything the app can do, screen by screen. Settings paths refer to tabs inside the app unless noted. New here? Start with installing, then come back.
Your first download
The whole app is this loop: paste, pick, save. Everything else is refinement.
- Paste any supported link on the Home tab — video, song, playlist, or podcast URL from 1,000+ platforms.
- The Format Picker opens with a preview header (thumbnail, duration, stream counts) so you know what you found before committing.
- Choose a quality or tap download to accept your preset. The queue card shows live speed, ETA sparkline, and progress.
- Streaming progress caps at 99% by design — the final 100% lands when merging and tagging finish. Never restart a 99% item; watch its log instead.
Format Picker deep-dive
Where fidelity is decided. Defaults are smart; overrides are total.
- Quality ceiling (default 4K): the ladder cascades AV1 → VP9 → H264 and stops at your ceiling — set it in Settings and never think about codecs again.
- Explicit format override: pick a stream by ID when the ladder is not what you want (e.g. a smaller H264 for an old tablet).
- Muxed badge: non-YouTube sites often offer pre-merged streams — badged in the picker, fastest to save since no merging is needed.
- Audio-only toggle: one tap flips the job to sound-only (Opus default, FLAC lossless, or a compact preset) without leaving the picker.
- Container choice: MKV default, MP4 where you need device compatibility. Never combined with remux in one job — the app guards this for you.
Audio extraction
Full songs, podcast episodes, and rips — without video weight.
- One-tap audio-only from any video: Opus default for quality-per-byte, FLAC for lossless archives, compact presets for small files.
- Dedicated audio presets plus site recipes like Podcast Audio and Opus Compact in the Profile Editor.
- Audio re-fetch from any item overflow menu: grabbed video but want the track too? Fetch just the audio afterwards.
- Subtitles and thumbnails can ride along with audio jobs — embedded, not sidecar litter.
Playlists & batch
Whole channels and multi-link jobs without babysitting.
- Playlist Selection screen: multi-select entries, reverse/shuffle order, ranges like 1-10, single-item mode, and unavailable-video marking.
- Set one format, download path, and filename template for every item in the playlist before starting.
- Batch importer: paste many URLs at once, or import from clipboard or a text file — one link per line.
- Concurrency 1–5 (default 2) in Settings → Simultaneous downloads; per-item status shows queued, active, or done.
- Download archive skips repeats automatically; per-folder archives keep series and channels tidy across sessions.
Subtitles
Real embedded subtitles — not separate files to lose.
- Download subtitles in your languages (English default) plus auto-generated subs where the platform offers them.
- Embed switch writes them into the video file with the real subtitle post-processor — or keep sidecars if you prefer.
- Language list, auto-subs toggle, and embed control all live in Settings → Subtitles.
- If subs download but are missing from the file, embedding is off — flip it on and confirm FFmpeg is healthy in Diagnostics.
SponsorBlock
Community-marked segments, removed or chaptered automatically.
- Mark mode flags segments as chapters; cut mode removes them with frame-aware cutting after subtitles are embedded.
- Seven toggleable categories: Sponsor, Intro/Interstitial, Endcards/Credits, Unpaid Promotion, Interaction Reminder, Preview/Recap, and Music.
- Enabled by default for the Sponsor category only — add more in Settings → SponsorBlock.
- Nothing selected means nothing cut: if chapters are not being cut, check that at least one category is on.
Thumbnails, metadata & chapters
Downloads arrive library-ready.
- Cover art embedded into the file, plus tags and chapters written in the canonical order (subtitles → chapters → metadata).
- Split-by-chapters mode turns one long video into separate files per chapter.
- Output templates name everything: default is "uploader - title", fully customizable in Settings → Templates.
- Media Preview screen shows the finished file with thumbnail and metadata, and opens it in your system player.
Section cutting & live streams
Surgical slices without editing software.
- Download just a slice with timestamp syntax like *10:15-20:00 (Advanced settings) — FFmpeg-only, no extra runtime needed.
- Bad timestamps warn and skip instead of failing the whole job.
- Livestreams can be captured from the start while they are still live.
Presets & site profiles
Configure once, reuse forever.
- 7 built-in presets bundling format, container, and output template — plus unlimited custom presets you define.
- Per-site profiles: YouTube 1080p, YouTube 4K, Podcast Audio, Lossless FLAC, Opus Compact, Twitter/X — tuned in the Profile Editor.
- Presets apply from the Format Picker, so a saved recipe is one tap away on every download.
Managing the queue
Every download is inspectable and controllable.
- FIFO engine queue with queued status on every card — enforced at every entry point, including share intents and watchlists.
- Per-item overflow menu: redownload, audio re-fetch, delete (file + history), and that item's own live log view.
- Live speed sparkline with smoothed ETA on active cards; completion and error alerts when jobs finish.
- Per-download logs survive completion — tap any queue card, history row, or overflow menu to read what happened.
Speed & network tuning
Squeeze more out of bad networks — all in Settings → Network.
- aria2c parallel fetching splits progressive downloads into up to 16 chunks (default 5) — enable it on Wi-Fi. DASH/HLS streams always use the native downloader by design.
- Rate limits, 10x retries with fragment retries, sleep intervals between requests, and connection timeouts tame flaky networks.
- HTTP/SOCKS proxy support, geo-bypass, and Wi-Fi-only gating for metered connections.
- Blocked content gets per-download VPN hints on its error card — follow the hint instead of retrying blindly.
Schedules & watchlists
Downloads that happen while you sleep.
- Schedule windows gate the queue to times and weekdays — e.g. only overnight on unmetered Wi-Fi (Settings → Schedule).
- Observed sources poll your channels in the background (feed first, extractor fallback), deduplicate seen uploads, and auto-queue new videos.
- Combine both: new uploads queue silently and download inside your cheapest window.
Updates, engine & health
Three tracks, zero homework.
- Update channels stable / nightly / master in Settings → Updates — the engine (yt-dlp plus its solver scripts) refreshes with SHA-256 integrity checks.
- Desktop updates the engine silently; Android bundles engine binaries into app updates because the OS forbids executing downloaded files.
- Diagnostics & Logs is your dashboard: FFmpeg, download helper, and JS runtime health, yt-dlp version, and a live filterable log stream (level, tag, text, source).
- Bug to report? Crashes write to disk offline and prompt on next launch without background telemetry. The issue composer scrubs tokens, cookies, and private URLs before opening a reviewable GitHub issue or copying a length-guarded draft to your clipboard.
Stuck? Troubleshoot it · read the FAQ · request a feature on GitHub.