Rewyt — Rewatch YouTube live streams

Rewyt is a desktop app for rewatching past moments of YouTube live streams, beyond YouTube’s limits. You can navigate and play streams interactively in the app or in your browser.

Available on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Built on top of ypb and yt-dlp.

Get started

• Quickstart — Get up and running with Rewyt
• Installation options — Choose your installation method

Get started with Rewyt

Learn how to install Rewyt and start rewatching YouTube live streams.

Installation

Rewyt comes as a desktop app (pre-built binary) or a web app (container).

• Desktop app: choose this if you already have yt-dlp installed
• Web app: choose this if you don’t, or prefer a self-contained setup

Desktop app

Download the binary for your platform from the latest release and unzip it to your working directory.

For prerequisites and platform details, see Desktop app.

Web app

Running Rewyt in containers gives you an isolated environment with yt-dlp, ffmpeg, and ypb pre-installed, along with the PO token provider.

Prerequisites: Podman or Docker, with Compose.

macOS/Windows only, Podman: Initialize the Podman machine (one-time setup):

podman machine init && podman machine start

Pull the compose file and extract it to a local directory:

podman artifact pull ghcr.io/xymaxim/rewyt-compose
podman artifact extract ghcr.io/xymaxim/rewyt-compose ~/rewyt-app
cd ~/rewyt-app

Start the app:

podman compose up -d

Open the app in your browser:

http://localhost:8080

See Web app for configuration options and more details.

Verify installation

Open the app to see a welcome screen, where you can verify that your installation is complete. If something’s missing, you’ll see a warning describing what’s needed. Otherwise, you’re ready to go.

Initial setup

Rewyt relies on yt-dlp’s network-related options and cookies. Where you set them depends on how you installed Rewyt:

• Desktop app: uses your local yt-dlp configuration file directly
• Web app: uses a yt-dlp configuration file mounted into the container, set by editing the .env file, see Configuration for details

If YouTube responds with a “Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” error while loading a stream, you’ll need to provide cookies from a signed-in browser session. See yt-dlp’s wiki on how to export and pass cookies to yt-dlp.

Rewatch a specific moment

Open a live stream

To get started, you’ll need a live stream to rewind. If you’re not sure what to watch, the Cornell Lab Bird Cams project has beautiful bird cam streams from around the world. Let’s use the Northern Royal Albatross nesting cam at Taiaroa Head, New Zealand.

Copy the YouTube link of the live stream and paste it into the input field in the app. Wait for the stream to load. You’ll see the main interface, with the main controls, timeline, and sliders.

Set a timezone

By default, the app displays time in your local system timezone. Since you’re watching a stream from New Zealand, it’s more convenient to match the stream’s local time instead.

Click the timezone label in the time display, below the video, to open the timezone selector. Select New Zealand Standard Time (UTC+12) or New Zealand Daylight Time (UTC+13).

Click the timeline

Click anywhere on the timeline. The stream immediately rewinds to that moment and starts playing.

Try zooming in on the timeline for a narrower time range, then click again to land closer to the moment you want.

Control with sliders

For more precision, use the rewind slider, days slider, and day slider instead. Drag the days slider to pick a day, then drag the day slider to set a specific time within that day. Sliders set your target time without rewinding yet.

When you’re happy with your selection, click the rewind button to jump there.

You can combine both methods: use the sliders to get close to a moment before rewinding, then click the timeline to rewind to the exact moment.

Next steps

Learn how to:

• Highlight and download excerpts: save a specific part of a stream
• Share and paste timestamps: share the moment you discovered and jump to a shared timestamp

Installation

Available on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Rewyt comes in two distributions, each with its own installation process:

1. Desktop app: Install platform-specific pre-built binaries along with additional dependencies
2. Web app: Run in a container with all dependencies bundled, and access via your browser

Choosing installation method

The choice depends on your current setup and usage:

Desktop app

Prerequisites

Rewyt relies on yt-dlp:

• yt-dlp: For video info extraction and downloading. Nightly builds are recommended. If you use binaries, update with: yt-dlp --update-to nightly.

Additional dependencies

The following dependencies are optional, but strongly recommended in practice:

• External JavaScript runtime: Required for full YouTube support

• Proof-of-Origin (PO) token provider plugin: Required to avoid HTTP 403 errors

Install from binaries

Pre-built binaries for different platforms are available on the GitHub latest release page.

Download the binary for your platform and unzip it to your working directory.

Web app

Running Rewyt with containers is the recommended way to get started.

Note

This guide uses Podman, but Docker works too. Commands are mostly the same with docker in place of podman, though some steps (like podman machine and podman artifact) don’t have a direct Docker equivalent.

The app runs as two containers managed by Compose:

• Rewyt (ghcr.io/xymaxim/rewyt): the main app, with yt-dlp, ffmpeg, and ypb inside
• PO token provider (brainicism/bgutil-ytdlp-pot-provider): handles YouTube’s bot verification in the background

Prerequisites

• Podman with Compose

• YouTube cookies exported from your browser

macOS and Windows

On macOS and Windows, Podman requires a virtual machine. Initialize and start it once:

podman machine init
podman machine start

The machine starts automatically on subsequent reboots.

Set up

1. Pull the compose file and extract it to a local directory:

   podman artifact pull ghcr.io/xymaxim/rewyt-compose
   podman artifact extract ghcr.io/xymaxim/rewyt-compose ~/rewyt-app
   cd ~/rewyt-app
   

   This gives you compose.yaml and .env.template files with defaults, containing configuration variables, including ypb’s — see Configuration below for what’s available.

2. Copy .env.template to .env and edit that copy:

   cp .env.template .env
   

   .env is yours to customize and won’t be overwritten by future updates.

Set up cookies (recommended)

YouTube may respond with a “Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” error without cookies, so setting them up is recommended. To avoid this:

1. Export cookies from your browser into a cookies.txt file.

2. In .env, set YPB_YTDLP_CONFIG_DIR to the directory where you want to store yt-dlp related config files.

3. Place cookies.txt inside that directory.

4. Reference it from your yt-dlp config file:

    --cookies /path/to/cookies.txt
   

Usage

Start the app:

podman compose up -d

Then open it in your browser:

http://localhost:8080

When done, shut down the app and the PO token provider sidecar:

podman compose down

Configuration

The .env.template file (copied to .env during setup) holds configuration variables, including ypb’s. See ypb’s Configuration section for what’s available and how to set them.

Update the app

To update the container images:

podman compose pull

To pick up changes to compose.yaml or .env.template, re-run the extract step. This leaves your .env untouched:

podman artifact pull ghcr.io/xymaxim/rewyt-compose
podman artifact extract ghcr.io/xymaxim/rewyt-compose .

Overview

Rewyt is built with Go, Svelte, Shaka Player, and packaged with Wails.

On startup, the Go backend starts ypb, which fetches video info via yt-dlp. When you rewind to a moment, the Svelte frontend requests an MPEG-DASH manifest from ypb, which generates one with proxied URLs. During playback, Shaka Player streams video through ypb, which proxies media segments from YouTube and handles connection errors.

Highlight and download excerpts

This guide shows you how to highlight a live stream excerpt and download it as a video file.

Prerequisites

Rewyt doesn’t download excerpts directly, you need ypb for that.

• Rewyt installed as a desktop app or web app
• ypb installed

Note

If you’re running Rewyt as a web app, ypb is already bundled inside its container, no separate install needed. Steps 1 and 2 below still apply, but for the download step, see Download excerpts with Compose instead.

Steps

1. Highlight an excerpt

   Use the A and B buttons (or a and b keyboard shortcuts) to mark the start and end of your excerpt on the timeline.

   

2. Copy the timestamp

   Open the Highlight tab at the bottom of the interface. Click More, then select Copy timestamp. This copies a timestamp that tells ypb exactly which part of the stream to download, for example:

   2026-06-20T10:00:00+03:00/2026-06-20T20:00:00+03:00

   

3. Download the excerpt

   Run the download command with the copied timestamp and the YouTube video ID:

   ypb download 2026-06-20T10:00:00+03:00/2026-06-20T20:00:00+03:00 abcdefgh123
   

By the end, you will have a downloaded file in your working directory when done.

See also

See Create a time-lapse video to turn your excerpt into a time-lapse.

Download excerpts with Compose

This guide shows you how to download a highlighted live stream excerpt when Rewyt and ypb are run via Compose.

Prerequisites

• Podman or Docker
• Rewyt installed as a web app, running via Compose

Highlight the excerpt

Note

For highlighting excerpts in Rewyt, see Highlight and download excerpts.

Highlight the excerpt and copy its timestamp, for example:

2026-06-20T10:00:00+00:00/2026-06-20T10:30:00+00:00

Download the excerpt

Run ypb inside the already-running Rewyt container:

# --workdir must stay /media, it's where the container's volume is mounted
podman compose exec --workdir /media rewyt ypb download \
  2026-06-20T10:00:00+03:00/2026-06-20T20:00:00+03:00 abcdefgh123

The file is saved to ./media by default, or the path set via YPB_MEDIA_DIR.

Share and paste timestamps

This guide shows you how to copy a timestamp from the stream and jump to a shared one.

Copy a timestamp

1. Select a time on the timeline

   Click on the timeline to rewind to the moment you want to share.

2. Copy the timestamp

   Open the Selected tab at the bottom of the interface. Click More, then select Copy timestamp. This copies an ISO timestamp to your clipboard, for example:

    2026-06-20T14:30:00+03:00
   

   

Share this timestamp with others so they can jump to the exact same moment.

Jump to a shared timestamp

1. Open the Jump to time dialog

   Click the Jump to time button in the main bar.

   

2. Paste the timestamp and rewind

   Paste the ISO timestamp into the input field and click Rewind. The stream jumps to that moment and starts playing.

   

Usage disclaimer

This app unfortunately violates YouTube’s Terms of Service, so use it at your own risk. You might run into rate limits or get blocked if YouTube notices.

If you enjoy the videos you watch, please consider supporting the creators by subscribing to their channels and engaging with their content directly.

Support

Thank you for considering support of Rewyt and ypb.

Sponsoring

Both projects are maintained in personal time. Your support helps with:

• Fixing issues and adding new features
• Improving user documentation
• Maintaining Windows version
• Covering costs for testing infrastructure

How to sponsor?

Cryptocurrency

You can support the project using any of these cryptocurrencies:

Changelog

The format of this changelog is based on Keep a Changelog. Versions follow Calendar Versioning.

Unpublished

First release.