[opensourcedex]

lux is a free, open source data extraction & web scraping project written in Go and released under MIT. It has 31,686 GitHub stars, 3,312 forks and 545 open issues, and was last pushed 6 months ago. On this registry it ranks #6 of 45 tracked projects in Data Extraction & Web Scraping, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 8 stars over the last 3 tracked days.

What is lux?

What it is

Lux is a video download library and command-line tool written in Go, released under the MIT license. It ships as a single lux binary that takes one or more URLs and retrieves the underlying media streams, and it also exposes the downloading logic as a Go library that other programs can embed. The project has existed for roughly nine years and lives in the Go ecosystem, distributed through go install alongside the usual operating system package managers.

The concrete problem it solves is the gap between a browser-accessible web page and a reusable media file. Many video sites do not hand out a direct link, and pulling one out by hand means inspecting network traffic for every quality tier. Lux resolves those URLs, lists every available stream with its container, codec and byte size, and then fetches the one that is requested. That turns an interactive, browser-bound task into a scriptable command that can be repeated across many URLs, resumed after interruption, and piped into other tooling.

Key capabilities

  • Downloads video from supported sites such as bilibili, Youku, iQiyi, QQ, Tumblr and YouTube, and downloads direct resource URLs without extraction when given one.
  • Lists all available qualities of a video with -i, showing codec, container and size, and downloads a selected stream with -f.
  • Downloads playlists and accepts multiple input URLs in a single invocation.
  • Resumes interrupted downloads and retries automatically on failure.
  • Supports multi-threaded downloading, proxy configuration, cookies, and a specified Referrer header.
  • Merges separate video and audio tracks through FFmpeg, which affects only the final file merge, not the download.
  • Offers subtitle options, aria2 integration, Youku-specific flags, output path and filename control, debug mode, and reuse of previously extracted data.

Who uses it and how

  • Users archiving their own uploads or playlists from bilibili, Youku or similar platforms, running a single command per playlist.
  • Scripts and batch jobs that pass many URLs at once and rely on auto retry and resume to survive flaky networks.
  • Anyone needing a specific quality tier, who runs -i first to review streams and then re-runs with -f on the chosen ID.
  • Applications embedding Lux as a Go library rather than shelling out to the binary.
  • Headless or proxied environments where cookies and Referrer headers must be supplied explicitly.

Getting started

Install with go install github.com/iawia002/lux@latest or download a binary from the releases page; packages also exist for Homebrew, AUR, Void Linux, Scoop, Chocolatey and Cask. FFmpeg must be installed separately for merging, then run lux [OPTIONS] URL [URL...].

When to use it — and when not to

Lux is a free, self-hosted alternative to commercial downloader utilities, at the cost of maintaining your own FFmpeg installation and, where required, supplying cookies and proxy settings yourself. Known issues exist for Youku and for Xigua/Toutiao video, so those sources may misbehave, and any site that changes its internals can break extraction until the project catches up. Extraction quality is therefore the main risk, not the download machinery.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Lux

Let there be Lux!

Codecov GitHub Workflow Status Go Report Card GitHub release Homebrew

👾 Lux is a fast and simple video downloader built with Go.

Installation

Prerequisites

The following dependencies are required and must be installed separately.

Note: FFmpeg does not affect the download, only affects the final file merge.

Install via go install

To install Lux, use go install, or download the binary file from Releases page.

$ go install github.com/iawia002/lux@latest

Homebrew (macOS only)

For macOS users, you can install lux via:

$ brew install lux

Arch Linux

For Arch Users AUR package is available.

Void Linux

For Void linux users, you can install lux via:

$ xbps-install -S lux

Scoop on Windows

$ scoop install lux

Chocolatey on Windows

$ choco install lux

Cask on Windows/macOS/Linux

$ cask install github.com/iawia002/lux

Getting Started

Usage:

lux [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]

Download a video

$ lux "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

 Site:      YouTube youtube.com
 Title:     Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Video)
 Type:      video
 Stream:
     [248]  -------------------
     Quality:         1080p video/webm; codecs="vp9"
     Size:            63.93 MiB (67038963 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f 248 ...

 41.88 MiB / 63.93 MiB [=================>-------------]  65.51% 4.22 MiB/s 00m05s

The -i option displays all available quality of video without downloading.

$ lux -i "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

 Site:      YouTube youtube.com
 Title:     Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Video)
 Type:      video
 Streams:   # All available quality
     [248]  -------------------
     Quality:         1080p video/webm; codecs="vp9"
     Size:            49.29 MiB (51687554 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f 248 ...

     [137]  -------------------
     Quality:         1080p video/mp4; codecs="avc1.640028"
     Size:            43.45 MiB (45564306 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f 137 ...

     [398]  -------------------
     Quality:         720p video/mp4; codecs="av01.0.05M.08"
     Size:            37.12 MiB (38926432 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f 398 ...

     [136]  -------------------
     Quality:         720p video/mp4; codecs="avc1.4d401f"
     Size:            31.34 MiB (32867324 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f 136 ...

     [247]  -------------------
     Quality:         720p video/webm; codecs="vp9"
     Size:            31.03 MiB (32536181 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f 247 ...

Use lux -f stream "URL" to download a specific stream listed in the output of -i option.

Download anything else

If Lux is provided the URL of a specific resource, then it will be downloaded directly:

$ lux "https://img9.bcyimg.com/drawer/15294/post/1799t/1f5a87801a0711e898b12b640777720f.jpg"

lux doesn't support this URL right now, but it will try to download it directly

 Site:      Universal
 Title:     1f5a87801a0711e898b12b640777720f
 Type:      image/jpeg
 Stream:
     [default]  -------------------
     Size:            1.00 MiB (1051042 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f default "URL"

 1.00 MiB / 1.00 MiB [===================================] 100.00% 1.21 MiB/s 0s

Download playlist

The -p option downloads an entire playlist instead of a single video.

$ lux -i -p "https://www.bilibili.com/bangumi/play/ep198061"

 Site:      哔哩哔哩 bilibili.com
 Title:     Doctor X 第四季：第一集
 Type:      video
 Streams:   # All available quality
     [default]  -------------------
     Quality:         高清 1080P
     Size:            845.66 MiB (886738354 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f default "URL"


 Site:      哔哩哔哩 bilibili.com
 Title:     Doctor X 第四季：第二集
 Type:      video
 Streams:   # All available quality
     [default]  -------------------
     Quality:         高清 1080P
     Size:            930.71 MiB (975919195 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f default "URL"

......

You can use the -start, -end or -items option to specify the download range of the list:

-start
    	Playlist video to start at (default 1)
-end
    	Playlist video to end at
-items
    	Playlist video items to download. Separated by commas like: 1,5,6,8-10

For bilibili playlists only:

-eto
  File name of each bilibili episode doesn't include the playlist title

Multiple inputs

You can also download multiple URLs at once:

$ lux -i "https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21877586" "https://www.bilibili.com/video/av21990740"

 Site:      哔哩哔哩 bilibili.com
 Title:     【莓机会了】甜到虐哭的13集单集MAD「我现在什么都不想干,更不想看14集」
 Type:      video
 Streams:   # All available quality
     [default]  -------------------
     Quality:         高清 1080P
     Size:            51.88 MiB (54403767 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f default "URL"


 Site:      哔哩哔哩 bilibili.com
 Title:     【莓救了】甜到虐哭！！！国家队单集MAD-当熟悉的bgm响起，眼泪从脸颊滑下
 Type:      video
 Streams:   # All available quality
     [default]  -------------------
     Quality:         高清 1080P
     Size:            77.63 MiB (81404093 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f default "URL"

These URLs will be downloaded one by one.

You can also use the -F option to read URLs from file:

$ lux -F ~/Desktop/u.txt

 Site:      微博 weibo.com
 Title:     在Google，我们设计什么？ via@阑夕
 Type:      video
 Stream:
     [default]  -------------------
     Size:            19.19 MiB (20118196 Bytes)
     # download with: lux -f default "URL"

 19.19 MiB / 19.19 MiB [=================================] 100.00% 9.69 MiB/s 1s

......

You can use the -start, -end or -items option to specify the download range of the list:

-start
    	File line to start at (default 1)
-end
    	File line to end at
-items
    	File lines to download. Separated by commas like: 1,5,6,8-10

Resume a download

Ctrl+C interrupts a download.

A temporary .download file is kept in the output directory. If lux is ran with the same arguments, then the download progress will resume from the last session.

Auto retry

lux will auto retry when the download failed, you can specify the retry times by -retry option (default is 100).

Cookies

Cookies can be provided to lux with the -c option if they are required for a

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is lux free to use?

lux is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does lux do?

👾 Fast and simple video download library and CLI tool written in Go

What is lux written in?

lux is primarily written in Go. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/iawia002/lux, and it has 31,686 GitHub stars.