
{/* banner prompt: A detailed, sunlit macro photograph of a miniature diorama on a wooden workbench: a tiny, stylized browser window is connected by a polished copper pipe to a small, intricate brass lockbox, symbolizing a private, local download, warm analog tones, shallow depth of field. --ar 16:9 */}

If you use [TYO Reach](https://reach.tyo.com.au), you already watch videos through your own
gateway, with your own logins. Sometimes you need the *file*: your own uploads,
a Creative Commons lecture, public-domain footage, a clip you have the rights to
keep. The usual answer is a "video downloader" website or extension, and the
usual price is your privacy: cloud converters see every URL you feed them, and
plenty of downloader extensions phone home with more than that.

**reach-dl** takes the other road. It is a small open-source extension that puts
a download manager in your browser's side panel, and keeps every byte of your
data on your machine.

## Private by architecture, not by promise

Most privacy claims are promises. reach-dl's is a design constraint: **there is
nothing to send your data to.**

When you queue a download, the extension collects the page URL and that site's
cookies, opens a local pipe to a tiny helper program on your own computer
(Chrome's native messaging, with no network involved), and the helper runs
[yt-dlp](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) through your Reach proxy. The helper
exits when the download ends. There is no server, no message broker, no daemon,
no account, no telemetry. Your cookies go browser → local pipe → yt-dlp and are
written only to a temporary file that is deleted the moment the run finishes.
The download queue itself never touches disk and never contains cookies at all,
they are read fresh from the browser at the moment each download starts.

Because the download rides your Reach gateway with your browser's own
User-Agent and cookies, sites see the same session that just played the video,
which also keeps Cloudflare-protected sites happy where a bare command line
often fails.

## A real download manager, not just a button

Click the toolbar button on a video page (or right-click → **"Save with
reach-dl"**) and the side panel opens with the page queued:

![The reach-dl side panel with a download queue](https://storage.googleapis.com/www-tyolab-com-blog-assets/images/blog/2026/07/introducing-reach-dl-a-local-private-download-manager-for-tyo-reach/panel.png)
*The side panel: queue, progress, and per-item controls.*

- **Queue as many as you like**: downloads run one at a time (the Reach
  gateway is tuned for browsing, not bulk transfer) and process in order.
- **Pause and resume.** Pausing stops the download but keeps the partial
  `.part` file; resuming picks it up exactly where it left off. Even closing
  the browser mid-download loses nothing; re-add the URL and it continues
  from the `.part` file.
- **Honest errors.** When a download fails you see yt-dlp's *actual* error
  line and a link to the full local log, not a shrug. Most failures are just
  a stale yt-dlp (`yt-dlp -U`), and the panel says so.
- **Choose where files land.** A "Save to" field in the panel footer accepts
  any folder (`~/` works); leave it empty for `~/Downloads`. A typo'd folder
  fails loudly instead of saving somewhere surprising.
- **Through Reach, or direct: your call.** A "Download through TYO Reach"
  toggle (on by default) decides which network the download rides. Turn it
  off for videos that aren't geo-blocked: direct downloads skip the proxy,
  don't count against your Reach data allowance, and are usually faster. The
  choice is always explicit; reach-dl never silently switches your traffic
  from one network to the other.

![The panel footer: Reach toggle and Save-to field](https://storage.googleapis.com/www-tyolab-com-blog-assets/images/blog/2026/07/introducing-reach-dl-a-local-private-download-manager-for-tyo-reach/saveto.png)
*The footer settings: the Reach toggle (shown off: direct mode) and the Save-to field. The folder must already exist; reach-dl never creates or deletes anything on its own.*

Under the hood, "pause" is pleasingly boring: the extension simply disconnects
the local pipe; the helper notices and interrupts yt-dlp the same way Ctrl-C
would, which is exactly why the `.part` file survives. No state to sync, no
protocol to keep alive.

## Setup in three steps

reach-dl deliberately does **not** bundle yt-dlp. You install and update your
own copy, and the extension drives it.

```sh
# 1. install yt-dlp on your PATH (and keep it current: yt-dlp -U)
#    https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#installation

# 2. load the extension: chrome://extensions → Developer mode →
#    "Load unpacked" → the ext/ folder from the repo; copy the extension ID

# 3. register the local helper (Go required):
git clone https://github.com/e-tang/reach-dl
cd reach-dl && ./install/install-host.sh <EXTENSION_ID>
```

Restart the browser, switch Reach on, and the toolbar button does the rest.
Everything is MIT-licensed at
[github.com/e-tang/reach-dl](https://github.com/e-tang/reach-dl), the
extension, the Go helper, and the original one-line CLI wrapper it grew out of.

## The fine print, said plainly

reach-dl is for **legitimate saving**: your own uploads, openly licensed and
public-domain material, and uses your jurisdiction's copyright law actually
permits. Respect each site's terms. Downloads through Reach count against your
plan's data allowance; videos are big, so proxy only what is genuinely
geo-blocked and fetch the rest directly.

*Next up for reach-dl: quality and format selection before you queue. If you
try the extension, the repo's issues page is open.*


fdd625d170c8984c88eddd96e898786616d20c7004125862f40f03ac71ed297d

reach-dl is an open-source browser extension that downloads videos locally through your TYO Reach proxy using yt-dlp, with a queue, pause/resume, and zero data leaving your machine.

reach-dl adds a side-panel download manager to your browser that saves the video you're watching, through your own TYO Reach gateway, with your own login, entirely on your own machine. No server, no cloud converter, no cookies leaving your computer.

Tag: Browser Extension

Tag: Browser Extension

Introducing reach-dl: a Local, Private Download Manager for TYO Reach