
{/* 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 — 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.*


f91f90aa7baaf8c7f40f9e5d89ac19f7024634b2376a949f85af0d7f61fb07a3

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