Pulsar is a desktop media utility that wraps yt-dlp and ffmpeg in a polished graphical interface.
It’s designed to simplify media acquisition and post-processing, letting users add URLs to a queue, monitor transfer progress, and work with downloaded media through integrated conversion and compression tools.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Built with Tauri v2 and Rust to provide a native desktop experience.
- Smart queue system for adding multiple media items, managing priorities, and processing tasks in the background.
- Automatically downloads and configures Pulsar Bridge and ffmpeg on first launch.
- Flexible output controls for selecting video and audio containers, resolutions, metadata, and thumbnails.
- Advanced options including geo-bypass, time-range downloads, and browser cookie extraction.
- Includes dark, light, and system themes together with multi-language interface support.
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/FuzjaJadrowa/Pulsar
Support:
Developer: FuzjaJadrowa
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Pulsar is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| YouTube Tools | |
|---|---|
| FreeTube | Privacy-based YouTube app |
| Media Downloader | Frontend for youtube-dl, gallery-dl, Lux, you-get, ... |
| OmniGet | Download media and files from a broad range of online sources |
| pipe-viewer | Lightweight YouTube client without requiring an API key |
| Piped | Uses NewPipe Extractor, a library for extracting |
| Open Video Downloader | Easy-to-use graphical frontend for downloading online videos |
| Tartube | Video downloader and browser built around yt-dlp |
| AudioTube | Qt-based music streamer |
| Videomass | Download, convert and processing media |
| ClipGrab | Downloader for YouTube and other sites |
| Minitube | Application for watching YouTube without using Flash |
| Materialious | Fontend for YouTube and Invidious |
| youtube-local | Browser-based YouTube client |
| SMTube | Search, play and download YouTube videos |
| Pipeline | Watch YouTube and PeerTube videos |
| MellowPlayer | Multi-platform cloud music integration |
| ytdl-gui | Graphical interface for yt-dlp |
| Youwee | Built with Tauri and React |
| PlasmaTube | Designed to be integrated with KDE Plasma |
| PsTube | Flutter-based video client |
| Video Downloader | Download videos from YouTube and other websites |
| VacuumTube | Unofficial wrapper of YouTube Leanback |
| NeoDLP | Feature-rich video/audio downloader based on yt-dlp |
| Mixtapes | Modern, Linux-first YouTube Music player |
| GDownloader | GUI for downloading videos, audio and galleries |
| Sunder | Built with Tauri v2 and Rust |
| SpMp | YouTube music client with a focus on customization |
| Pulsar | yt-dlp GUI |
| NouTube | YouTube and YouTube Music in a single app |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |


Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.