lbt

lbt is a collection of command-line tools for interacting with the LBRY network, written in POSIX shell.

Currently, these tools are available:

• lbt open will open LBRY content in the user's preferred application. (think xdg-open but for LBRY)
• lbt feed is a very basic way to see the latest content from LBRY channels. (think sfeed but for LBRY)
• lbt ls will list all LBRY content that's saved on this system.
• lbt get will simply fetch LBRY content and output it, either into a file or into standard output. (think wget but for LBRY)
• lbt rm will delete saved LBRY content.

All these tools support lbry:// protocol URLs, as well as Odysee and open.lbry.com links.

lbt can also convert some YouTube video links to LBRY videos automatically, if the creator uses the official LBRY x YouTube Sync service.

Why?

lbt might be useful if:

• You don't want to use the official Electron app (which some might call "bloated" for a YouTube alternative)
• You don't want to use the Odysee web interface, because you'd rather contribute to the P2P network with your own machine
• You want to work with LBRY content in shell scripts but don't want to mess with JSON output.

Commands

lbt open

lbt open will let you view LBRY content in your preferred application. It uses its own configuration file to determine how to open files: either fully download the file before opening it, or, if the application supports it, open a HTTP stream (useful for watching videos).

Example of usage

lbt open "lbry://@BrodieRobertson#5/easy-motion-how-did-i-use-vim-until-now#9"

opens this video, as a stream.

lbt open "https://open.lbry.com/@AlexandreMarcotte777:0/brodie-robertson:1"

downloads this GIF and opens it in your preferred image viewer.

This behaviour can be changed using simple config files, namely ~/.config/lbt/config.json and ~/.config/lbt/mimetypes. The latter is based on the file's MIME type:

video/*		stream
audio/*		stream
image/*		save 
text/html	stream
application/pdf	save 
*		save 

config.json can be used to change the run command, such as:

{
	"use_xdg_open": false,
	"custom_open_command": "run-mailcap --action=view \"$mimetype:$1\""
}

(I recommend run-mailcap-rs, as the original Ubuntu version of run-mailcap doesn't work right with http:// links)

The config files are automatically generated on the first run. The simplest way to find out the MIME type is with the program's --get-mime parameter, for example:

> lbt open -m "https://lbry.tv/@grin:4/keep-it-simple:4"
Resolving lbry://@grin#4/keep-it-simple#4...
MIME type is text/markdown

lbt get

lbt get is a lower-level utility: instead of opening content with an appropriate program, it simply grabs the needed file from the network and pipes it out. It can also just print out a URL that other programs can use.

Examples:

lbt get "https://lbry.tv/@lbry:3f/julian-chandra-joins-lbry:8" | less

downloads this document and pipes it into less.

lbt get --resolve --stream "https://open.lbry.com/@Jreg:2/chonky-cat:1"

opens an HTTP stream and prints out the URL. This URL can be opened with a browser, a video player, etc.

lbt get -rf "lbry://@TheLinuxGamer#f/Will-we-SURVIVE-the-Oregon-Trail#d"

downloads the video into your local download directory, and prints out the file name.

lbt feed

Output the latest content from LBRY channels.

Examples:

lbt feed 'https://odysee.com/@ashesashescast:f'

prints this:

It can also read channel names or URLs from a configuration file (~/.config/lbt/feeds).

Just for fun, you can also output data in a format compatible with sfeed or sfeed_plain. This allows you to do cool things, like:

lbt feed @BrodieRobertson @DistroTube --sfeed | sfeed_curses

Alternatively, a simple dmenu/bemenu script:

lbt open "$(lbt feed | bemenu --list=10 | sed 's|^.*lbry://||')"

lbt ls

Lists all LBRY content which is saved on your system. Accepts lots of options for showing/hiding columns of information, sorting, filtering, etc.

Examples:

lbt ls --files

prints out all LBRY content which is saved in your downloads directory, as opposed to only being stored in blob format.

lbt ls --channel --mime --sort=size --reverse

prints out additional columns for the channel name and MIME type, and sorts files from largest to smallest.

lbt rm

Examples:

lbt rm "#aec4347ca0eaefea5eb92d4a51b25451d0581996" --file

will delete this video from your LBRY library, as well as from your downloads folder.

lbt rm "https://lbry.tv/@lbry:3f/fullscreenrelease:7" --no-blobs -f

will delete the video from your downloads folder, but not from your LBRY library.

contrib/

The contrib/ folder includes some nice things, like an fzf script for looking at subscribed channels. That code is provided by the community and is not ""officially"" a part of lbt, but could still be very useful to some people.

Installation

Arch Linux

Users of Arch and its derivatives can use the AUR package, maintained by me.

Other systems

Grab the latest version of lbt on the Releases page. Extract the lbt file and put it into your PATH.

Dependencies:

• LBRY (you must make sure that lbrynet is in your PATH)
• curl
• jq
• GNU gettext (for localizations, support is incomplete)
• sed, awk
• GNU coreutils (cut, ...), util-linux (column, getopt, ...)

If you want to use lbt open as the default handler for lbry:// links:

1. Get the lbt-open.desktop file.
2. Put it into ~/.local/share/applications
3. Run xdg-mime default lbt-open.desktop x-scheme-handler/lbry

What's next?

Unimplemented features:

1. Interacting with paid content (I'm too scared to touch the crypto wallet stuff, and currently there isn't much paywalled content on the network anyway)
2. Localization
3. man page
4. Shell completion
5. Publishing content, I will not do this because:

• lbrynet publish does a decent job
• lbry-sync-ytdl is another CLI tool by me which can publish an entire playlist from youtube-dl