MediaGrab

A personal-use media downloader that grew from a native Windows utility into a Next.js and FastAPI application, self-hosted with Docker Compose on a Linux Mint laptop and started manually when needed.

Personal Project

Self · 2026

Source

One workflow. Two environments.

Follow the project from a Windows utility to a browser, a job API and a self-hosted runtime.

MediaGrab Windows desktop application UI — The WPF desktop client showing URL input, format/quality selection, and download progress

MediaGrab web application light mode — Browser client in light mode showing URL input, format selection, and progress

The original local utility

The WPF client starts yt-dlp locally, with FFmpeg handling conversion or merging. The browser version moves that work behind an API.

Inside the application

Explore the engineering decisions and their supporting evidence.

Project evolution1 / 3

Overview

MediaGrab is a personal-use downloader for supported media URLs, with audio/video output and selectable quality. This case study covers the C#/WPF Windows application and the browser client backed by Next.js and FastAPI. Both use yt-dlp to retrieve media and FFmpeg for conversion or stream merging. I manually start the containerized web application with Docker Compose on my Linux Mint laptop when needed. I have also used Cloudflare Tunnel and a custom domain to reach it remotely.

Result

MediaGrab includes a Windows desktop downloader and a browser-based downloader with a FastAPI job API. Both support audio/video output and quality selection. The desktop client saves files locally; the web version processes media on my Linux Mint server and returns the result to the browser. I manually start its separate Next.js and FastAPI containers with Docker Compose when needed. The GitHub repository is linked below.

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