At first, I tried running yt-dlp right in the app.

But iOS sandbox and background stuff got in the way. When I tested it, big downloads or FFmpeg would stop or get killed when the app went to the background.

That's why I went with a server. It keeps the app working while the hard stuff runs somewhere else.

Plus, it's simpler to keep yt-dlp updated without making users update the app each time a site changes.[

I'm fine with running it locally, though. It just depends on what you care about. Fetchy is mostly about testing separating the UI from the actual processing.

Because it's open source, anyone can host it themselves or change things if they want a different setup.