YTDL Links Input

Of the four nodes in ComfyUI-ytdl_nodes, this is the one you'll dismiss as pointless, then realize is required. YTDL Links Input is exactly what the name says: a text box where you paste one or more video URLs, and it hands them to the downloader as a typed list. It's the smallest node in the pack, but the YTDL Downloader won't take a URL from you directly - its links socket expects the custom YTDL_LINKS type, and this is the only thing that produces it. So the pack's workflows all start here.

How it works

Underneath it's dead simple. You get a multiline text field - paste URLs, one per line. The node splits on newlines, keeps anything starting with http://, https://, or www., strips the whitespace, and returns the survivors as a YTDL_LINKS value. It doesn't fetch anything, doesn't check whether the links are alive, doesn't validate that they're YouTube URLs. It's a filter and a type converter, not a fetcher. That means junk lines just vanish, but a typo'd URL will happily flow through to the downloader and fail there with a real error instead. Fair trade for a node this dumb.

Why it's worth using anyway

Two practical reasons to reach for it instead of feeling clever. First, multiple links at once - drop five videos in, and the downloader runs through them in one pass (and it respects download_playlist and continue_on_error downstream). Second, it keeps your workflow readable: a node labeled "these are the sources" is a lot easier to revisit next week than a URL buried in a node you forgot was a downloader. The one thing to remember is that the output type is YTDL_LINKS and nothing else accepts it - if you ever disconnect this node, the downloader's input snaps shut, which is the standard "why is this socket red" moment for people new to the pack.

Getting it running

You can't install this node alone; it ships with the pack:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Saganaki22/ComfyUI-ytdl_nodes

or search "ytdl" in ComfyUI Manager. Restart, and it appears under audio/ytdl in the node menu. It has no dependencies of its own - the pack auto-installs yt-dlp on first launch for the downloader, and this node just passes text around, so there's nothing else to configure. Paste your links, run the downloader, done. If you're only here to grab one video, this node takes ten seconds - and it's the reason the rest of the pack works at all.