What is xiaoer-videolab?

Xiaoer VideoLab is a browser extension that downloads the video on whatever page you are currently viewing, saving it to your Downloads folder with one click. It works on macOS and Windows and supports over 1,800 video sites, including YouTube, Bilibili, TikTok, X/Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, and many others. The design is privacy-focused. Most video downloader extensions request broad permissions to read everything on every website you visit. This one requests only the current tab's URL when you click the button, and sends that single URL to a small background program running on your own computer. The extension itself has no access to page content and makes no outbound network requests. All actual downloading is handled locally by a tool called yt-dlp, which is a well-known open-source downloader that you install separately. The background program is a minimal Python server that starts automatically when you log in (using launchd on macOS, or Task Scheduler on Windows). When the extension sends it a URL, it passes that URL to yt-dlp, which fetches the video and saves it as an mp4 file. A macOS notification appears when the download finishes. The extension badge shows progress and whether the download succeeded or failed. Installing it takes about five minutes. On Mac you install yt-dlp and ffmpeg using Homebrew, clone the repository, run an install script, and then load the extension folder into Chrome's developer mode. On Windows the steps are similar using PowerShell and the built-in Windows package manager. The README is written for people with no coding experience and walks through each step. Not all sites work equally well. DRM-protected streaming content cannot be downloaded. A few Chinese platforms such as WeChat Channels and Kuaishou are not supported. Some sites like Douyin and Xiaohongshu require you to have the video playing on screen before clicking. The full list of supported and unsupported sites is documented in the README.