YoutubeOnTV

Tired of scavenging while your ship's TV plays the same boring broadcast? Spice up your doomed space expeditions by streaming YouTube videos on the company-issued television!

Nothing says "professional employee" quite like watching cat videos while your crewmates are getting eaten by monsters outside.

What does this mod do?

Simple: it turns your ship's TV into a YouTube player. Queue up videos, rickroll your friends, or watch cooking tutorials while the quota looms over your head. All players see the same content in perfect sync, because shared trauma is better trauma.

Features:

• Stream YouTube videos directly to the in-game TV
• Add videos by URL, video ID, or just search by name
• Queue system so the content never stops (unlike your paychecks)
• Everyone sees the same thing - full multiplayer sync
• When all else fails, there's a fallback video (you'll see)

Installation

Use r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager:

1. Search for "YoutubeOnTV"
2. Click "Install"
3. Launch the game
4. That's it!

The mod automatically downloads what it needs (yt-dlp and ffmpeg) on first run.

How to use

Open the terminal on your ship and type these commands:

tv add <something> Add a video to the queue. You can use:

• Full YouTube URL: tv add https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
• Just the video ID: tv add dQw4w9WgXcQ
• Search by name: tv add never gonna give you up

tv queue See what's coming up next

tv skip Skip to the next video (when your friend's music taste is questionable)

tv clear Empty the entire queue (emergency use only)

Example

> tv add dQw4w9WgXcQ
Added to queue: youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

> tv add subway surfers gameplay
Added to queue: search: subway surfers gameplay

> tv queue
Now playing: youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

Videos in queue: 1
1. search: subway surfers gameplay

> tv skip
Skipped the current video.

Important Notes

• Videos are downloaded before they play (480p H.264, a few seconds for a typical music video). The next video in the queue downloads while the current one plays, so it starts right away.
• The first launch downloads yt-dlp and ffmpeg (about 70 MB together) into the plugin folder. yt-dlp keeps itself up to date.
• Every player downloads the video themselves and follows the host's position, so everyone sees the same thing.
• Downloaded videos are cached in the plugin folder (1 GB by default, oldest removed first).
• Don't run this together with TVLoader: both take over the ship TV.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/com.roandegraaf.youtubeontv.cfg:

• MaxVideoMinutes (default 60): longest video that can be queued
• MaxCacheMegabytes (default 1024): size of the video cache
• PrefetchNextVideo (default on): download the next queued video while the current one plays

Credits

Mod by roandegraaf

Built with YoutubeDLSharp and yt-dlp

Now get back to work. The Company is watching.

Changelog

[0.3.0] - 2026-09-24

Every player in a lobby needs 0.3.0: the network messages changed, and older versions will not sync with it.

Changed

• Fixed YouTube videos playing without sound. YouTube now serves most videos as separate video and audio streams, and Unity's VideoPlayer cannot play an audio-only stream (observed under Proton: "VideoPlayer cannot play url"), so the companion audio player added in 0.2.10 never produced sound. Videos are now downloaded with yt-dlp and merged with ffmpeg into a local H.264/AAC MP4, which the TV plays from disk.
• Videos now download in full before they start. A typical music video takes a few seconds; the next queued video is downloaded while the current one plays so it starts right away. ffmpeg (about 55 MB) is downloaded once on first launch, next to yt-dlp.
• Fixed clients in multiplayer being unable to play the host's videos. YouTube stream URLs are locked to the IP address that requested them, so the host now shares the video (as a normal watch URL) and every player downloads their own copy, then follows the host's playback position.
• Joining players now also receive the queue, and the host answers only the player who asked instead of restarting the TV for everyone.
• Fixed an error at the main menu (NullReferenceException in VideoManager.Start) that meant joining players never asked the host for the TV state.
• Fixed the queue, the current video and the fallback state carrying over into the next lobby, which could leave the TV dark after re-hosting.
• Fixed a failed yt-dlp download leaving every later video stuck on loading forever; tool downloads are retried and yt-dlp runs have a timeout.
• Fixed the TV sometimes staying black when a video failed to open under Proton (Media Foundation aborts the read without reporting an error); opening is now retried.
• The terminal replies now actually show what happened (tv queue lists the queue). The previous dynamic replies were silently dropped by TerminalApi, which is no longer needed.
• tv add with an 11-letter lowercase word (like programming) now searches instead of being treated as a video id; YouTube Shorts and live links are recognised.
• Stopped the vanilla TV clip rotation from hijacking the player after the TV is stored and placed again.
• A warning is logged when TVLoader is installed, since both mods take over the ship TV.

Added

• Config options (BepInEx/config/com.roandegraaf.youtubeontv.cfg): MaxVideoMinutes (default 60), MaxCacheMegabytes (default 1024) and PrefetchNextVideo (default on).

[0.2.11] - 2026-08-27

Changed

• Video is now requested at 480p instead of 720p60, matching the TV screen's actual resolution. The 720p stream was five times the download for no visible gain and would not open at all.

[0.2.10] - 2026-08-27

Changed

• Fixed videos playing with picture but no sound. YouTube is retiring the pre-muxed formats the mod relied on, and yt-dlp was quietly falling back to a video-only stream. When no combined format exists the TV now plays the matching audio stream alongside the video.
• Video is now requested as H.264 instead of whatever codec ranked best, since Unity cannot be relied on to decode AV1.
• Fixed the fallback video not being found when the plugin folder is not named exactly "YoutubeOnTV" (r2modman installs it as "<Author>-YoutubeOnTV")

[0.2.8] - 2026-08-23

Changed

• Fixed the queue not advancing to the next video automatically
• Videos are now removed from the queue when they start playing
• Fixed tv skip refusing to skip when the queue was empty
• Fixed clients resolving their own videos instead of following the host

[0.2.7] - 2025-11-23

Changed

• Republished with the final client TV state sync changes (0.2.6 was packaged from a build made before them)

[0.2.6] - 2025-11-23

Changed

• Fixed bug where video played in a loop after ending

[0.2.5] - 2025-11-23

Changed

• Small bugfixes

[0.2.4] - 2025-11-23

Changed

• Oops, syncing for all clients was NOT working, but good news, it IS working now!

[0.2.3] - 2025-11-23

Changed

• Renamed full project to YoutubeOnTV
• Because of the rename, it could be that the mod needs to be reinstalled. If that is the case, please delete the mod and download it again.

[0.2.2] - 2025-11-22

Changed

• Updated YouTube URL handling
• Fixed bug where turning off and on the TV would cause the video to get stuck

[0.2.1] - 2025-11-22

Changed

• Updated README

[0.2.0] - 2025-11-22

Changed

• Replaced bundled yt-dlp.exe with YoutubeDLSharp library dependency
• yt-dlp.exe now downloads automatically on first run (no manual installation needed)
• Cleaner mod distribution (no longer bundling .exe files with the mod)

Added

• Added Lordfirespeed-YoutubeDLSharp-1.1.0 as a dependency

[0.1.0] - 2025-11-22

Added

• Initial release
• Terminal commands for TV control (tv add, tv queue, tv skip, tv clear)
• YouTube video streaming to in-game TVs
• Network synchronization for multiplayer
• Video queue management
• yt-dlp integration for video downloading
• Fallback video support
• TerminalApi integration