How to install Clipgrab on Linux Mint 20.1 to download videos

Well, here we see how to install and use Clipgrab on Linux Mint 20.1, Ubuntu 21.04/20.4/18.04 including Debian, Elementary OS, Kali, MX Linux, and others. Also, learn the steps to create its desktop shortcut. 

Clipgrab is a graphics program that can be used to download videos from online multimedia platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion or Facebook, etc., and convert them if desired ( e.g. to MP3, OGG Vorbis / Theora, or WMV ). It is really handy because if you don’t require video and are interested in its audio, then save the media file in Mp3 format. For conversion, FFmpeg is used in the background.

Its interface is quite clear and simply designed that doesn’t require any guide to understand, even for beginners. Apart from Linux, Clipgrab is available for Windows and Mac OS X and is licensed under GPL3.  The best thing is you can search videos using keywords on Clipgrab if you don’t have the URL of a particular video.

ClipGrab can automatically download videos when a video link is found on the clipboard. It is also possible to use a proxy server.

Install and Clipgrab on Linux Mint 20.1

1. Run system update

This is not necessary but still just ensures security-wise the system uses the latest updates, run-

sudo apt update

 

2. Install Dependencies- FFmpeg & Python 2

To convert videos using Clipgrab, we need FFmpeg on our system and to let the software search Youtube or other videos, we need to install python 2 on Linux Mint as well.

sudo apt install ffmpeg

By Default python 3 will be there, however, we need python 2, so run the below-given command this will automatically select python-is-python2 instead of python.

sudo apt install python

 

3. Download Clipgrab for Linux mint 20.1

Clipgrab is available in the APP Image format and thus can be run on any Linux system regardless of their base or code. Hence, first, we download the same and then will see how to use it.

Visit the Clipgrab official page to download the AppImage file- Here is the link. Select the Linux binary.

 

4. Move the youtube downloader file to some safe place

By default, the file will be in your Downloads folder because we got it from the browser. But there are chances of deleting it accidentally, thus let’s move it to some secure place.

cd Downloads

sudo mv ClipGrab-*-x86_64.AppImage /opt/clipgrab.AppImage

#Download logo

wget https://www.how2shout.com/linux/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/clipgrab.png

sudo cp clipgrab.png /opt/

 

5. Create Cligrab Desktop and Application launcher shortcut

Let’s create a Desktop shortcut for this Youtube downloader so that we can easily access it on Linux Mint.

nano ~/Desktop/Clipgrab.desktop

Copy the whole block of the below-given text and paste it into the file.

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=ClipGrab
Comment=Download and convert videos from various portals (e.g. YouTube)
Exec=/opt/clipgrab.AppImage
Icon=/opt/clipgrab.png
Categories=Application;Network
Terminal=false

Save the File by pressing g- Ctrl+X, type Y, and then hit the Enter Key.

Also, copy the shortcut to the Applications folder, so that we can access it from the launcher.

sudo cp ~/Desktop/Clipgrab.desktop /usr/share/applications

Now, you will have it on the Application launcher

 

Furthermore, also make the desktop shortcut executable, for that, right-click on it, select properties >> Permissions tab, and select the “Allow executing file as program” box.

 

6. Run Clipgrab on Linux Mint

Finally, using the shortcuts, run this youtube video downloader and either use some keyword or URL to download videos.

Also, see another lightweight Snap Video downloader- Lightweight Video Downloader for Linux Mint 20.1

 

7. Remove or Uninstall

To remove this video downloading platform, we just need to delete the files we have downloaded and created so far:

sudo rm -r /opt/clipgrab.AppImage
sudo rm -r /opt/clipgrab.png
sudo rm -r /usr/share/applications/Clipgrab.desktop