I built a Telegram bot that downloads YouTube videos — here's how it works

#python #telegram #showdev #programming

Hey DEV community! 👋

I've been building a Telegram bot called @AndyVideoBot that downloads YouTube videos and audio directly to Telegram chat. No browser extension, no website, no login required — just paste a link.

What it does

Video formats: 144p · 240p · 360p · 480p · 720p · 1080p · 1440p · 4K
Audio: MP3 extraction
Playlists — download entire playlists
YouTube Shorts — vertical video supported
Channel subscriptions — subscribe to a channel and get new uploads delivered automatically
Dubbed audio selection — choose language when multiple audio tracks are available
Smart cache — if someone already downloaded the same video at the same quality, instant delivery from cache (no re-downloading)
Inline mode — share downloads directly in any Telegram chat

Tech stack

Python 3.14 (free-threaded, GIL disabled)
Telethon — Telegram MTProto client
yt-dlp — YouTube downloading engine
aiosqlite — async SQLite

Multi-bot architecture

The bot supports running multiple instances simultaneously sharing a single database. Each instance handles its own download queue, and files are served from a shared Telegram-based cache — so if bot A downloaded a video, bot B delivers it instantly from cache.