jiji262/douyin-downloader

Douyin Downloader is a Python tool for saving content from Douyin, which is the Chinese version of TikTok. If you have ever wanted to back up videos, photo posts, music, or entire creator profiles from Douyin without the platform's watermark stamped on them, this tool handles all of that from the command line or a config file. You point it at a Douyin link, a user profile, or a list of links in a YAML config file, and it fetches the content at the highest available quality. It automatically picks the watermark-free version of each video when one exists. Downloads run several at a time by default, and if a file gets interrupted, an integrity check catches the broken download and cleans it up so you are not left with partial files. To avoid downloading the same thing twice, the tool keeps a SQLite database that tracks what has already been saved. This matters especially for batch profile downloads, where you might run the tool repeatedly to catch new posts from a creator over time. You can also set time filters so it only grabs content posted within a date range. Some Douyin pages block automated requests after a certain point. The tool handles this by optionally launching a real browser session in the background, pausing so you can solve any verification challenge manually, and then continuing the download once the page is accessible. This fallback keeps large batch jobs from stalling. Beyond videos and photos, it can record live streams, collect comments from posts, and pull hot-search or keyword-search results. There is also an optional REST API server mode, so other programs can trigger downloads without running the command-line tool directly. A desktop app called Douzy, currently in closed beta, wraps the same backend with a visual interface where you paste a link and watch progress in real time. Setup requires Python 3.8 or later, a requirements install, and Douyin session cookies. The cookies step is the trickiest part: you log into Douyin in a browser and then run a helper script that captures those cookies automatically. Docker deployment is also supported if you prefer a containerized setup.