Glossary

These terms come up whenever you are downloading something.

• Job: A single download task. When you paste a URL and click download, that creates one job. A playlist creates one job per video.
• Queue: The list of all active and pending jobs. Visible in the floating drawer in the bottom-right corner of the downloader.
• Hero: The large progress area at the top of the downloader that shows the currently focused job (thumbnail, title, progress bar, speed, ETA).
• Stall watchdog: A background timer that watches for jobs that stop making progress. If yt-dlp hangs (no new data for too long), the watchdog kills the process and marks the job as failed.
• Processing: The phase after downloading finishes, when ffmpeg is merging video and audio streams or extracting audio. The queue row shows "Processing..." during this.

Your media library is the collection of files RuForge knows about.

• Entry: A single item in the library. Can be a standalone video/audio file or a playlist collection.
• Playlist collection: A group of related files that were downloaded together as a playlist. Displayed as a stack card in the library.
• Gallery: Another name for the media library grid. The terms are used interchangeably in the app.
• Scan root: A folder that the library watches for media files. RuForge scans two: the internal vault and your download path. Both are always included.
• Card: The visual tile in the library grid showing a thumbnail, title, duration, and watch progress for a single file.

Sidecars are small companion files that live next to your downloaded videos.

• Sidecar: Any file that stores metadata about a downloaded video. The most important one is the .info.json file.
• .info.json: Created by yt-dlp during download. Contains the video title, uploader, duration, chapters, thumbnail URL, source URL, and format details. RuForge reads this to populate library cards and player metadata.
• .sponsorblock.json: A sidecar created by RuForge when SponsorBlock data is fetched for a video. Stores sponsor segments, chapters, and points of interest so they do not need to be re-fetched on every play.
• Sprite sheet: A grid of thumbnail frames generated by ffmpeg after download. Used for hover previews on the player scrub bar. Stored next to the video file.
• Poster: A single-frame thumbnail image generated by ffmpeg, used as the cover art for library cards when no yt-dlp thumbnail is available.

Terms related to watching your downloaded content.

• Player: The built-in video/audio player in the main window. Supports chapters, subtitles, keyboard shortcuts, and SponsorBlock overlays.
• Mini player: A separate borderless window that floats on top of other apps. You can resize it from large (full controls) down to a tiny strip.
• Control dock: The frosted bar at the bottom of the player with play/pause, volume, loop, and other controls.
• Chapter scrubber: A segmented progress bar that divides the video into chapters (from yt-dlp metadata). Each segment is clickable and shows the chapter title on hover.
• Auto-advance: When a video ends, the player automatically plays the next file. It first tries the next item in the current folder, then falls back to the next item in the library.
• Scrub preview: Thumbnail images that appear when you hover over the progress bar, generated from ffmpeg sprite sheets.