AeroFetch/resources/bin/README.md

Bundled binaries

AeroFetch spawns these from the main process. yt-dlp.exe (and optional aria2c.exe) ship in the installer via electron-builder extraResources (outside the asar archive) and are committed here so a fresh clone builds and runs.

ffmpeg.exe + ffprobe.exe are NOT shipped in the installer — they're the bulk of its size, so they're downloaded on first run into userData/bin (see src/main/ffmpegSetup.ts, pinned in src/main/config.ts). Dropping copies here is an optional dev seed — ensureManagedFfmpeg copies them into userData/bin so npm run dev needs no download — but at ~107MB each (over GitHub's 100MB file limit) they're gitignored, not committed. Without the seed, npm run dev just triggers the same first-run download the shipped app uses.

resources/bin/
├── yt-dlp.exe     (bundled + committed)
├── ffmpeg.exe     (optional dev seed — gitignored, excluded from the installer)
├── ffprobe.exe    (optional dev seed — gitignored, excluded from the installer)
└── aria2c.exe     (optional, bundled)

yt-dlp.exe

• Download: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest
• Grab yt-dlp.exe.
• Unlicense / public domain.

ffmpeg.exe + ffprobe.exe (dev seed only)

• The app downloads these on first run from the pinned upstream archive in src/main/config.ts (FFMPEG_ARCHIVE_URL + FFMPEG_ARCHIVE_SHA256). To bump the version, edit those constants — recompute the SHA-256 from the new zip — in their own commit (the "pinned decisions" discipline).
• For local dev, drop both ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe here — they come together in the same archive's bin/ folder and their versions must match. yt-dlp needs ffprobe.exe to read media durations; without it, duration-dependent post-processing fails with "ffprobe not found" (--sponsorblock-remove, --force-keyframes-at-cuts, and --split-chapters all error out). Any recent win64 build works, e.g. https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ or https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases.
• The installer no longer redistributes ffmpeg, so there's no ffmpeg license text to ship with the build — users fetch the binary from upstream themselves.

aria2c.exe (optional)

• Powers the "Use aria2c downloader" toggle in Settings → Network for faster multi-connection downloads. If it's missing, that toggle silently falls back to yt-dlp's built-in downloader — nothing breaks.
• Download: https://github.com/aria2/aria2/releases (grab the aria2-*-win-64bit-build1.zip, copy aria2c.exe from it here).
• GPL-2.0 — ship its license text alongside the installer before release if bundled.

Branding stays generic: AeroFetch is a "yt-dlp frontend." Keep upstream license texts with any distributed build.