Sieve for Windows

Paste a link, get the file — then transcode it on your GPU.

A free desktop downloader and transcoder for Windows, built on yt-dlp + FFmpeg. 8 one-tap download presets over 1,800+ sites · a 52-preset transcode suite with NVIDIA NVENC, Intel Quick Sync and AMD AMF hardware encoding · batch + watch-folder modes · VMAF quality scoring · channel subscriptions on a schedule. No ads, no accounts, no tracking.

⬇ Download the latest release

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Install

1. Grab sieve-setup-<version>.exe from the Releases page.
2. Run it — one-click, per-user install, no admin needed. Updating? Just run the new installer; your settings, history and presets carry over.
3. Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unsigned installer: choose More info → Run anyway.

The installer bundles everything Sieve needs — yt-dlp, FFmpeg + ffprobe, and Deno (the JavaScript runtime yt-dlp uses for full YouTube support). Nothing else to install.

Always current

Sites change all the time, so Sieve keeps its engines up to date on its own:

• It checks once a day for new yt-dlp, FFmpeg (stable release line) and Deno builds and shows a one-click Update now banner — or turn on Settings → Engine updates → Install automatically.
• Every update comes straight from its official publisher, is checksum-verified, and is tested before it's used — a build that would break a feature is rejected, and your working one is never touched.
• About → Engines shows what you're running and lets you update or roll back each engine. Updates apply to the next job — no restart needed.
• Want site fixes the moment they land? Switch yt-dlp to the nightly channel in Settings.

Works with

Tested end to end with YouTube (videos, Shorts, Music, playlists, channels), Facebook (reels, watch, fb.watch and share links), LinkedIn posts, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Mixcloud, Vimeo, Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, Reddit, Bluesky, Twitch, Dailymotion and Pinterest — plus the rest of yt-dlp's 1,800+ supported sites.

Signed-in content (age-restricted, private or members-only videos): sign in to the site in Firefox, then choose Firefox under Settings → Cookies. Sieve only uses your cookies when a site actually asks for a login. Chrome, Edge and Brave lock their cookies on Windows, so they can't be used for this.

Requirements

Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit). Hardware encoding is optional and used automatically when available: NVIDIA (NVENC), Intel (Quick Sync / Arc) or AMD Radeon (AMF). Everything also works on the CPU.

The Sieve family

• Sieve for Windows (this app) — Electron + React desktop app: hardware-encoder transcoding, watch folders, subscriptions.
• Sieve for Android — native Kotlin + Jetpack Compose app with on-device MediaCodec transcoding.

The two are siblings, not ports — same name, same philosophy (free and clean, never monetized), separate codebases with their own feature sets.

More: michaelwright.work/projects/sieve-windows

Licenses

Sieve spawns FFmpeg, yt-dlp and Deno strictly as separate programs (no linking). FFmpeg is GPL v3, yt-dlp is Unlicense, and Deno is MIT. Full license texts and the FFmpeg source offer ship inside the app and are viewable in the About panel; FFmpeg updates installed from within the app come directly from BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds, which publishes the matching source.

This repository hosts release downloads for Sieve for Windows.