Termux is a cute little and efficient Linux environment on Android.
It has a very good package repo and you can find and install almost everything. At least in my case, there were no oh-oh moments due to a package not available - be it python, ffmpeg, etc. It has some differences with a regular linux environment1 but it can be easily bypassed with proot2.
Installed it today at 22 00 and from a quick glance at their wiki, found that it supported broadcast intents, that means you could snatch the intents from almost any app and parse the data to do anything on a Linux environment on your Android phone! 😉 Now, how cool is that!
I had been thinking of writing a hook to capture Instagram/Facebook/YouTube links and download data according to my requirements (video, audio only, specific images from Instagram carousels etc). Without having to rely on third party websites/ apps infested with ads and malware, I could script it and run it using termux in less than a second!
Apart from those silly stuff, I noticed that if you could acquire a wakelock for the app on Android ( RIP battery? ) it could run cron jobs - which is super cool! That could even mean setting up a simple web server or a flask app that can listen to webhooks ahem telegram which would be super productive and helpful.
More testing/research in the coming days!
Here’s my bash script attempt numer - 01 ( it’s not a well thought / efficient solution, rather a lazy attempt; probably I will refactor when I have time or if it breaks when instagram updates something in the backend )
Straight to the code
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#!/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/bash
url=$1
userChoice=$(termux-dialog radio -v "YouTube Video,YouTube Audio,Instagram Image/Carousel Video,Instagram Reels/Video Story,Facebook Video,Other Files Downloads" -t Select)
userChoiceExists=$(echo $userChoice | jq -r '.text')
if [ -z "$userChoiceExists" ]
then
echo "See ya!"
else
userChoiceIndex=$(echo $userChoice | jq -r '.index')
case $userChoiceIndex in
0)
echo "Will try to download 480p if available or else next available best video 720 or 1080 or 4K"
yt-dlp -f "bv*[height<=480]+ba/b[height<=480] / wv*+ba/w" -o "/storage/emulated/0/nevins/YouTube/%(title)s.%(ext)s" $url
;;
1)
yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --embed-thumbnail --output "/storage/emulated/0/nevins/YouTube/Music/%(title)s.%(ext)s" $url
;;
2)
imageUrl=$url
cropped=$(echo $imageUrl | sed 's/?.*//')
tempSt="?__a=1&__d=dis"
cropped="$cropped$tempSt"
json=$(curl -H 'cookie: mid=; ig_nrcb=1; ig_did=; datr=; =base_domain=.instagram.com; csrftoken=1L; ds_user_id=; rur=""' -X GET $cropped)
carouselExists=$(echo $json | jq '.items[0] | has("carousel_media_count")')
videoOnlySinglePost=$(echo $json | jq '.items[0] | has("video_versions")')
dirSuffix=$(echo $json | jq '.items[0].user.username')
dirSuffix="${dirSuffix:1:${#dirSuffix}-2}"
if $videoOnlySinglePost; then
mkdir -p '/storage/emulated/0/nevins/Instagram/Videos/'$dirSuffix
else
mkdir -p '/storage/emulated/0/nevins/Instagram/Pictures/'$dirSuffix
fi
if $carouselExists; then
echo "Fuck yeah, lets get all of em!"
confirmation=''
limit=$(echo $json | jq '.items[0].carousel_media_count')
for (( c=0; c<limit; c++ ))
do
confirmation="$confirmation$c,"
done
userPrompt=$(termux-dialog checkbox -v ${confirmation::-1})
userWantsToDownload=$(echo $userPrompt | jq '.code')
if [[ $userWantsToDownload -eq -1 ]] ; then
echo $userPrompt | jq -r '.values[].index' | while read index; do
echo $json | jq '.items[0].carousel_media' | jq --argjson index $index -r '.[$index].media_type' | while read media_type ; do
if [[ $media_type -eq 1 ]] ; then
echo $json | jq '.items[0].carousel_media' | jq --argjson index $index -r '.[$index].image_versions2.candidates[0].url' | while read url ; do
fileName='/storage/emulated/0/nevins/Instagram/Pictures/'$dirSuffix
rdm=$(openssl rand -hex 12)
fileName="/$fileName/$rdm.jpg"
curl -o $fileName -J -L $url
done
elif [[ $media_type -eq 2 ]] ; then
echo $json | jq '.items[0].carousel_media' | jq --argjson index $index -r '.[$index].video_versions[0].url' | while read url ; do
fileName='/storage/emulated/0/nevins/Instagram/Videos/'$dirSuffix
mkdir -p $fileName
rdm=$(openssl rand -hex 12)
fileName="/$fileName/$rdm.mp4"
curl -o $fileName -J -L $url
done
else
echo "Unable to determine the media type..."
termux-toast -g bottom "Unable to determine the media type..."
fi
done
done
fi
confirmation=''
elif $videoOnlySinglePost; then
fileName='/storage/emulated/0/nevins/Instagram/Videos/'$dirSuffix
mkdir -p $fileName
rdm=$(openssl rand -hex 12)
fileName="/$fileName/$rdm.mp4"
singleDownload=$(echo $json | jq '.items[0].video_versions[0].url')
singleDownload="${singleDownload:1:${#singleDownload}-2}"
curl -o $fileName -J -L $singleDownload
else
fileName='/storage/emulated/0/nevins/Instagram/Pictures/'$dirSuffix
rdm=$(openssl rand -hex 12)
fileName="/$fileName/$rdm.jpg"
singleDownload=$(echo $json | jq '.items[0].image_versions2.candidates[0].url')
singleDownload="${singleDownload:1:${#singleDownload}-2}"
curl -o $fileName -J -L $singleDownload
fi
/data/data/com.termux/files/home/rclone/sync.sh
;;
3)
yt-dlp --cookies "/data/data/com.termux/files/home/insta/cookies.txt" -P "/storage/emulated/0/nevins/Instagram/Videos/" $url
;;
4)
yt-dlp -o "/storage/emulated/0/nevins/Facebook/Videos/%(id)s.%(ext)s" $url
;;
5)
yt-dlp -o "/storage/emulated/0/nevins/%(id)s.%(ext)s" $url
esac
fi