ytrender

ytrender is an open-source rendering library designed to produce consistent, display-ready representations of YouTube video data for use in web and mobile apps. It gathers metadata and assets such as video thumbnails, titles, channel names, publication dates, duration, and view counts, and renders them into reusable UI components or exportable images.

The project emphasizes performance and consistency across platforms. It supports multiple thumbnail sizes, responsive layouts, and theming, allowing developers to apply brand styles. It can render client-side in browsers and server-side in Node.js, with a built-in caching layer to reduce API requests.

ytrender is modular, with a core renderer, a data fetcher for the YouTube Data API v3, and separate templates for different visual styles. It outputs either HTML snippets, React or Vue components, or canvas-based images, depending on configuration.

Usage is straightforward: install via npm, import the renderer, provide a video ID or full video data, and specify options such as size, theme, and output format. It requires a YouTube Data API key and adheres to API usage policies.

The project is maintained by an open-source community and has been used in video dashboards, content aggregators, and marketing pages. It is released under the MIT license and welcomes contributions.

See also: YouTube Data API, YouTube video thumbnails.