Support

Installation & Requirements

Grabbr requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later on Apple Silicon or Intel. No additional tools required — yt-dlp, ffmpeg, and ffprobe are all bundled inside the app.

Open the DMG, drag Grabbr into your Applications folder, and launch it. Grabbr is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, and the approval travels inside the app itself — so it opens cleanly the first time, with no Open Anyway trip through System Settings and no internet connection needed for that first launch.

Activating Your Business License

Personal use is free and needs no license at all. If you purchased a Business License, your license key will be delivered to your email within a few minutes.

To activate: open Grabbr and click the Upgrade link at the bottom of the sidebar (just above the Download Now button). In the window that opens, paste your key (format: GRABBR-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) and click Activate. Internet is required for the first activation; after that, Grabbr checks in once per day and works offline for up to 72 hours.

Download failed / HTTP 403 error

YouTube and other sites frequently change their internal APIs. This is usually fixed by clicking Update yt-dlp in the Grabbr app footer, then retrying the download.

Private / age-restricted videos won't download

Grabbr can sign in as you do, by reading cookies from your browser — but it only does so when you ask it to. Open the settings panel and turn on Browser cookies, then pick the browser you are actually signed into (Chrome, Brave, Edge, Firefox, Vivaldi, Opera, Chromium or Safari; leave it on Automatic and Grabbr picks the first one installed). Make sure you are logged in to the site in that browser, then retry the download.

Safari keeps its cookies locked down, so if Grabbr can't read them it will tell you what to do — grant Full Disk Access, or switch to another browser — instead of failing with a raw system error.

License key not working

• Make sure you're copying the full key including all dashes: GRABBR-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX
• Check your spam folder — the delivery email comes from noreply@twoplus11.com
• If you need to transfer a seat to a new Mac, contact us and we can reset it

Smart Trim isn't removing segments

Smart Trim uses the SponsorBlock community database. If a video has no community-submitted segments, nothing will be removed — this is expected. Well-known YouTube channels typically have good SponsorBlock coverage.

Check which mode you are in, too: Smart Trim can either cut segments out or mark them as chapters. In the second mode the video is deliberately left whole — the segments are written in as chapters your player can skip, not removed.

Smart Trim only works on YouTube videos.

Browser extension not working

The extension — in Chrome or Safari — needs Grabbr.app running in the background. Start Grabbr first, then click the extension button (or press ⌘⇧Y) on any video page to send it to Grabbr instantly.

In Safari, check the extension is actually switched on under Safari ▸ Settings ▸ Extensions — it ships inside Grabbr, but macOS requires you to enable it yourself.

Check Background helper for the browser extension is on in Grabbr’s settings. That helper is what keeps the extension working while Grabbr is closed; with it switched off, the extension only reaches Grabbr while the app is already open.

If it still doesn't work, check that no firewall or Little Snitch rule is blocking 127.0.0.1:8766 (the local bridge port).

Multiple downloads failed at once

If several downloads fail (e.g., after a network interruption), click the Retry Failed button that appears in the Downloads header to re-queue all failed items at once — no need to retry each one individually.

Alternatively, click the ↺ retry button on any individual download card.

Clipboard watch keeps popping up

Grabbr watches your clipboard and offers to download any URL you copy. To disable this, open the settings panel (bottom of the sidebar) and toggle Clipboard Watch off. This preference is saved and persists between app launches.

Drag & drop and other ways to start a download

• Drag a link from Chrome, Safari, or any app directly onto the Grabbr window — the download starts immediately.
• Paste a URL with ⌘V anywhere in the app to focus the URL field and fill it.
• Clipboard watch — copy a video URL in any app and a banner appears in Grabbr with a one-click download option.
• Browser extension (Chrome or Safari) — press ⌘⇧Y on any video page to send it to Grabbr instantly.
• Import a list — click Import beside Paste and choose a .txt file of URLs to queue them all at once. Dropping the same file on the window does the same thing; the button is there so the list is reachable without a mouse.

All Keyboard Shortcuts

Grabbr is designed to be keyboard-first. Press ? inside the app to open the cheat-sheet at any time.