video-dispatch is a Windows desktop app for uploading video to TikTok and YouTube, including YouTube Shorts: choose one video, write what goes with it, and queue it to both. It keeps a queue that survives restarts, resumes interrupted YouTube uploads, schedules YouTube videos, fills in text from your own presets, and can compress or re-encode a video to MP4 before sending it. A video editor cuts, trims, joins, fades, zooms, slows down and speeds up clips, adds music and words over them, turns sound up or evens it out, and saves one new MP4.
It runs on Windows 10 (version 2004 or later) and 11, is one file of about 7 MB with nothing to install, and has no server. You register your own TikTok and Google apps, and your videos go straight from your PC to them.
Warning
This hasn't been run against real TikTok or Google accounts yet, only against local servers built from their docs. TikTok may also refuse the app you register, which would leave only YouTube. See What hasn't been tried and Registering your apps.
Each video is a job for each platform. Here one is uploading, one waits out YouTube's daily quota, and one sits in the creator's TikTok inbox with its caption ready to paste.
The pictures are of made-up sample data (video-dispatch --sample): the channel, the videos and the accounts are invented, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Choose a video, and it says what's in it: size, picture size, length, frame rate and codec, and whether YouTube will probably make it a Short. That's only a prediction, because YouTube decides and has no setting for it: square or vertical and up to three minutes is a Short.
TikTok's inbox upload has no field for a caption. So the video arrives in your TikTok inbox as a draft, you finish the post in TikTok, and the caption you wrote here waits on the Queue page to paste in.
For YouTube you choose privacy and made for kids yourself each time, unless a preset chose them. YouTube treats a missing privacy as public, so nothing is queued without one. The preview is built from the same values that are sent, so it's exactly what YouTube gets. A scheduled video stays private until its time, even with the app closed.
Cut videos into clips, trim them, put them in order, fade and zoom them, lay music and other sounds over them, put words on top, and save it all as one new MP4. Edit on New post starts an edit of the chosen video, and Use in New post brings the saved one back to post.
The timeline has three lines: the clips, the sounds, and the words. Click anything on it to choose it, and its settings show beside the preview.
| Videos | drop them on the page from Explorer, or press Videos. Dropped among the clips, they go where they're let go |
| Sound | lays music, or any sound Windows can play, over the edit from the playhead. Sound files dropped on the page go where they're let go, and so do videos dropped on the sounds' line, for their sound |
| Words | puts words over the picture from the playhead, for three seconds, ready to type over |
| Split (S) | cuts the clip under the playhead in two |
| Trim | drag either edge of a clip, sound or words. The preview shows the picture at a clip's edge as you drag |
| Move | drag a clip to where it should go among the others, or a sound or words along the timeline |
| Delete | takes out what's chosen. Its file isn't touched |
| Undo, Redo (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y) | every change, as far back as 100. Dragging a slider, or typing words, is one change |
| Play (Space) | plays the edit with its sounds. ← and → step a frame, with Shift a second |
What can be set for each:
| A clip | how loud its own sound is, up to 400%, and how it's evened out; its speed; a fade in from black and out to black (picture and sound together); a crossfade from the clip before; and zoom up to 400%. Drag the preview to choose what's in view when zoomed |
| A sound | how loud it is, up to 400%, how it's evened out, and how long it takes to fade in and out. Any part of it past the end of the edit isn't heard |
| Words | the words, top, middle or bottom, three sizes, white, yellow or black, with or without a box behind them, and how long they show |
Speed runs from 25% to 400%, or type how long the clip should last under Lasts, such as 60 or 1:00. A 30-second clip set to last a minute plays at 50%, each frame shown twice. Once you've changed a clip's speed, you're asked whether its sound should change with it. If yes, it stays in step with the picture, and sounds deeper when slowed and higher when sped up. If no, it plays at its own speed from the start of the clip, so it ends early when the clip is slowed and is cut off when it's sped up. The choice stays beside the speed, to change later.
Louder and quieter. Volume goes from silent to four times as loud. Each clip's and sound's sound can also be evened out first:
| As recorded | left as it is |
| As loud as it can be | the whole of it turned up or down until its loudest moment is just under full. Nothing is made more than 20 times louder, so near-silence doesn't become hiss |
| Evened out, as for speech | its loud parts turned down and then the whole of it turned up, so quiet and loud parts end up closer together |
Whatever is turned up, the finished mix goes through a limiter. Sound louder than there's room for is held just under full instead of clipping into distortion.
A crossfade plays the two clips at once, so it makes the edit that much shorter. The timeline shows it as a pale band, and fades as shaded corners.
Paused, the preview is the exact frame from the video, in the shape the video is saved at, with zoom, fades, crossfades and words drawn as saving draws them. Frames come from Windows' own player in about 20 ms each, so dragging the playhead keeps up. Playing, it plays the clips one after another at their speeds, and opens the next video a moment before a cut to it. While playing, a crossfade shows the next clip's first picture fading in, rather than that clip moving. The preview can't play sound louder than it was, or a clip's sound at its own speed while its picture plays at another, so those are only heard in the saved video. The edit is kept for next time, and holds only where the files are and which parts are used.
Save video makes the new file where you choose, at the first clip's picture size and frame rate. A clip of another shape fits inside it, with black bars. The new file is high quality, since it may well be compressed again before it's sent. A key frame every two seconds lets players jump about in it. It can't be saved over one of the files in the edit. While it saves, a folder named after the new file holds the sound and pictures of words it's working from, and it's removed when it's done.
Each platform has its own Before sending choice. It starts on sending the file as it is, and nothing is re-encoded unless you ask.
| High quality | an H.264 MP4 at the same picture size |
| Balanced | the same, at up to 1080p |
| Smaller file | the same, at up to 720p |
| Fit a size | as many megabytes as you say, with the picture made smaller too if the size calls for it |
Your original is never changed. The new file stays in the app's own folder until the platforms have it, and two platforms asking for the same thing share one file. An MP4 that wouldn't come out smaller is sent as it is, and the job says so. A video too big or in a format TikTok refuses can be queued if it's being made into something TikTok takes. The platforms compress everything again, so re-encoding is mainly for fitting limits, not for looking better.
Windows' own tools do this, and save edits, so there's nothing to install, and nothing needs FFmpeg. If you'd rather use it, because it reads more formats and aims at a quality rather than a bitrate, Settings offers two ways:
| Download FFmpeg | fetches the stable Windows build, about 115 MB, checks it against its published checksum, unpacks only ffmpeg.exe and its licence into the app's folder, and checks that it runs and can make H.264 |
| Use your own copy | point at any ffmpeg.exe you already have |
FFmpeg isn't part of this project, and never ships with it: it arrives only when you press the button. FFmpeg's own site offers only source code, and points Windows users to outside builders, so the button fetches the release build from gyan.dev, one of the two it links to, under GPLv3. The checksum comes from that same site, so it catches a damaged download, not a tampered site.
While a downloaded copy is in use, the app asks gyan.dev for the newest version number about once a day. If there's a newer one, a dot appears beside Settings, and Update FFmpeg fetches it when you press it. It never installs one by itself. It doesn't ask anything if you use your own copy or Windows' tools. Going back to Windows' tools, or choosing your own copy, removes the downloaded one.
Uploads run while the app is open, one at a time for each platform, so one stuck platform doesn't hold up the other.
| Closing during an upload | it warns first. YouTube uploads carry on from where they were the next time you open it. TikTok has no way to resume, so its uploads start over |
| A connection that drops | tries again with growing waits: 5 times for YouTube and 3 for TikTok, whose every new try may count against its limit |
| A platform's limit | the platform's queue waits it out: until midnight Pacific for YouTube's quota, and 24 hours for TikTok's 5 pending shares. Try now asks straight away |
| A sign-in that ended | that platform's queue pauses until you connect the account again, then carries on |
| A file that changed after queueing | fails instead of uploading a corrupt mix |
| A video the platform already has | is never sent again by hand. Trying again only checks on it, and Stop following says plainly that the video stays there |
The app stops asking about a TikTok draft after 7 days, and keeps the job so you can mark it posted. A video still processing after 3 days is marked failed, with a note to check on it there.
Text you use again and again, with {title}, {filename} (without its extension) and {date} filled in. A misspelled variable is pointed out as you type, and blocks queueing rather than going out as written. Everything stays editable for each post.
TikTok presets hold only text, because TikTok's rules say privacy, comments, Duet, Stitch and commercial content must be set for each post.
One account per platform. Your keys are saved in Windows Credential Manager, a saved secret is never shown back, and Disconnect ends the sign-in at the platform too.
Adding videos to playlists is off unless you ask for it, because the YouTube permission it needs (youtube.force-ssl) also allows deleting videos, comments and captions. Turning it on later means connecting again.
Download a zip from Releases, or take the .exe straight from public/, which always holds the latest build: video-dispatch.exe, about 7 MB, for Windows 10 (version 2004 or later) and 11 on x64 PCs. It runs on the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime installed on the PC, which Microsoft Update keeps patched. Without it, Windows offers to download it.
The program is small because it draws with what Windows and .NET already have: WPF, with Windows 11's own look (light or dark, in your accent colour). It adds no packages. About 6 MB of it is Microsoft's own library for reaching Windows' media tools, kept zipped inside the program and unpacked into memory only when a video is edited or re-encoded.
- Register your apps, once.
- Under Accounts, enter each app's keys, save them, and press Connect. Your browser opens for you to approve.
- Under New post, choose a video, fill it in, and press Add to queue.
- For TikTok, open TikTok when the job says so, finish the post there, and paste the caption.
From the command line:
video-dispatch D:\Videos\walk.mp4 # opens New post on that video
video-dispatch --sample # made-up accounts and jobs, no browser, no network, nothing saved
video-dispatch --theme dark # light or dark, rather than following Windows
video-dispatch --page queue # opens on new, edit, queue, presets, accounts, settings or about
There's no server to hold a shared key, and a client secret can't be kept in open source, so each user registers their own apps. These steps come from each platform's docs, read on 2026-11-01. Their consoles change, and the steps haven't been walked through on a real account yet.
-
Sign up at TikTok for Developers. Click your profile icon, then Manage apps, then Connect an app, and choose the app's owner. TikTok advises an organization rather than an individual for real integrations.
-
Fill in the app icon (1024 x 1024), name, category and description. Under Platforms, choose Desktop, which asks for a website address.
-
Under Products, click Add products, and add Login Kit and the Content Posting API.
-
In Login Kit, add this redirect URI exactly. The
*is a wildcard port, because the app listens on a random one:http://127.0.0.1:*/callback/ -
Under Scopes, add
user.info.basicandvideo.upload. -
Copy the Client key and Client secret from Credentials into Accounts in the app.
-
Apps created since September 2024 must verify their website, terms of service and privacy policy addresses. That's under URL properties, then Verify properties.
-
Under App review, explain how you use each product and scope, upload a demo video, and click Submit for review. An app must be approved for
video.upload.
TikTok may refuse this. Its Content Sharing Guidelines say a utility tool for accounts you or your team manage isn't acceptable, and they don't cover apps that each user registers. If yours is refused, untick Post to TikTok and use YouTube alone.
TikTok also has a Sandbox mode, switched at the top of the app page, for trying things without review, on up to 10 accounts you own. Its docs say it offers no Content Posting API access for public videos, and don't say whether inbox uploads work. So that's worth trying, but it's not known to work.
- In the Google Cloud console, create a project or choose one.
- In the API Library, find YouTube Data API v3 and enable it.
- Set up the OAuth consent screen, with an external audience if you're asked. While the app's status is Testing, add your own Google account as a test user on the Audience page.
- On the Clients page, click Create client, choose Desktop app, name it, and click Create. There's no redirect address to enter: a desktop client signs in through a local address on a random port.
- Copy the client ID, and the secret if you like, into Accounts in the app. Google lists the secret as optional for desktop clients.
The app requests youtube.upload and youtube.readonly, and youtube.force-ssl only if you ask for playlists.
Move it out of Testing. While it's in Testing, Google ends your sign-in after 7 days, and you'd have to connect again each week. To stop that, click Publish app on the Audience page. Google's rules for a published app then apply:
- An app that hasn't been verified shows an "unverified app" warning at sign-in, and at most 100 people can ever sign in to it.
- Google says verification is optional for an app for your personal use with under 100 users, who may click through the warning.
- Google's docs conflict on whether uploads from an unverified project stay private. So the app compares the privacy YouTube reports with what you asked for, and warns if they differ.
A Google project gets 100 video uploads a day through YouTube's API, and its quotas reset at midnight Pacific. Your channel may have a daily limit of its own.
Everything has been tested against made-up platforms: 965 tests, including the whole flow from signing in to both platforms' uploads over real connections to local servers built from their docs. Those servers can only be as right as the docs. These haven't happened yet:
- A real sign-in or upload on TikTok or YouTube, or an app approval from TikTok.
- A real video from a phone, rotated, through New post. Reading video details has been tried on real files, but rotation only on hand-built ones.
- Re-encoding real footage. Both engines have really encoded test videos, including sideways ones, and Fit a size stayed under its limit on all of them, but those are made-up pictures. So how real footage looks, and how long a long video takes, are still to be seen.
- Editing real footage. Windows' tools have cut, joined, zoomed, faded, crossfaded, slowed down and sped up test videos, put words on them and mixed sounds into them, including sideways and differently shaped ones, and the editor's own window has played them in order. Where each sound lands, and how loud it is, was measured, but nobody has listened to an edit, so how a slowed sound or the evening out sounds is still to be heard. FFmpeg's way of saving an edit has only been checked as the command it builds, not run.
- Changing the speed of a video that isn't an MP4 or MOV with Windows' tools. That isn't possible, and it says to choose FFmpeg.
- Download FFmpeg pressed in the real app. The same download code has fetched and run the real build from gyan.dev, but from a test program, not from that button.
- An edition of Windows without the media tools, such as N editions. Re-encoding there should say to install the Media Feature Pack or choose FFmpeg.
- An update from one real release to the next, because there's only been one. The check for one has run against GitHub, and the update itself against made-up downloads.
Details that only a real account can settle are in docs/platform-notes.md, which records what the code relies on from each platform's docs.
About (at the bottom of the side) says who makes video-dispatch, with links to Strongthium, and asks GitHub whether there's a newer version. If there is, Update downloads the release, checks it against the release's SHA256SUMS, replaces the program and starts it again. If the program's folder can't be changed without an administrator, it says so, and What's new leads to the release to download by hand. The checksums come with the release, so they catch a damaged download, not a tampered release.
GitHub is asked only when About is first shown, again if it's shown an hour later, or when Check again is pressed. api.github.com sees that the question came from your address, and which program and version asked.
There's no server and no telemetry. Your videos and what you write go from your PC to TikTok and Google, under your own apps, and nowhere else. If you download FFmpeg, gyan.dev sees your address and this program's name and version, when you fetch it and at each check for a newer version. Nothing about your videos goes there.
| Keys, sign-ins and the addresses of unfinished uploads | only in Windows Credential Manager, never in a plain file. Access tokens stay in memory |
| Jobs, presets, settings and the edit | JSON files under %LOCALAPPDATA%\video-dispatch, with no secrets in them. The edit holds where its files are, which parts are used, their settings and its words |
| A downloaded FFmpeg | under that same folder, if you asked for it |
| Your videos and sounds | read where they are, and never changed. A re-encoded copy stays under that folder until the platforms have it. A saved edit is a new file, where you chose to save it |
To remove it all, press Disconnect and Remove keys under Accounts, delete that folder, and delete the program.
You need Windows and the .NET 10 SDK.
.\build.ps1 # tests, then the program into public\ (or double-click build.cmd)
.\build.ps1 -Bump revision # the same as a new version: 1.0.0.0 -> 1.0.0.1
build.ps1 runs the tests (-SkipTests skips them), publishes the program, and replaces what's in public/ with it, its SHA256SUMS and the VERSION it was built as.
The version is in VERSION, major.minor.patch.revision, and every build reads it. -Bump major|minor|patch|revision or -Version 2.0.0.0 builds a new one, and VERSION is changed once that build has succeeded, so the version in the repository is always the one in public/.
For working on it:
dotnet build
dotnet test
dotnet run --project src/VideoDispatch -- --sample
| Folder | What's in it |
|---|---|
src/VideoDispatch.Core |
the publishing library, with no UI: sign-ins, both upload clients, the queue, presets, reading video details, edits, what re-encoding aims for, FFmpeg, updates |
src/VideoDispatch.Editing |
re-encoding, saving edits and reading pictures with Windows' own media tools |
src/VideoDispatch |
the window (WPF, with its Fluent theme): New post, Edit, Queue, Presets, Accounts, Settings and About, and the made-up sample |
tests/VideoDispatch.Core.Tests |
tests of the library, some over real sockets to local servers |
tests/VideoDispatch.Tests |
tests of what the screens do, and the end-to-end tests |
docs/platform-notes.md |
what the code relies on from each platform's docs |
public |
the latest build, made by build.ps1 |
build.ps1, build.cmd, VERSION |
the builder, and the version it builds |
master holds the source. A push to deploy (a merge into it counts) runs .github/workflows/release.yml, which:
- runs the tests on Windows;
- builds the x64 program, one
.exe; - publishes release
v<VERSION>with its zip andSHA256SUMS. A version is released once: to release again, raise it first (build.ps1 -Bump revision).
There's no deploy branch yet, so nothing has been released.
Strongthium Labs also makes software for running your own servers and Windows PCs, and for talking to your customers, at strongthium.com:
 |
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Strongthium Registry Windows registry editor. Shows what each key and value means, finds any key in seconds, and backs up every change before it's made. |
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Strongthium Convey Video conferencing for Windows. Video, sound and text chat between Windows PCs, over the Internet, a dial-up modem or a cable. |
MIT, see LICENSE.