VODs disappear from Twitch after 7-60 days depending on the channel
partnership tier. Anyone serious about archiving needs to capture
streams while they are still live, not after. The downloader is now
a recorder too.
End-user surface:
- Each streamer in the sidebar has a small red "REC" pill next to
the remove-x. Click it -> server checks Helix (or public GQL when
no client_id is configured) for live status. If the channel is
online a new queue item is added with isLive: true, status:
pending; the existing queue scheduler picks it up. Toast feedback
for offline / already-recording / generic-failure cases.
- Live items render with a pulsing red REC badge in the queue title
row and skip the bulk-select checkbox + the merge-group selector
(they don't make sense for an open-ended capture).
- Output goes to {download_path}/{streamer}/live/
{streamer}_LIVE_{YYYY-MM-DD}_{HH-mm-ss}.mp4 — timestamped so back-
to-back recordings of the same channel never collide.
- Streamlink runs without --hls-start-offset / --hls-duration so it
records until the stream actually ends or the user hits cancel /
remove. The existing per-item filename claim, integrity check on
close, and downloaded_vod_ids tracking apply unchanged (live
recordings are not added to downloaded_vod_ids since they have
no Twitch VOD ID).
Server plumbing:
- New getLiveStreamInfo(login) helper. Helix /streams when an app
token is available (better metadata: title + game), public GQL
fallback otherwise so users in public-mode still get live status.
- New IPC start-live-recording(streamerName) does the live check,
refuses with ALREADY_RECORDING if a live item for the same
channel is already pending or downloading.
- downloadVOD branches into a small downloadLiveStream helper when
item.isLive — computes the timestamped filename, ensures the
per-streamer/live folder exists, hands off to downloadVODPart
with null start/end times.
- sanitizeQueueItem preserves the isLive flag across queue file
reload so a recording in progress survives an app restart in
state (though streamlink itself dies on app exit and the user
has to re-trigger).
DE + EN locale strings for every toast + tooltip + the queue badge.
CSS animation for the pulsing badge so it visually distinguishes
live recordings from regular VOD downloads at a glance.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>