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yt-dlp

yt-dlp/yt-dlp is an actively developed fork of the famous Youtube video downloader youtube-dl.

Install

Download the binary executable for Linux/MacOS.

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o ~/.local/bin/yt-dlp
chmod a+rx ~/.local/bin/yt-dlp

conda install -c conda-forge yt-dlp

choco install yt-dlp

Or

winget install yt-dlp.yt-dlp

Usage

Download videos with subtitles

Use the --write-subs option.

yt-dlp --write-subs <url>

Select resolution and format

Use -S (sort) to download 1080p H264 videos first.

yt-dlp -S "res:1080,vcodec:h264" <url>

Download videos from a playlist

yt-dlp --yes-playlist --ignore-errors --continue --no-overwrites --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s" <playlist_url>
  • --yes-playlist : Download multiple videos if the URL is a playlist.
  • --ignore-errors : Ignore errors (like geo-restriction of a video or deleted video in a playlist) and continue with rest of the playlist.
  • --continue : Resume if any of the video is partially downloaded in the local file system.
  • --no-overwrites : If a file is already downloaded in local file system, then skip the download.
  • --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s : Specify the download directory with filename and extension extracted from the video.
  • "${VID_URL}" : URL of the video or playlist.

Download Watch Later videos and mark them as viewed

Use the --mark-watched option. You also need to login with --username <username> --password <password>.

yt-dlp --username <username> --password <password> --mark-watched 'https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=WL'

Download audio only, as opus format, from a playlist

Use --extract-audio --audio-format opus --format 'bestaudio' to extract only the audio information and store as opus file.

yt-dlp --yes-playlist --ignore-errors --continue --no-overwrites --extract-audio --audio-format opus --format 'bestaudio' --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "${URL}"

Download videos from a list of videos

Use --batch-file batchlist.txt to capture the list of URLs in a separate lines in a text file and download them in batch.

yt-dlp --ignore-errors --continue --no-overwrites --format 'bestvideo+bestaudio' --batch-file batchlist.txt --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s"