Description
< #Video Download #Audio Download #Command Line #youtube-dl #Batch Download #Open Source
yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio and video downloader with support for thousands of sites, not just YouTube. It is a fork of youtube-dl by way of the now inactive youtube-dlc, and it ships updates far more often, which is what keeps it working when a site changes.
Compared with a subscription's offline privileges it does more and constrains less: YouTube Premium costs about sixteen dollars a month and only makes content available inside its own app, while yt-dlp pulls video, audio, subtitles, thumbnails and chapters separately, in the format and quality you choose, leaving ordinary local files behind.
Thousands of sites: major platforms and a long tail of smaller ones are covered by the same tool, so each site does not need its own downloader.
Pick your format: list every available resolution, codec and bitrate, then select with a format expression — audio only, 1080p only, or separate audio and video streams merged afterwards.
Subtitles and metadata: download subtitles including auto-generated ones, thumbnails, chapter information and descriptions, and write metadata into the file's tags.
Playlists and batches: whole playlists, channels or a list of URLs from a file can be fetched at once, with index ranges and an archive file that prevents re-downloading.
Fine-grained control: rate limits, concurrent fragments, resumable downloads, retry policy, proxies and cookies are all configurable for unreliable networks.
Post-processing: with ffmpeg it remuxes automatically, extracts audio to mp3 or m4a, embeds subtitles and thumbnails, and renames files from a template.
Programmable: usable as a command-line tool or as a Python module inside your own scripts, which makes a custom download pipeline straightforward.
Several ways to install: standalone executables for each platform, installation through pip, and a self-update command to stay current.
Open source project: the source is hosted on GitHub and released under the Unlicense (effectively public domain), so developers can review, contribute or customize it. Respect each site's terms of service and local law, and download only what you are entitled to.
yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio and video downloader with support for thousands of sites, not just YouTube. It is a fork of youtube-dl by way of the now inactive youtube-dlc, and it ships updates far more often, which is what keeps it working when a site changes.
Compared with a subscription's offline privileges it does more and constrains less: YouTube Premium costs about sixteen dollars a month and only makes content available inside its own app, while yt-dlp pulls video, audio, subtitles, thumbnails and chapters separately, in the format and quality you choose, leaving ordinary local files behind.
Features
Thousands of sites: major platforms and a long tail of smaller ones are covered by the same tool, so each site does not need its own downloader.
Pick your format: list every available resolution, codec and bitrate, then select with a format expression — audio only, 1080p only, or separate audio and video streams merged afterwards.
Subtitles and metadata: download subtitles including auto-generated ones, thumbnails, chapter information and descriptions, and write metadata into the file's tags.
Playlists and batches: whole playlists, channels or a list of URLs from a file can be fetched at once, with index ranges and an archive file that prevents re-downloading.
Fine-grained control: rate limits, concurrent fragments, resumable downloads, retry policy, proxies and cookies are all configurable for unreliable networks.
Post-processing: with ffmpeg it remuxes automatically, extracts audio to mp3 or m4a, embeds subtitles and thumbnails, and renames files from a template.
Programmable: usable as a command-line tool or as a Python module inside your own scripts, which makes a custom download pipeline straightforward.
Several ways to install: standalone executables for each platform, installation through pip, and a self-update command to stay current.
Open source project: the source is hosted on GitHub and released under the Unlicense (effectively public domain), so developers can review, contribute or customize it. Respect each site's terms of service and local law, and download only what you are entitled to.
