youtube下载程序：youtube-dl 和 yt-dlp

Command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and other video sites.

http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/

youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms.

INSTALLATION

To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, macOS, etc.), type:

sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:

sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

Windows users can download an .exe file and place it in any location on their PATH except for %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 (e.g. do not put in C:\Windows\System32).

You can also use pip:

sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube-dl

This command will update youtube-dl if you have already installed it. See the pypi page for more information.

macOS users can install youtube-dl with Homebrew:

brew install youtube-dl

Or with MacPorts:

sudo port install youtube-dl

Alternatively, refer to the developer instructions for how to check out and work with the git repository. For further options, including PGP signatures, see the youtube-dl Download Page.

DESCRIPTION

youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on your Unix box, on Windows or on macOS. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.

youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]

OPTIONS

-h, --help                           Print this help text and exit
--version                            Print program version and exit
-U, --update                         Update this program to latest version.
                                     Make sure that you have sufficient
                                     permissions (run with sudo if needed)
-i, --ignore-errors                  Continue on download errors, for
                                     example to skip unavailable videos in a
                                     playlist
--abort-on-error                     Abort downloading of further videos (in
                                     the playlist or the command line) if an
                                     error occurs
--dump-user-agent                    Display the current browser
                                     identification
--list-extractors                    List all supported extractors
--extractor-descriptions             Output descriptions of all supported
                                     extractors
--force-generic-extractor            Force extraction to use the generic
                                     extractor
--default-search PREFIX              Use this prefix for unqualified URLs.
                                     For example "gvsearch2:" downloads two
                                     videos from google videos for youtube-
                                     dl "large apple". Use the value "auto"
                                     to let youtube-dl guess ("auto_warning"
                                     to emit a warning when guessing).
                                     "error" just throws an error. The
                                     default value "fixup_error" repairs
                                     broken URLs, but emits an error if this
                                     is not possible instead of searching.
--ignore-config                      Do not read configuration files. When
                                     given in the global configuration file
                                     /etc/youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the
                                     user configuration in
                                     ~/.config/youtube-dl/config
                                     (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt on
                                     Windows)
--config-location PATH               Location of the configuration file;
                                     either the path to the config or its
                                     containing directory.
--flat-playlist                      Do not extract the videos of a
                                     playlist, only list them.
--mark-watched                       Mark videos watched (YouTube only)
--no-mark-watched                    Do not mark videos watched (YouTube
                                     only)
--no-color                           Do not emit color codes in output

Network Options:

--proxy URL                          Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS
                                     proxy. To enable SOCKS proxy, specify a
                                     proper scheme. For example
                                     socks5://127.0.0.1:1080/. Pass in an
                                     empty string (--proxy "") for direct
                                     connection
--socket-timeout SECONDS             Time to wait before giving up, in
                                     seconds
--source-address IP                  Client-side IP address to bind to
-4, --force-ipv4                     Make all connections via IPv4
-6, --force-ipv6                     Make all connections via IPv6

Geo Restriction:

--geo-verification-proxy URL         Use this proxy to verify the IP address
                                     for some geo-restricted sites. The
                                     default proxy specified by --proxy (or
                                     none, if the option is not present) is
                                     used for the actual downloading.
--geo-bypass                         Bypass geographic restriction via
                                     faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
--no-geo-bypass                      Do not bypass geographic restriction
                                     via faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
--geo-bypass-country CODE            Force bypass geographic restriction
                                     with explicitly provided two-letter ISO
                                     3166-2 country code
--geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK       Force bypass geographic restriction
                                     with explicitly provided IP block in
                                     CIDR notation

Video Selection:

--playlist-start NUMBER              Playlist video to start at (default is
                                     1)
--playlist-end NUMBER                Playlist video to end at (default is
                                     last)
--playlist-items ITEM_SPEC           Playlist video items to download.
                                     Specify indices of the videos in the
                                     playlist separated by commas like: "--
                                     playlist-items 1,2,5,8" if you want to
                                     download videos indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in
                                     the playlist. You can specify range: "
                                     --playlist-items 1-3,7,10-13", it will
                                     download the videos at index 1, 2, 3,
                                     7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
--match-title REGEX                  Download only matching titles (regex or
                                     caseless sub-string)
--reject-title REGEX                 Skip download for matching titles
                                     (regex or caseless sub-string)
--max-downloads NUMBER               Abort after downloading NUMBER files
--min-filesize SIZE                  Do not download any videos smaller than
                                     SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
--max-filesize SIZE                  Do not download any videos larger than
                                     SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
--date DATE                          Download only videos uploaded in this
                                     date
--datebefore DATE                    Download only videos uploaded on or
                                     before this date (i.e. inclusive)
--dateafter DATE                     Download only videos uploaded on or
                                     after this date (i.e. inclusive)
--min-views COUNT                    Do not download any videos with less
                                     than COUNT views
--max-views COUNT                    Do not download any videos with more
                                     than COUNT views
--match-filter FILTER                Generic video filter. Specify any key
                                     (see the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a list
                                     of available keys) to match if the key
                                     is present, !key to check if the key is
                                     not present, key > NUMBER (like
                                     "comment_count > 12", also works with
                                     >=, <, <=, !=, =) to compare against a
                                     number, key = 'LITERAL' (like "uploader
                                     = 'Mike Smith'", also works with !=) to
                                     match against a string literal and & to
                                     require multiple matches. Values which
                                     are not known are excluded unless you
                                     put a question mark (?) after the
                                     operator. For example, to only match
                                     videos that have been liked more than
                                     100 times and disliked less than 50
                                     times (or the dislike functionality is
                                     not available at the given service),
                                     but who also have a description, use
                                     --match-filter "like_count > 100 &
                                     dislike_count <? 50 & description" .
--no-playlist                        Download only the video, if the URL
                                     refers to a video and a playlist.
--yes-playlist                       Download the playlist, if the URL
                                     refers to a video and a playlist.
--age-limit YEARS                    Download only videos suitable for the
                                     given age
--download-archive FILE              Download only videos not listed in the
                                     archive file. Record the IDs of all
                                     downloaded videos in it.
--include-ads                        Download advertisements as well
                                     (experimental)

Download Options:

-r, --limit-rate RATE                Maximum download rate in bytes per
                                     second (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
-R, --retries RETRIES                Number of retries (default is 10), or
                                     "infinite".
--fragment-retries RETRIES           Number of retries for a fragment
                                     (default is 10), or "infinite" (DASH,
                                     hlsnative and ISM)
--skip-unavailable-fragments         Skip unavailable fragments (DASH,
                                     hlsnative and ISM)
--abort-on-unavailable-fragment      Abort downloading when some fragment is
                                     not available
--keep-fragments                     Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
                                     downloading is finished; fragments are
                                     erased by default
--buffer-size SIZE                   Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or
                                     16K) (default is 1024)
--no-resize-buffer                   Do not automatically adjust the buffer
                                     size. By default, the buffer size is
                                     automatically resized from an initial
                                     value of SIZE.
--http-chunk-size SIZE               Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP
                                     downloading (e.g. 10485760 or 10M)
                                     (default is disabled). May be useful
                                     for bypassing bandwidth throttling
                                     imposed by a webserver (experimental)
--playlist-reverse                   Download playlist videos in reverse
                                     order
--playlist-random                    Download playlist videos in random
                                     order
--xattr-set-filesize                 Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
                                     expected file size
--hls-prefer-native                  Use the native HLS downloader instead
                                     of ffmpeg
--hls-prefer-ffmpeg                  Use ffmpeg instead of the native HLS
                                     downloader
--hls-use-mpegts                     Use the mpegts container for HLS
                                     videos, allowing to play the video
                                     while downloading (some players may not
                                     be able to play it)
--external-downloader COMMAND        Use the specified external downloader.
                                     Currently supports aria2c,avconv,axel,c
                                     url,ffmpeg,httpie,wget
--external-downloader-args ARGS      Give these arguments to the external
                                     downloader

Filesystem Options:

-a, --batch-file FILE                File containing URLs to download ('-'
                                     for stdin), one URL per line. Lines
                                     starting with '#', ';' or ']' are
                                     considered as comments and ignored.
--id                                 Use only video ID in file name
-o, --output TEMPLATE                Output filename template, see the
                                     "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for all the info
--output-na-placeholder PLACEHOLDER  Placeholder value for unavailable meta
                                     fields in output filename template
                                     (default is "NA")
--autonumber-start NUMBER            Specify the start value for
                                     %(autonumber)s (default is 1)
--restrict-filenames                 Restrict filenames to only ASCII
                                     characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in
                                     filenames
-w, --no-overwrites                  Do not overwrite files
-c, --continue                       Force resume of partially downloaded
                                     files. By default, youtube-dl will
                                     resume downloads if possible.
--no-continue                        Do not resume partially downloaded
                                     files (restart from beginning)
--no-part                            Do not use .part files - write directly
                                     into output file
--no-mtime                           Do not use the Last-modified header to
                                     set the file modification time
--write-description                  Write video description to a
                                     .description file
--write-info-json                    Write video metadata to a .info.json
                                     file
--write-annotations                  Write video annotations to a
                                     .annotations.xml file
--load-info-json FILE                JSON file containing the video
                                     information (created with the "--write-
                                     info-json" option)
--cookies FILE                       File to read cookies from and dump
                                     cookie jar in
--cache-dir DIR                      Location in the filesystem where
                                     youtube-dl can store some downloaded
                                     information permanently. By default
                                     $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or
                                     ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the moment,
                                     only YouTube player files (for videos
                                     with obfuscated signatures) are cached,
                                     but that may change.
--no-cache-dir                       Disable filesystem caching
--rm-cache-dir                       Delete all filesystem cache files

Thumbnail Options:

--write-thumbnail                    Write thumbnail image to disk
--write-all-thumbnails               Write all thumbnail image formats to
                                     disk
--list-thumbnails                    Simulate and list all available
                                     thumbnail formats

Verbosity / Simulation Options:

-q, --quiet                          Activate quiet mode
--no-warnings                        Ignore warnings
-s, --simulate                       Do not download the video and do not
                                     write anything to disk
--skip-download                      Do not download the video
-g, --get-url                        Simulate, quiet but print URL
-e, --get-title                      Simulate, quiet but print title
--get-id                             Simulate, quiet but print id
--get-thumbnail                      Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
--get-description                    Simulate, quiet but print video
                                     description
--get-duration                       Simulate, quiet but print video length
--get-filename                       Simulate, quiet but print output
                                     filename
--get-format                         Simulate, quiet but print output format
-j, --dump-json                      Simulate, quiet but print JSON
                                     information. See the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE"
                                     for a description of available keys.
-J, --dump-single-json               Simulate, quiet but print JSON
                                     information for each command-line
                                     argument. If the URL refers to a
                                     playlist, dump the whole playlist
                                     information in a single line.
--print-json                         Be quiet and print the video
                                     information as JSON (video is still
                                     being downloaded).
--newline                            Output progress bar as new lines
--no-progress                        Do not print progress bar
--console-title                      Display progress in console titlebar
-v, --verbose                        Print various debugging information
--dump-pages                         Print downloaded pages encoded using
                                     base64 to debug problems (very verbose)
--write-pages                        Write downloaded intermediary pages to
                                     files in the current directory to debug
                                     problems
--print-traffic                      Display sent and read HTTP traffic
-C, --call-home                      Contact the youtube-dl server for
                                     debugging
--no-call-home                       Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server
                                     for debugging

Workarounds:

--encoding ENCODING                  Force the specified encoding
                                     (experimental)
--no-check-certificate               Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
--prefer-insecure                    Use an unencrypted connection to
                                     retrieve information about the video.
                                     (Currently supported only for YouTube)
--user-agent UA                      Specify a custom user agent
--referer URL                        Specify a custom referer, use if the
                                     video access is restricted to one
                                     domain
--add-header FIELD:VALUE             Specify a custom HTTP header and its
                                     value, separated by a colon ':'. You
                                     can use this option multiple times
--bidi-workaround                    Work around terminals that lack
                                     bidirectional text support. Requires
                                     bidiv or fribidi executable in PATH
--sleep-interval SECONDS             Number of seconds to sleep before each
                                     download when used alone or a lower
                                     bound of a range for randomized sleep
                                     before each download (minimum possible
                                     number of seconds to sleep) when used
                                     along with --max-sleep-interval.
--max-sleep-interval SECONDS         Upper bound of a range for randomized
                                     sleep before each download (maximum
                                     possible number of seconds to sleep).
                                     Must only be used along with --min-
                                     sleep-interval.

Video Format Options:

-f, --format FORMAT                  Video format code, see the "FORMAT
                                     SELECTION" for all the info
--all-formats                        Download all available video formats
--prefer-free-formats                Prefer free video formats unless a
                                     specific one is requested
-F, --list-formats                   List all available formats of requested
                                     videos
--youtube-skip-dash-manifest         Do not download the DASH manifests and
                                     related data on YouTube videos
--merge-output-format FORMAT         If a merge is required (e.g.
                                     bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
                                     container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
                                     webm, flv. Ignored if no merge is
                                     required

Subtitle Options:

--write-sub                          Write subtitle file
--write-auto-sub                     Write automatically generated subtitle
                                     file (YouTube only)
--all-subs                           Download all the available subtitles of
                                     the video
--list-subs                          List all available subtitles for the
                                     video
--sub-format FORMAT                  Subtitle format, accepts formats
                                     preference, for example: "srt" or
                                     "ass/srt/best"
--sub-lang LANGS                     Languages of the subtitles to download
                                     (optional) separated by commas, use
                                     --list-subs for available language tags

Authentication Options:

-u, --username USERNAME              Login with this account ID
-p, --password PASSWORD              Account password. If this option is
                                     left out, youtube-dl will ask
                                     interactively.
-2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR            Two-factor authentication code
-n, --netrc                          Use .netrc authentication data
--video-password PASSWORD            Video password (vimeo, youku)

Adobe Pass Options:

--ap-mso MSO                         Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
                                     provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso
                                     for a list of available MSOs
--ap-username USERNAME               Multiple-system operator account login
--ap-password PASSWORD               Multiple-system operator account
                                     password. If this option is left out,
                                     youtube-dl will ask interactively.
--ap-list-mso                        List all supported multiple-system
                                     operators

Post-processing Options:

-x, --extract-audio                  Convert video files to audio-only files
                                     (requires ffmpeg/avconv and
                                     ffprobe/avprobe)
--audio-format FORMAT                Specify audio format: "best", "aac",
                                     "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis",
                                     or "wav"; "best" by default; No effect
                                     without -x
--audio-quality QUALITY              Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality,
                                     insert a value between 0 (better) and 9
                                     (worse) for VBR or a specific bitrate
                                     like 128K (default 5)
--recode-video FORMAT                Encode the video to another format if
                                     necessary (currently supported:
                                     mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
--postprocessor-args ARGS            Give these arguments to the
                                     postprocessor
-k, --keep-video                     Keep the video file on disk after the
                                     post-processing; the video is erased by
                                     default
--no-post-overwrites                 Do not overwrite post-processed files;
                                     the post-processed files are
                                     overwritten by default
--embed-subs                         Embed subtitles in the video (only for
                                     mp4, webm and mkv videos)
--embed-thumbnail                    Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover
                                     art
--add-metadata                       Write metadata to the video file
--metadata-from-title FORMAT         Parse additional metadata like song
                                     title / artist from the video title.
                                     The format syntax is the same as
                                     --output. Regular expression with named
                                     capture groups may also be used. The
                                     parsed parameters replace existing
                                     values. Example: --metadata-from-title
                                     "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a
                                     title like "Coldplay - Paradise".
                                     Example (regex): --metadata-from-title
                                     "(?P<artist>.+?) - (?P<title>.+)"
--xattrs                             Write metadata to the video file's
                                     xattrs (using dublin core and xdg
                                     standards)
--fixup POLICY                       Automatically correct known faults of
                                     the file. One of never (do nothing),
                                     warn (only emit a warning),
                                     detect_or_warn (the default; fix file
                                     if we can, warn otherwise)
--prefer-avconv                      Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running
                                     the postprocessors
--prefer-ffmpeg                      Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running
                                     the postprocessors (default)
--ffmpeg-location PATH               Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary;
                                     either the path to the binary or its
                                     containing directory.
--exec CMD                           Execute a command on the file after
                                     downloading and post-processing,
                                     similar to find's -exec syntax.
                                     Example: --exec 'adb push {}
                                     /sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
--convert-subs FORMAT                Convert the subtitles to other format
                                     (currently supported: srt|ass|vtt|lrc)

CONFIGURATION

You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line option to a configuration file. On Linux and macOS, the system wide configuration file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide configuration file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the user wide configuration file locations are %APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt or C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf. Note that by default configuration file may not exist so you may need to create it yourself.

For example, with the following configuration file youtube-dl will always extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory:

# Lines starting with # are comments

# Always extract audio
-x

# Do not copy the mtime
--no-mtime

# Use this proxy
--proxy 127.0.0.1:3128

# Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
-o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s

Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka switches used in regular command line calls thus there must be no whitespace after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.

You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.

You can also use --config-location if you want to use custom configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.

Authentication with .netrc file

You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve this using a .netrc file on a per extractor basis. For that you will need to create a .netrc file in your $HOME and restrict permissions to read/write by only you:

touch $HOME/.netrc
chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc

After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following format, where extractor is the name of the extractor in lowercase:

machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>

For example:

machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password

To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.

On Windows you may also need to setup the %HOME% environment variable manually. For example:

set HOME=%USERPROFILE%

OUTPUT TEMPLATE

The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file names.

tl;dr: navigate me to examples.

The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "https://some/video". However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according to python string formatting operations. For example, %(NAME)s or %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses, followed by formatting operations. Allowed names along with sequence type are:

• id (string): Video identifier
• title (string): Video title
• url (string): Video URL
• ext (string): Video filename extension
• alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
• display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
• uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
• license (string): License name the video is licensed under
• creator (string): The creator of the video
• release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was released
• timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became available
• upload_date (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
• uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
• channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on
• channel_id (string): Id of the channel
• location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
• duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
• view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the platform
• like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
• dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
• repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
• average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale used depends on the webpage
• comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video
• age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
• is_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a fixed-length video
• start_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should start, as specified in the URL
• end_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should end, as specified in the URL
• format (string): A human-readable description of the format
• format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
• format_note (string): Additional info about the format
• width (numeric): Width of the video
• height (numeric): Height of the video
• resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
• tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
• abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
• acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
• asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
• vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
• fps (numeric): Frame rate
• vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
• container (string): Name of the container format
• filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
• filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
• protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual download
• extractor (string): Name of the extractor
• extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
• epoch (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
• autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each download, starting at --autonumber-start
• playlist (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the video
• playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
• playlist_id (string): Playlist identifier
• playlist_title (string): Playlist title
• playlist_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader
• playlist_uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist uploader

Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:

• chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
• chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
• chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to

Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:

• series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode belongs to
• season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
• season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode belongs to
• season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
• episode (string): Title of the video episode
• episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a season
• episode_id (string): Id of the video episode

Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:

• track (string): Title of the track
• track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disc
• track_id (string): Id of the track
• artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
• genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
• album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
• album_type (string): Type of the album
• album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
• disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs to
• release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released

Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. Note that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such sequences will be replaced with placeholder value provided with --output-na-placeholder (NA by default).

For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title youtube-dl test video and id BaW_jenozKcj, this will result in a youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4 file created in the current directory.

For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for example, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.

Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g. -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' which will result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for you.

To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to stdout use -o -.

The current default template is %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s.

In some cases, you don't want special characters such as 中, spaces, or &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:

Output template and Windows batch files

If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become -o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion should stay intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".

Output template examples

Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of single.

$ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.mp4    # All kinds of weird characters

$ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4          # A simple file name

# Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
$ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re

# Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
$ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists

# Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
$ youtube-dl -u user -p password -o '~/MyVideos/%(playlist)s/%(chapter_number)s - %(chapter)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.udemy.com/java-tutorial/

# Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
$ youtube-dl -o "C:/MyVideos/%(series)s/%(season_number)s - %(season)s/%(episode_number)s - %(episode)s.%(ext)s" https://videomore.ru/kino_v_detalayah/5_sezon/367617

# Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
$ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc

FORMAT SELECTION

By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality, i.e. if you want the best quality you don't need to pass any special options, youtube-dl will guess it for you by default.

But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for example when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key mechanism for achieving this is so-called format selection based on which you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on some criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.

The general syntax for format selection is --format FORMAT or shorter -f FORMAT where FORMAT is a selector expression, i.e. an expression that describes format or formats you would like to download.

tl;dr: navigate me to examples.

The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can get the list of available format codes for particular video using --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor specific.

You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as a single file.

You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:

• best: Select the best quality format represented by a single file with video and audio.
• worst: Select the worst quality format represented by a single file with video and audio.
• bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format (e.g. DASH video). May not be available.
• worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be available.
• bestaudio: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be available.
• worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May not be available.

For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use -f worstvideo.

If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same formats available, you can specify the order of preference using slashes. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format 22 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available, otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for download.

If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.

You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").

The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >, >=, = (equals), != (not equals):

• filesize: The number of bytes, if known in advance
• width: Width of the video, if known
• height: Height of the video, if known
• tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
• abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
• vbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
• asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz
• fps: Frame rate

Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $= (ends with), *= (contains) and following string meta fields:

• ext: File extension
• acodec: Name of the audio codec in use
• vcodec: Name of the video codec in use
• container: Name of the container format
• protocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download, lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m, ism, http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native)
• format_id: A short description of the format
• language: Language code

Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation ! in order to produce an opposite comparison, e.g. !*= (does not contain).

Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.

Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so -f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.

You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file using -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv installed), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with ffmpeg/avconv.

Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower than 480 you can use -f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'.

Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection (see #5447, #5456). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading bestvideo and bestaudio separately and muxing them together into a single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it falls back to best and results in downloading the best available quality served as a single file. best is also needed for videos that don't come from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two different files. If you want to only download some DASH formats (for example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution higher than 1080p), you can add -f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best to your configuration file. Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to stdout (and most likely to pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output template as -o -, youtube-dl still uses -f best format selection in order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to wait until bestvideo and bestaudio are downloaded and muxed.

If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify your choice with -f best. You may want to add it to the configuration file in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.

Format selection examples

Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of single.

# Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
$ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'

# Download best format available but no better than 480p
$ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'

# Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
$ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'

# Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
$ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'

# Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
$ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'

Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.

VIDEO SELECTION

Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options --date, --datebefore or --dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:

• Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
• Relative dates: Dates in the format (now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?

Examples:

# Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
$ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months

# Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
$ youtube-dl --date 19700101

$ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
$ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231

FAQ

How do I update youtube-dl?

If you've followed our manual installation instructions, you can simply run youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).

If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is sufficient to update.

If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like apt-get or yum, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb, youtube-dl releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even daily. Simply go to https://yt-dl.org to find out the current version. Unfortunately, there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your distribution serves a really outdated version. You can (and should) complain to your distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.

As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like

sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl

Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions:

sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
hash -r

Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.

youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows

Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.

I'm getting an error Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists

YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube videos.

If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs to the Ubuntu packaging people - all they have to do is update the package to a somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.

I'm getting an error when trying to use output template: error: using output template conflicts with using title, video ID or auto number

Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title, --id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration file. Remove the latter if any.

Do I always have to pass -citw?

By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally, if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please file an issue where you explain that). Therefore, it is unnecessary and sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In particular, the only option out of -citw that is regularly useful is -i.

Can you please put the -b option back?

Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not report them to be available in a specific high quality format you're interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and youtube-dl will try to download it.

I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?

Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a web browser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.

Do I need any other programs?

youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want to convert video/audio, you'll need avconv or ffmpeg. On some sites - most notably YouTube - videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format without sound. youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present and automatically pick the best option.

Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be downloaded when rtmpdump is installed. Downloading MMS and RTSP videos requires either mplayer or mpv to be installed.

I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?

Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv, vlc or mplayer.

I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.

It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the same cookies and/or HTTP headers. Use the --cookies option to write the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used, use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl. You can also get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output obtained with --dump-json.

It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or user-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.

Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are not supported by browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own downloader must support these as well.

If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to stdout, or simply allow the player to download the files written by youtube-dl in turn.

ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info

YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update youtube-dl.

ERROR: unable to download video

YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update youtube-dl.

Video URL contains an ampersand and I'm getting some strange output [1] 2839 or 'v' is not recognized as an internal or external command

That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell from interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you have to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a backslash (which approach will work depends on your shell).

For example if your URL is https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with following command:

youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'

or

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc

For Windows you have to use the double quotes:

youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"

ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'

In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update youtube-dl.

HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required

These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP address because of overuse. Usually this is a soft block meaning that you can gain access again after solving CAPTCHA. Just open a browser and solve a CAPTCHA the service suggests you and after that pass cookies to youtube-dl. Note that if your machine has multiple external IPs then you should also pass exactly the same IP you've used for solving CAPTCHA with --source-address. Also you may need to pass a User-Agent HTTP header of your browser with --user-agent.

If this is not the case (no CAPTCHA suggested to solve by the service) then you can contact the service and ask them to unblock your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address already - use the --proxy or --source-address options to select another IP address.

SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character

The error

File "youtube-dl", line 2
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...

means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to Python 2.6 or 2.7.

What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?

Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unzip it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some systems) or clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify the code, you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile the executable, run make youtube-dl.

The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll

To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package (x86).

On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should I put the exe files?

If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're running the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.

To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there, and then set your PATH environment variable to include that directory.

From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg) by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're in.

How do I put downloads into a specific folder?

Use the -o to specify an output template, for example -o "/home/user/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for all of your downloads, put the option into your configuration file.

How do I download a video starting with a -?

Either prepend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from the options with --:

youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"

How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?

Use the --cookies option, for example --cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt.

In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser extension for exporting cookies. For example, Get cookies.txt (for Chrome) or cookies.txt (for Firefox).

Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or # Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format in the cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond with your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n) for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS, etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request when using --cookies is a good sign of invalid newline format.

Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use case is working around CAPTCHA some websites require you to solve in particular cases in order to get access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).

How do I stream directly to media player?

You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with -o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For example, streaming to vlc can be achieved with:

youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -

How do I download only new videos from a playlist?

Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially download the complete playlist with --download-archive /path/to/download/archive/file.txt that will record identifiers of all the videos in a special file. Each subsequent run with the same --download-archive will download only new videos and skip all videos that have been downloaded before. Note that only successful downloads are recorded in the file.

For example, at first,

youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"

will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download new videos if any:

youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"

Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?

When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with the built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better than the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.

When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or ffmpeg.

In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in the list of supported sites by youtube-dl cannot mandate one specific downloader.

If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download correctly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue or a pull request which details why the native or the ffmpeg HLS downloader is a better choice for your use case.

Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?

As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not include support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As a rule of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is quite obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by the creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.

A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should not be included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the whole front page of the service is filled with videos they are not allowed to distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the service shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.

Support requests for services that do purchase the rights to distribute their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.

How can I speed up work on my issue?

(Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a while. To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:

First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker. That allows us to coordinate all efforts by users and developers, and serves as a unified point. Unfortunately, the youtube-dl project has grown too large to use personal email as an effective communication channel.

Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack all the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell access to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the issue from multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local censorship or misconfiguration issues.

If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay somebody else to do so).

Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small comment ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but fixed from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do not declare your issue as important or urgent.

How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?

For one, have a look at the list of supported sites. Note that it can sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from https://example.com/video/1234567 to https://example.com/v/1234567 ) and youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that list as unsupported. In that case, simply report a bug.

It is not possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches all URLs. You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extractor, but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos from lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may also be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself. Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or removing the generic extractor.

If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python program.

Why do I need to go through that much red tape when filing bugs?

Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old, because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid problems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.

youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of youtube-dl is current.

DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS

Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds or get them from their distribution.

To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything either. Simply execute

python -m youtube_dl

To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a test file directly; any of the following work:

python -m unittest discover
python test/test_download.py
nosetests

See item 6 of new extractor tutorial for how to run extractor specific test cases.

If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need

• python
• make (only GNU make is supported)
• pandoc
• zip
• nosetests

Adding support for a new site

If you want to add support for a new site, first of all make sure this site is not dedicated to copyright infringement. youtube-dl does not support such sites thus pull requests adding support for them will be rejected.

After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally, you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called yourextractor):

1. Fork this repository

2. Check out the source code with:

    git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
   

3. Start a new git branch with

    cd youtube-dl
    git checkout -b yourextractor
   

4. Start with this simple template and save it to youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py:

   # coding: utf-8
   from __future__ import unicode_literals
   
   from .common import InfoExtractor
   
   
   class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
       _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
       _TEST = {
           'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
           'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
           'info_dict': {
               'id': '42',
               'ext': 'mp4',
               'title': 'Video title goes here',
               'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
               # TODO more properties, either as:
               # * A value
               # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
               # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
               # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
           }
       }
   
       def _real_extract(self, url):
           video_id = self._match_id(url)
           webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
   
           # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
           title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
   
           return {
               'id': video_id,
               'title': title,
               'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
               'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
               # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
           }

5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py.

6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor. This should fail at first, but you can continually re-run it until you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename _TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor, TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_1, TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc. Note that tests with only_matching key in test's dict are not counted in.

7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py for possible helper methods and a detailed description of what your extractor should and may return. Add tests and code for as many as you want.

8. Make sure your code follows youtube-dl coding conventions and check the code with flake8:

    $ flake8 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
   

9. Make sure your code works under all Python versions claimed supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7, and 3.2+.

10. When the tests pass, add the new files and commit them and push the result, like this:

    $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
    $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
    $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
    $ git push origin yourextractor
    

11. Finally, create a pull request. We'll then review and merge it.

In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!

from https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl

-----

A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes.

https://discord.gg/H5MNcFW63r

yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork based on the now inactive youtube-dlc. The main focus of this project is adding new features and patches while also keeping up to date with the original project

• NEW FEATURES
  • Differences in default behavior
• INSTALLATION
  • Update
  • Release Files
  • Dependencies
  • Compile
• USAGE AND OPTIONS
  • General Options
  • Network Options
  • Geo-restriction
  • Video Selection
  • Download Options
  • Filesystem Options
  • Thumbnail Options
  • Internet Shortcut Options
  • Verbosity and Simulation Options
  • Workarounds
  • Video Format Options
  • Subtitle Options
  • Authentication Options
  • Post-processing Options
  • SponsorBlock Options
  • Extractor Options
• CONFIGURATION
  • Authentication with .netrc file
• OUTPUT TEMPLATE
  • Output template and Windows batch files
  • Output template examples
• FORMAT SELECTION
  • Filtering Formats
  • Sorting Formats
  • Format Selection examples
• MODIFYING METADATA
  • Modifying metadata examples
• EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS
• PLUGINS
• EMBEDDING YT-DLP
  • Embedding examples
• DEPRECATED OPTIONS
• CONTRIBUTING
  • Opening an Issue
  • Developer Instructions
• MORE

NEW FEATURES

• Based on youtube-dl 2021.12.17 commit/6508688 (exceptions) and youtube-dlc 2020.11.11-3 commit/f9401f2: You get all the features and patches of youtube-dlc in addition to the latest youtube-dl

• SponsorBlock Integration: You can mark/remove sponsor sections in youtube videos by utilizing the SponsorBlock API

• Format Sorting: The default format sorting options have been changed so that higher resolution and better codecs will be now preferred instead of simply using larger bitrate. Furthermore, you can now specify the sort order using -S. This allows for much easier format selection than what is possible by simply using --format (examples)

• Merged with animelover1984/youtube-dl: You get most of the features and improvements from animelover1984/youtube-dl including --write-comments, BiliBiliSearch, BilibiliChannel, Embedding thumbnail in mp4/ogg/opus, playlist infojson etc. Note that the NicoNico livestreams are not available. See #31 for details.

• Youtube improvements:

  • All Feeds (:ytfav, :ytwatchlater, :ytsubs, :ythistory, :ytrec, :ytnotif) and private playlists supports downloading multiple pages of content
  • Search (ytsearch:, ytsearchdate:), search URLs and in-channel search works
  • Mixes supports downloading multiple pages of content
  • Some (but not all) age-gated content can be downloaded without cookies
  • Fix for n-sig based throttling
  • Redirect channel's home URL automatically to /video to preserve the old behaviour
  • 255kbps audio is extracted (if available) from youtube music when premium cookies are given
  • Youtube music Albums, channels etc can be downloaded (except self-uploaded music)
  • Download livestreams from the start using --live-from-start (experimental)
  • Support for downloading stories (ytstories:<channel UCID>)

• Cookies from browser: Cookies can be automatically extracted from all major web browsers using --cookies-from-browser BROWSER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE]

• Download time range: Videos can be downloaded partially based on either timestamps or chapters using --download-sections

• Split video by chapters: Videos can be split into multiple files based on chapters using --split-chapters

• Multi-threaded fragment downloads: Download multiple fragments of m3u8/mpd videos in parallel. Use --concurrent-fragments (-N) option to set the number of threads used

• Aria2c with HLS/DASH: You can use aria2c as the external downloader for DASH(mpd) and HLS(m3u8) formats

• New and fixed extractors: Many new extractors have been added and a lot of existing ones have been fixed. See the changelog or the list of supported sites

• New MSOs: Philo, Spectrum, SlingTV, Cablevision, RCN

• Subtitle extraction from manifests: Subtitles can be extracted from streaming media manifests. See commit/be6202f for details

• Multiple paths and output templates: You can give different output templates and download paths for different types of files. You can also set a temporary path where intermediary files are downloaded to using --paths (-P)

• Portable Configuration: Configuration files are automatically loaded from the home and root directories. See configuration for details

• Output template improvements: Output templates can now have date-time formatting, numeric offsets, object traversal etc. See output template for details. Even more advanced operations can also be done with the help of --parse-metadata and --replace-in-metadata

• Other new options: Many new options have been added such as --alias, --print, --concat-playlist, --wait-for-video, --retry-sleep, --sleep-requests, --convert-thumbnails, --force-download-archive, --force-overwrites, --break-on-reject etc

• Improvements: Regex and other operators in --format/--match-filter, multiple --postprocessor-args and --downloader-args, faster archive checking, more format selection options, merge multi-video/audio, multiple --config-locations, --exec at different stages, etc

• Plugins: Extractors and PostProcessors can be loaded from an external file. See plugins for details

• Self-updater: The releases can be updated using yt-dlp -U

See changelog or commits for the full list of changes

Differences in default behavior

Some of yt-dlp's default options are different from that of youtube-dl and youtube-dlc:

• The options --auto-number (-A), --title (-t) and --literal (-l), no longer work. See removed options for details
• avconv is not supported as an alternative to ffmpeg
• yt-dlp stores config files in slightly different locations to youtube-dl. See configuration for a list of correct locations
• The default output template is %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s. There is no real reason for this change. This was changed before yt-dlp was ever made public and now there are no plans to change it back to %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s. Instead, you may use --compat-options filename
• The default format sorting is different from youtube-dl and prefers higher resolution and better codecs rather than higher bitrates. You can use the --format-sort option to change this to any order you prefer, or use --compat-options format-sort to use youtube-dl's sorting order
• The default format selector is bv*+ba/b. This means that if a combined video + audio format that is better than the best video-only format is found, the former will be preferred. Use -f bv+ba/b or --compat-options format-spec to revert this
• Unlike youtube-dlc, yt-dlp does not allow merging multiple audio/video streams into one file by default (since this conflicts with the use of -f bv*+ba). If needed, this feature must be enabled using --audio-multistreams and --video-multistreams. You can also use --compat-options multistreams to enable both
• --no-abort-on-error is enabled by default. Use --abort-on-error or --compat-options abort-on-error to abort on errors instead
• When writing metadata files such as thumbnails, description or infojson, the same information (if available) is also written for playlists. Use --no-write-playlist-metafiles or --compat-options no-playlist-metafiles to not write these files
• --add-metadata attaches the infojson to mkv files in addition to writing the metadata when used with --write-info-json. Use --no-embed-info-json or --compat-options no-attach-info-json to revert this
• Some metadata are embedded into different fields when using --add-metadata as compared to youtube-dl. Most notably, comment field contains the webpage_url and synopsis contains the description. You can use --parse-metadata to modify this to your liking or use --compat-options embed-metadata to revert this
• playlist_index behaves differently when used with options like --playlist-reverse and --playlist-items. See #302 for details. You can use --compat-options playlist-index if you want to keep the earlier behavior
• The output of -F is listed in a new format. Use --compat-options list-formats to revert this
• All experiences of a funimation episode are considered as a single video. This behavior breaks existing archives. Use --compat-options seperate-video-versions to extract information from only the default player
• Youtube live chat (if available) is considered as a subtitle. Use --sub-langs all,-live_chat to download all subtitles except live chat. You can also use --compat-options no-live-chat to prevent live chat from downloading
• Youtube channel URLs are automatically redirected to /video. Append a /featured to the URL to download only the videos in the home page. If the channel does not have a videos tab, we try to download the equivalent UU playlist instead. For all other tabs, if the channel does not show the requested tab, an error will be raised. Also, /live URLs raise an error if there are no live videos instead of silently downloading the entire channel. You may use --compat-options no-youtube-channel-redirect to revert all these redirections
• Unavailable videos are also listed for youtube playlists. Use --compat-options no-youtube-unavailable-videos to remove this
• If ffmpeg is used as the downloader, the downloading and merging of formats happen in a single step when possible. Use --compat-options no-direct-merge to revert this
• Thumbnail embedding in mp4 is done with mutagen if possible. Use --compat-options embed-thumbnail-atomicparsley to force the use of AtomicParsley instead
• Some private fields such as filenames are removed by default from the infojson. Use --no-clean-infojson or --compat-options no-clean-infojson to revert this
• When --embed-subs and --write-subs are used together, the subtitles are written to disk and also embedded in the media file. You can use just --embed-subs to embed the subs and automatically delete the separate file. See #630 (comment) for more info. --compat-options no-keep-subs can be used to revert this
• certifi will be used for SSL root certificates, if installed. If you want to use only system certificates, use --compat-options no-certifi
• youtube-dl tries to remove some superfluous punctuations from filenames. While this can sometimes be helpfull, it is often undesirable. So yt-dlp tries to keep the fields in the filenames as close to their original values as possible. You can use --compat-options filename-sanitization to revert to youtube-dl's behavior

For ease of use, a few more compat options are available:

• --compat-options all: Use all compat options (Do NOT use)
• --compat-options youtube-dl: Same as --compat-options all,-multistreams
• --compat-options youtube-dlc: Same as --compat-options all,-no-live-chat,-no-youtube-channel-redirect

INSTALLATION

You can install yt-dlp using one of the following methods:

Using the release binary

You can simply download the correct binary file for your OS

Note: The manpages, shell completion files etc. are available in the source tarball

In UNIX-like OSes (MacOS, Linux, BSD), you can also install the same in one of the following ways:

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

sudo wget https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -O /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

sudo aria2c https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp --dir /usr/local/bin -o yt-dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

With PIP

You can install the PyPI package with:

python3 -m pip install -U yt-dlp

You can install without any of the optional dependencies using:

python3 -m pip install --no-deps -U yt-dlp

If you want to be on the cutting edge, you can also install the master branch with:

python3 -m pip install --force-reinstall https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/archive/master.tar.gz

Note that on some systems, you may need to use py or python instead of python3

With Homebrew

macOS or Linux users that are using Homebrew can also install it by:

brew install yt-dlp/taps/yt-dlp

UPDATE

You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the provided release

If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program

If you installed using Homebrew, run brew upgrade yt-dlp/taps/yt-dlp

RELEASE FILES

Recommended

File	Description
yt-dlp	Platform-independant binary. Needs Python (recommended for Linux/BSD)
yt-dlp.exe	Windows (Win7 SP1+) standalone x64 binary (recommended for Windows)
yt-dlp_macos	MacOS (10.15+) standalone executable (recommended for MacOS)

Alternatives

File	Description
yt-dlp_x86.exe	Windows (Vista SP2+) standalone x86 (32-bit) binary
yt-dlp_min.exe	Windows (Win7 SP1+) standalone x64 binary built with py2exe. Does not contain pycryptodomex/certifi, needs VC++14
yt-dlp_win.zip	Unpackaged Windows executable (no auto-update)
yt-dlp_macos.zip	Unpackaged MacOS (10.15+) executable (no auto-update)

Misc

File	Description
yt-dlp.tar.gz	Source tarball. Also contains manpages, completions, etc
SHA2-512SUMS	GNU-style SHA512 sums
SHA2-256SUMS	GNU-style SHA256 sums

DEPENDENCIES

Python versions 3.6+ (CPython and PyPy) are supported. Other versions and implementations may or may not work correctly.

While all the other dependencies are optional, ffmpeg and ffprobe are highly recommended

• ffmpeg and ffprobe - Required for merging separate video and audio files as well as for various post-processing tasks. License depends on the build
• mutagen* - For embedding thumbnail in certain formats. Licensed under GPLv2+
• pycryptodomex* - For decrypting AES-128 HLS streams and various other data. Licensed under BSD-2-Clause
• websockets* - For downloading over websocket. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
• secretstorage - For accessing the Gnome keyring while decrypting cookies of Chromium-based browsers on Linux. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
• brotli* or brotlicffi - Brotli content encoding support. Both licensed under MIT ^{1 2}
• certifi* - Provides Mozilla's root certificate bundle. Licensed under MPLv2
• xattr, pyxattr or setfattr - For writing xattr metadata on Linux. Licensed under MIT, LGPL2.1 and GPLv2+ respectively
• AtomicParsley - For embedding thumbnail in mp4/m4a if mutagen/ffmpeg cannot. Licensed under GPLv2+
• rtmpdump - For downloading rtmp streams. ffmpeg will be used as a fallback. Licensed under GPLv2+
• mplayer or mpv - For downloading rstp streams. ffmpeg will be used as a fallback. Licensed under GPLv2+
• phantomjs - Used in extractors where javascript needs to be run. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
• sponskrub - For using the now deprecated sponskrub options. Licensed under GPLv3+
• Any external downloader that you want to use with --downloader

To use or redistribute the dependencies, you must agree to their respective licensing terms.

The Windows and MacOS standalone release binaries are built with the Python interpreter and the packages marked with * included.

Note: There are some regressions in newer ffmpeg versions that causes various issues when used alongside yt-dlp. Since ffmpeg is such an important dependency, we provide custom builds with patches for these issues at yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds. See the readme for details on the specific issues solved by these builds

COMPILE

For Windows: To build the Windows executable, you must have pyinstaller (and any of yt-dlp's optional dependencies if needed). Once you have all the necessary dependencies installed, (optionally) build lazy extractors using devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py, and then just run pyinst.py. The executable will be built for the same architecture (32/64 bit) as the python used to build it.

py -m pip install -U pyinstaller -r requirements.txt
py devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py
py pyinst.py

Note that pyinstaller does not support Python installed from the Windows store without using a virtual environment

For Unix: You will need the required build tools: python, make (GNU), pandoc, zip, pytest
Then simply run make. You can also run make yt-dlp instead to compile only the binary without updating any of the additional files

Note: In either platform, devscripts/update-version.py can be used to automatically update the version number

You can also fork the project on github and run your fork's build workflow to automatically build a release

USAGE AND OPTIONS

yt-dlp [OPTIONS] [--] URL [URL...]

Ctrl+F is your friend :D

General Options:

-h, --help                      Print this help text and exit
--version                       Print program version and exit
-U, --update                    Update this program to latest version
-i, --ignore-errors             Ignore download and postprocessing errors.
                                The download will be considered successful
                                even if the postprocessing fails
--no-abort-on-error             Continue with next video on download errors;
                                e.g. to skip unavailable videos in a
                                playlist (default)
--abort-on-error                Abort downloading of further videos if an
                                error occurs (Alias: --no-ignore-errors)
--dump-user-agent               Display the current user-agent and exit
--list-extractors               List all supported extractors and exit
--extractor-descriptions        Output descriptions of all supported
                                extractors and exit
--force-generic-extractor       Force extraction to use the generic
                                extractor
--default-search PREFIX         Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. Eg:
                                "gvsearch2:python" downloads two videos from
                                google videos for the search term "python".
                                Use the value "auto" to let yt-dlp guess
                                ("auto_warning" to emit a warning when
                                guessing). "error" just throws an error. The
                                default value "fixup_error" repairs broken
                                URLs, but emits an error if this is not
                                possible instead of searching
--ignore-config                 Don't load any more configuration files
                                except those given by --config-locations.
                                For backward compatibility, if this option
                                is found inside the system configuration
                                file, the user configuration is not loaded.
                                (Alias: --no-config)
--no-config-locations           Do not load any custom configuration files
                                (default). When given inside a configuration
                                file, ignore all previous --config-locations
                                defined in the current file
--config-locations PATH         Location of the main configuration file;
                                either the path to the config or its
                                containing directory ("-" for stdin). Can be
                                used multiple times and inside other
                                configuration files
--flat-playlist                 Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
                                only list them
--no-flat-playlist              Extract the videos of a playlist
--live-from-start               Download livestreams from the start.
                                Currently only supported for YouTube
                                (Experimental)
--no-live-from-start            Download livestreams from the current time
                                (default)
--wait-for-video MIN[-MAX]      Wait for scheduled streams to become
                                available. Pass the minimum number of
                                seconds (or range) to wait between retries
--no-wait-for-video             Do not wait for scheduled streams (default)
--mark-watched                  Mark videos watched (even with --simulate)
--no-mark-watched               Do not mark videos watched (default)
--no-colors                     Do not emit color codes in output
--compat-options OPTS           Options that can help keep compatibility
                                with youtube-dl or youtube-dlc
                                configurations by reverting some of the
                                changes made in yt-dlp. See "Differences in
                                default behavior" for details
--alias ALIASES OPTIONS         Create aliases for an option string. Unless
                                an alias starts with a dash "-", it is
                                prefixed with "--". Arguments are parsed
                                according to the Python string formatting
                                mini-language. Eg: --alias get-audio,-X
                                "-S=aext:{0},abr -x --audio-format {0}"
                                creates options "--get-audio" and "-X" that
                                takes an argument (ARG0) and expands to
                                "-S=aext:ARG0,abr -x --audio-format ARG0".
                                All defined aliases are listed in the --help
                                output. Alias options can trigger more
                                aliases; so be carefull to avoid defining
                                recursive options. As a safety measure, each
                                alias may be triggered a maximum of 100
                                times. This option can be used multiple
                                times

Network Options:

--proxy URL                     Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy. To
                                enable SOCKS proxy, specify a proper scheme.
                                Eg: socks5://user:pass@127.0.0.1:1080/. Pass
                                in an empty string (--proxy "") for direct
                                connection
--socket-timeout SECONDS        Time to wait before giving up, in seconds
--source-address IP             Client-side IP address to bind to
-4, --force-ipv4                Make all connections via IPv4
-6, --force-ipv6                Make all connections via IPv6

Geo-restriction:

--geo-verification-proxy URL    Use this proxy to verify the IP address for
                                some geo-restricted sites. The default proxy
                                specified by --proxy (or none, if the option
                                is not present) is used for the actual
                                downloading
--geo-bypass                    Bypass geographic restriction via faking
                                X-Forwarded-For HTTP header (default)
--no-geo-bypass                 Do not bypass geographic restriction via
                                faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
--geo-bypass-country CODE       Force bypass geographic restriction with
                                explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
                                country code
--geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK  Force bypass geographic restriction with
                                explicitly provided IP block in CIDR
                                notation

Video Selection:

--playlist-start NUMBER         Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
--playlist-end NUMBER           Playlist video to end at (default is last)
--playlist-items ITEM_SPEC      Playlist video items to download. Specify
                                indices of the videos in the playlist
                                separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
                                1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos
                                indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can
                                specify range: "--playlist-items
                                1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos at
                                index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13
--min-filesize SIZE             Do not download any videos smaller than SIZE
                                (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
--max-filesize SIZE             Do not download any videos larger than SIZE
                                (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
--date DATE                     Download only videos uploaded on this date.
                                The date can be "YYYYMMDD" or in the format 
                                [now|today|yesterday][-N[day|week|month|year]].
                                Eg: --date today-2weeks
--datebefore DATE               Download only videos uploaded on or before
                                this date. The date formats accepted is the
                                same as --date
--dateafter DATE                Download only videos uploaded on or after
                                this date. The date formats accepted is the
                                same as --date
--match-filters FILTER          Generic video filter. Any "OUTPUT TEMPLATE"
                                field can be compared with a number or a
                                string using the operators defined in
                                "Filtering formats". You can also simply
                                specify a field to match if the field is
                                present, use "!field" to check if the field
                                is not present, and "&" to check multiple
                                conditions. Use a "\" to escape "&" or
                                quotes if needed. If used multiple times,
                                the filter matches if atleast one of the
                                conditions are met. Eg: --match-filter
                                !is_live --match-filter "like_count>?100 &
                                description~='(?i)\bcats \& dogs\b'" matches
                                only videos that are not live OR those that
                                have a like count more than 100 (or the like
                                field is not available) and also has a
                                description that contains the phrase "cats &
                                dogs" (caseless). Use "--match-filter -" to
                                interactively ask whether to download each
                                video
--no-match-filter               Do not use generic video filter (default)
--no-playlist                   Download only the video, if the URL refers
                                to a video and a playlist
--yes-playlist                  Download the playlist, if the URL refers to
                                a video and a playlist
--age-limit YEARS               Download only videos suitable for the given
                                age
--download-archive FILE         Download only videos not listed in the
                                archive file. Record the IDs of all
                                downloaded videos in it
--no-download-archive           Do not use archive file (default)
--max-downloads NUMBER          Abort after downloading NUMBER files
--break-on-existing             Stop the download process when encountering
                                a file that is in the archive
--break-on-reject               Stop the download process when encountering
                                a file that has been filtered out
--break-per-input               Make --break-on-existing, --break-on-reject
                                and --max-downloads act only on the current
                                input URL
--no-break-per-input            --break-on-existing and similar options
                                terminates the entire download queue
--skip-playlist-after-errors N  Number of allowed failures until the rest of
                                the playlist is skipped

Download Options:

-N, --concurrent-fragments N    Number of fragments of a dash/hlsnative
                                video that should be downloaded concurrently
                                (default is 1)
-r, --limit-rate RATE           Maximum download rate in bytes per second
                                (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
--throttled-rate RATE           Minimum download rate in bytes per second
                                below which throttling is assumed and the
                                video data is re-extracted (e.g. 100K)
-R, --retries RETRIES           Number of retries (default is 10), or
                                "infinite"
--file-access-retries RETRIES   Number of times to retry on file access
                                error (default is 3), or "infinite"
--fragment-retries RETRIES      Number of retries for a fragment (default is
                                10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and ISM)
--retry-sleep [TYPE:]EXPR       An expression for the time to sleep between
                                retries in seconds (optionally) prefixed by
                                the type of retry (file_access, fragment,
                                http (default)) to apply the sleep to. EXPR
                                can be a number, linear=START[:END[:STEP=1]]
                                or exp=START[:END[:BASE=2]]. This option can
                                be used multiple times to set the sleep for
                                the different retry types. Eg: --retry-sleep
                                linear=1::2 --retry-sleep fragment:exp=1:20
--skip-unavailable-fragments    Skip unavailable fragments for DASH,
                                hlsnative and ISM downloads (default)
                                (Alias: --no-abort-on-unavailable-fragment)
--abort-on-unavailable-fragment
                                Abort download if a fragment is unavailable
                                (Alias: --no-skip-unavailable-fragments)
--keep-fragments                Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
                                downloading is finished
--no-keep-fragments             Delete downloaded fragments after
                                downloading is finished (default)
--buffer-size SIZE              Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K)
                                (default is 1024)
--resize-buffer                 The buffer size is automatically resized
                                from an initial value of --buffer-size
                                (default)
--no-resize-buffer              Do not automatically adjust the buffer size
--http-chunk-size SIZE          Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP
                                downloading (e.g. 10485760 or 10M) (default
                                is disabled). May be useful for bypassing
                                bandwidth throttling imposed by a webserver
                                (experimental)
--playlist-reverse              Download playlist videos in reverse order
--no-playlist-reverse           Download playlist videos in default order
                                (default)
--playlist-random               Download playlist videos in random order
--xattr-set-filesize            Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
                                expected file size
--hls-use-mpegts                Use the mpegts container for HLS videos;
                                allowing some players to play the video
                                while downloading, and reducing the chance
                                of file corruption if download is
                                interrupted. This is enabled by default for
                                live streams
--no-hls-use-mpegts             Do not use the mpegts container for HLS
                                videos. This is default when not downloading
                                live streams
--download-sections REGEX       Download only chapters whose title matches
                                the given regular expression. Time ranges
                                prefixed by a "*" can also be used in place
                                of chapters to download the specified range.
                                Eg: --download-sections "*10:15-15:00"
                                --download-sections "intro". Needs ffmpeg.
                                This option can be used multiple times to
                                download multiple sections
--downloader [PROTO:]NAME       Name or path of the external downloader to
                                use (optionally) prefixed by the protocols
                                (http, ftp, m3u8, dash, rstp, rtmp, mms) to
                                use it for. Currently supports native,
                                aria2c, avconv, axel, curl, ffmpeg, httpie,
                                wget. You can use this option multiple times
                                to set different downloaders for different
                                protocols. For example, --downloader aria2c
                                --downloader "dash,m3u8:native" will use
                                aria2c for http/ftp downloads, and the
                                native downloader for dash/m3u8 downloads
                                (Alias: --external-downloader)
--downloader-args NAME:ARGS     Give these arguments to the external
                                downloader. Specify the downloader name and
                                the arguments separated by a colon ":". For
                                ffmpeg, arguments can be passed to different
                                positions using the same syntax as
                                --postprocessor-args. You can use this
                                option multiple times to give different
                                arguments to different downloaders (Alias:
                                --external-downloader-args)

Filesystem Options:

-a, --batch-file FILE           File containing URLs to download ("-" for
                                stdin), one URL per line. Lines starting
                                with "#", ";" or "]" are considered as
                                comments and ignored
--no-batch-file                 Do not read URLs from batch file (default)
-P, --paths [TYPES:]PATH        The paths where the files should be
                                downloaded. Specify the type of file and the
                                path separated by a colon ":". All the same
                                TYPES as --output are supported.
                                Additionally, you can also provide "home"
                                (default) and "temp" paths. All intermediary
                                files are first downloaded to the temp path
                                and then the final files are moved over to
                                the home path after download is finished.
                                This option is ignored if --output is an
                                absolute path
-o, --output [TYPES:]TEMPLATE   Output filename template; see "OUTPUT
                                TEMPLATE" for details
--output-na-placeholder TEXT    Placeholder for unavailable fields in
                                "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" (default: "NA")
--restrict-filenames            Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters,
                                and avoid "&" and spaces in filenames
--no-restrict-filenames         Allow Unicode characters, "&" and spaces in
                                filenames (default)
--windows-filenames             Force filenames to be Windows-compatible
--no-windows-filenames          Make filenames Windows-compatible only if
                                using Windows (default)
--trim-filenames LENGTH         Limit the filename length (excluding
                                extension) to the specified number of
                                characters
-w, --no-overwrites             Do not overwrite any files
--force-overwrites              Overwrite all video and metadata files. This
                                option includes --no-continue
--no-force-overwrites           Do not overwrite the video, but overwrite
                                related files (default)
-c, --continue                  Resume partially downloaded files/fragments
                                (default)
--no-continue                   Do not resume partially downloaded
                                fragments. If the file is not fragmented,
                                restart download of the entire file
--part                          Use .part files instead of writing directly
                                into output file (default)
--no-part                       Do not use .part files - write directly into
                                output file
--mtime                         Use the Last-modified header to set the file
                                modification time (default)
--no-mtime                      Do not use the Last-modified header to set
                                the file modification time
--write-description             Write video description to a .description
                                file
--no-write-description          Do not write video description (default)
--write-info-json               Write video metadata to a .info.json file
                                (this may contain personal information)
--no-write-info-json            Do not write video metadata (default)
--write-playlist-metafiles      Write playlist metadata in addition to the
                                video metadata when using --write-info-json,
                                --write-description etc. (default)
--no-write-playlist-metafiles   Do not write playlist metadata when using
                                --write-info-json, --write-description etc.
--clean-info-json               Remove some private fields such as filenames
                                from the infojson. Note that it could still
                                contain some personal information (default)
--no-clean-info-json            Write all fields to the infojson
--write-comments                Retrieve video comments to be placed in the
                                infojson. The comments are fetched even
                                without this option if the extraction is
                                known to be quick (Alias: --get-comments)
--no-write-comments             Do not retrieve video comments unless the
                                extraction is known to be quick (Alias:
                                --no-get-comments)
--load-info-json FILE           JSON file containing the video information
                                (created with the "--write-info-json"
                                option)
--cookies FILE                  Netscape formatted file to read cookies from
                                and dump cookie jar in
--no-cookies                    Do not read/dump cookies from/to file
                                (default)
--cookies-from-browser BROWSER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE]
                                The name of the browser and (optionally) the
                                name/path of the profile to load cookies
                                from, separated by a ":". Currently
                                supported browsers are: brave, chrome,
                                chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari,
                                vivaldi. By default, the most recently
                                accessed profile is used. The keyring used
                                for decrypting Chromium cookies on Linux can
                                be (optionally) specified after the browser
                                name separated by a "+". Currently supported
                                keyrings are: basictext, gnomekeyring,
                                kwallet
--no-cookies-from-browser       Do not load cookies from browser (default)
--cache-dir DIR                 Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl
                                can store some downloaded information (such
                                as client ids and signatures) permanently.
                                By default $XDG_CACHE_HOME/yt-dlp or
                                ~/.cache/yt-dlp
--no-cache-dir                  Disable filesystem caching
--rm-cache-dir                  Delete all filesystem cache files

Thumbnail Options:

--write-thumbnail               Write thumbnail image to disk
--no-write-thumbnail            Do not write thumbnail image to disk
                                (default)
--write-all-thumbnails          Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
--list-thumbnails               List available thumbnails of each video.
                                Simulate unless --no-simulate is used

Internet Shortcut Options:

--write-link                    Write an internet shortcut file, depending
                                on the current platform (.url, .webloc or
                                .desktop). The URL may be cached by the OS
--write-url-link                Write a .url Windows internet shortcut. The
                                OS caches the URL based on the file path
--write-webloc-link             Write a .webloc macOS internet shortcut
--write-desktop-link            Write a .desktop Linux internet shortcut

Verbosity and Simulation Options:

-q, --quiet                     Activate quiet mode. If used with --verbose,
                                print the log to stderr
--no-warnings                   Ignore warnings
-s, --simulate                  Do not download the video and do not write
                                anything to disk
--no-simulate                   Download the video even if printing/listing
                                options are used
--ignore-no-formats-error       Ignore "No video formats" error. Useful for
                                extracting metadata even if the videos are
                                not actually available for download
                                (experimental)
--no-ignore-no-formats-error    Throw error when no downloadable video
                                formats are found (default)
--skip-download                 Do not download the video but write all
                                related files (Alias: --no-download)
-O, --print [WHEN:]TEMPLATE     Field name or output template to print to
                                screen, optionally prefixed with when to
                                print it, separated by a ":". Supported
                                values of "WHEN" are the same as that of
                                --use-postprocessor, and "video" (default).
                                Implies --quiet. Implies --simulate unless
                                --no-simulate or later stages of WHEN are
                                used. This option can be used multiple times
--print-to-file [WHEN:]TEMPLATE FILE
                                Append given template to the file. The
                                values of WHEN and TEMPLATE are same as that
                                of --print. FILE uses the same syntax as the
                                output template. This option can be used
                                multiple times
-j, --dump-json                 Quiet, but print JSON information for each
                                video. Simulate unless --no-simulate is
                                used. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a
                                description of available keys
-J, --dump-single-json          Quiet, but print JSON information for each
                                url or infojson passed. Simulate unless
                                --no-simulate is used. If the URL refers to
                                a playlist, the whole playlist information
                                is dumped in a single line
--force-write-archive           Force download archive entries to be written
                                as far as no errors occur, even if -s or
                                another simulation option is used (Alias:
                                --force-download-archive)
--newline                       Output progress bar as new lines
--no-progress                   Do not print progress bar
--progress                      Show progress bar, even if in quiet mode
--console-title                 Display progress in console titlebar
--progress-template [TYPES:]TEMPLATE
                                Template for progress outputs, optionally
                                prefixed with one of "download:" (default),
                                "download-title:" (the console title),
                                "postprocess:",  or "postprocess-title:".
                                The video's fields are accessible under the
                                "info" key and the progress attributes are
                                accessible under "progress" key. E.g.:
                                --console-title --progress-template
                                "download-title:%(info.id)s-%(progress.eta)s"
-v, --verbose                   Print various debugging information
--dump-pages                    Print downloaded pages encoded using base64
                                to debug problems (very verbose)
--write-pages                   Write downloaded intermediary pages to files
                                in the current directory to debug problems
--print-traffic                 Display sent and read HTTP traffic

Workarounds:

--encoding ENCODING             Force the specified encoding (experimental)
--legacy-server-connect         Explicitly allow HTTPS connection to servers
                                that do not support RFC 5746 secure
                                renegotiation
--no-check-certificates         Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
--prefer-insecure               Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve
                                information about the video (Currently
                                supported only for YouTube)
--add-header FIELD:VALUE        Specify a custom HTTP header and its value,
                                separated by a colon ":". You can use this
                                option multiple times
--bidi-workaround               Work around terminals that lack
                                bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv
                                or fribidi executable in PATH
--sleep-requests SECONDS        Number of seconds to sleep between requests
                                during data extraction
--sleep-interval SECONDS        Number of seconds to sleep before each
                                download. This is the minimum time to sleep
                                when used along with --max-sleep-interval
                                (Alias: --min-sleep-interval)
--max-sleep-interval SECONDS    Maximum number of seconds to sleep. Can only
                                be used along with --min-sleep-interval
--sleep-subtitles SECONDS       Number of seconds to sleep before each
                                subtitle download

Video Format Options:

-f, --format FORMAT             Video format code, see "FORMAT SELECTION"
                                for more details
-S, --format-sort SORTORDER     Sort the formats by the fields given, see
                                "Sorting Formats" for more details
--format-sort-force             Force user specified sort order to have
                                precedence over all fields, see "Sorting
                                Formats" for more details (Alias: --S-force)
--no-format-sort-force          Some fields have precedence over the user
                                specified sort order (default)
--video-multistreams            Allow multiple video streams to be merged
                                into a single file
--no-video-multistreams         Only one video stream is downloaded for each
                                output file (default)
--audio-multistreams            Allow multiple audio streams to be merged
                                into a single file
--no-audio-multistreams         Only one audio stream is downloaded for each
                                output file (default)
--prefer-free-formats           Prefer video formats with free containers
                                over non-free ones of same quality. Use with
                                "-S ext" to strictly prefer free containers
                                irrespective of quality
--no-prefer-free-formats        Don't give any special preference to free
                                containers (default)
--check-formats                 Make sure formats are selected only from
                                those that are actually downloadable
--check-all-formats             Check all formats for whether they are
                                actually downloadable
--no-check-formats              Do not check that the formats are actually
                                downloadable
-F, --list-formats              List available formats of each video.
                                Simulate unless --no-simulate is used
--merge-output-format FORMAT    If a merge is required (e.g.
                                bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
                                container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
                                webm, flv. Ignored if no merge is required

Subtitle Options:

--write-subs                    Write subtitle file
--no-write-subs                 Do not write subtitle file (default)
--write-auto-subs               Write automatically generated subtitle file
                                (Alias: --write-automatic-subs)
--no-write-auto-subs            Do not write auto-generated subtitles
                                (default) (Alias: --no-write-automatic-subs)
--list-subs                     List available subtitles of each video.
                                Simulate unless --no-simulate is used
--sub-format FORMAT             Subtitle format; accepts formats preference,
                                Eg: "srt" or "ass/srt/best"
--sub-langs LANGS               Languages of the subtitles to download (can
                                be regex) or "all" separated by commas. (Eg:
                                --sub-langs "en.*,ja") You can prefix the
                                language code with a "-" to exclude it from
                                the requested languages. (Eg: --sub-langs
                                all,-live_chat) Use --list-subs for a list
                                of available language tags

Authentication Options:

-u, --username USERNAME         Login with this account ID
-p, --password PASSWORD         Account password. If this option is left
                                out, yt-dlp will ask interactively
-2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR       Two-factor authentication code
-n, --netrc                     Use .netrc authentication data
--netrc-location PATH           Location of .netrc authentication data;
                                either the path or its containing directory.
                                Defaults to ~/.netrc
--video-password PASSWORD       Video password (vimeo, youku)
--ap-mso MSO                    Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
                                provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for
                                a list of available MSOs
--ap-username USERNAME          Multiple-system operator account login
--ap-password PASSWORD          Multiple-system operator account password.
                                If this option is left out, yt-dlp will ask
                                interactively
--ap-list-mso                   List all supported multiple-system operators
--client-certificate CERTFILE   Path to client certificate file in PEM
                                format. May include the private key
--client-certificate-key KEYFILE
                                Path to private key file for client
                                certificate
--client-certificate-password PASSWORD
                                Password for client certificate private key,
                                if encrypted. If not provided, and the key
                                is encrypted, yt-dlp will ask interactively

Post-Processing Options:

-x, --extract-audio             Convert video files to audio-only files
                                (requires ffmpeg and ffprobe)
--audio-format FORMAT           Format to convert the audio to when -x is
                                used. (currently supported: best (default),
                                mp3, aac, m4a, opus, vorbis, flac, alac,
                                wav). You can specify multiple rules using
                                similar syntax as --remux-video
--audio-quality QUALITY         Specify ffmpeg audio quality to use when
                                converting the audio with -x. Insert a value
                                between 0 (best) and 10 (worst) for VBR or a
                                specific bitrate like 128K (default 5)
--remux-video FORMAT            Remux the video into another container if
                                necessary (currently supported: mp4, mkv,
                                flv, webm, mov, avi, mka, ogg, mp3, aac,
                                m4a, opus, vorbis, flac, alac, wav). If
                                target container does not support the
                                video/audio codec, remuxing will fail. You
                                can specify multiple rules; Eg.
                                "aac>m4a/mov>mp4/mkv" will remux aac to m4a,
                                mov to mp4 and anything else to mkv
--recode-video FORMAT           Re-encode the video into another format if
                                necessary. The syntax and supported formats
                                are the same as --remux-video
--postprocessor-args NAME:ARGS  Give these arguments to the postprocessors.
                                Specify the postprocessor/executable name
                                and the arguments separated by a colon ":"
                                to give the argument to the specified
                                postprocessor/executable. Supported PP are:
                                Merger, ModifyChapters, SplitChapters,
                                ExtractAudio, VideoRemuxer, VideoConvertor,
                                Metadata, EmbedSubtitle, EmbedThumbnail,
                                SubtitlesConvertor, ThumbnailsConvertor,
                                FixupStretched, FixupM4a, FixupM3u8,
                                FixupTimestamp and FixupDuration. The
                                supported executables are: AtomicParsley,
                                FFmpeg and FFprobe. You can also specify
                                "PP+EXE:ARGS" to give the arguments to the
                                specified executable only when being used by
                                the specified postprocessor. Additionally,
                                for ffmpeg/ffprobe, "_i"/"_o" can be
                                appended to the prefix optionally followed
                                by a number to pass the argument before the
                                specified input/output file. Eg: --ppa
                                "Merger+ffmpeg_i1:-v quiet". You can use
                                this option multiple times to give different
                                arguments to different postprocessors.
                                (Alias: --ppa)
-k, --keep-video                Keep the intermediate video file on disk
                                after post-processing
--no-keep-video                 Delete the intermediate video file after
                                post-processing (default)
--post-overwrites               Overwrite post-processed files (default)
--no-post-overwrites            Do not overwrite post-processed files
--embed-subs                    Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4,
                                webm and mkv videos)
--no-embed-subs                 Do not embed subtitles (default)
--embed-thumbnail               Embed thumbnail in the video as cover art
--no-embed-thumbnail            Do not embed thumbnail (default)
--embed-metadata                Embed metadata to the video file. Also
                                embeds chapters/infojson if present unless
                                --no-embed-chapters/--no-embed-info-json are
                                used (Alias: --add-metadata)
--no-embed-metadata             Do not add metadata to file (default)
                                (Alias: --no-add-metadata)
--embed-chapters                Add chapter markers to the video file
                                (Alias: --add-chapters)
--no-embed-chapters             Do not add chapter markers (default) (Alias:
                                --no-add-chapters)
--embed-info-json               Embed the infojson as an attachment to
                                mkv/mka video files
--no-embed-info-json            Do not embed the infojson as an attachment
                                to the video file
--parse-metadata FROM:TO        Parse additional metadata like title/artist
                                from other fields; see "MODIFYING METADATA"
                                for details
--replace-in-metadata FIELDS REGEX REPLACE
                                Replace text in a metadata field using the
                                given regex. This option can be used
                                multiple times
--xattrs                        Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
                                (using dublin core and xdg standards)
--concat-playlist POLICY        Concatenate videos in a playlist. One of
                                "never", "always", or "multi_video"
                                (default; only when the videos form a single
                                show). All the video files must have same
                                codecs and number of streams to be
                                concatable. The "pl_video:" prefix can be
                                used with "--paths" and "--output" to set
                                the output filename for the concatenated
                                files. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details
--fixup POLICY                  Automatically correct known faults of the
                                file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only
                                emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
                                default; fix file if we can, warn
                                otherwise), force (try fixing even if file
                                already exists)
--ffmpeg-location PATH          Location of the ffmpeg binary; either the
                                path to the binary or its containing
                                directory
--exec [WHEN:]CMD               Execute a command, optionally prefixed with
                                when to execute it (after_move if
                                unspecified), separated by a ":". Supported
                                values of "WHEN" are the same as that of
                                --use-postprocessor. Same syntax as the
                                output template can be used to pass any
                                field as arguments to the command. After
                                download, an additional field "filepath"
                                that contains the final path of the
                                downloaded file is also available, and if no
                                fields are passed, %(filepath)q is appended
                                to the end of the command. This option can
                                be used multiple times
--no-exec                       Remove any previously defined --exec
--convert-subs FORMAT           Convert the subtitles to another format
                                (currently supported: srt, vtt, ass, lrc)
                                (Alias: --convert-subtitles)
--convert-thumbnails FORMAT     Convert the thumbnails to another format
                                (currently supported: jpg, png, webp). You
                                can specify multiple rules using similar
                                syntax as --remux-video
--split-chapters                Split video into multiple files based on
                                internal chapters. The "chapter:" prefix can
                                be used with "--paths" and "--output" to set
                                the output filename for the split files. See
                                "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details
--no-split-chapters             Do not split video based on chapters
                                (default)
--remove-chapters REGEX         Remove chapters whose title matches the
                                given regular expression. The syntax is the
                                same as --download-sections. This option can
                                be used multiple times
--no-remove-chapters            Do not remove any chapters from the file
                                (default)
--force-keyframes-at-cuts       Force keyframes at cuts when
                                downloading/splitting/removing sections.
                                This is slow due to needing a re-encode, but
                                the resulting video may have fewer artifacts
                                around the cuts
--no-force-keyframes-at-cuts    Do not force keyframes around the chapters
                                when cutting/splitting (default)
--use-postprocessor NAME[:ARGS]
                                The (case sensitive) name of plugin
                                postprocessors to be enabled, and
                                (optionally) arguments to be passed to it,
                                separated by a colon ":". ARGS are a
                                semicolon ";" delimited list of NAME=VALUE.
                                The "when" argument determines when the
                                postprocessor is invoked. It can be one of
                                "pre_process" (after video extraction),
                                "after_filter" (after video passes filter),
                                "before_dl" (before each video download),
                                "post_process" (after each video download;
                                default), "after_move" (after moving video
                                file to it's final locations), "after_video"
                                (after downloading and processing all
                                formats of a video), or "playlist" (at end
                                of playlist). This option can be used
                                multiple times to add different
                                postprocessors

SponsorBlock Options:

Make chapter entries for, or remove various segments (sponsor, introductions, etc.) from downloaded YouTube videos using the SponsorBlock API

--sponsorblock-mark CATS        SponsorBlock categories to create chapters
                                for, separated by commas. Available
                                categories are sponsor, intro, outro,
                                selfpromo, preview, filler, interaction,
                                music_offtopic, poi_highlight, all and
                                default (=all). You can prefix the category
                                with a "-" to exclude it. See [1] for
                                description of the categories. Eg:
                                --sponsorblock-mark all,-preview
                                [1] https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Segment_Categories
--sponsorblock-remove CATS      SponsorBlock categories to be removed from
                                the video file, separated by commas. If a
                                category is present in both mark and remove,
                                remove takes precedence. The syntax and
                                available categories are the same as for
                                --sponsorblock-mark except that "default"
                                refers to "all,-filler" and poi_highlight is
                                not available
--sponsorblock-chapter-title TEMPLATE
                                An output template for the title of the
                                SponsorBlock chapters created by
                                --sponsorblock-mark. The only available
                                fields are start_time, end_time, category,
                                categories, name, category_names. Defaults
                                to "[SponsorBlock]: %(category_names)l"
--no-sponsorblock               Disable both --sponsorblock-mark and
                                --sponsorblock-remove
--sponsorblock-api URL          SponsorBlock API location, defaults to
                                https://sponsor.ajay.app

Extractor Options:

--extractor-retries RETRIES     Number of retries for known extractor errors
                                (default is 3), or "infinite"
--allow-dynamic-mpd             Process dynamic DASH manifests (default)
                                (Alias: --no-ignore-dynamic-mpd)
--ignore-dynamic-mpd            Do not process dynamic DASH manifests
                                (Alias: --no-allow-dynamic-mpd)
--hls-split-discontinuity       Split HLS playlists to different formats at
                                discontinuities such as ad breaks
--no-hls-split-discontinuity    Do not split HLS playlists to different
                                formats at discontinuities such as ad breaks
                                (default)
--extractor-args KEY:ARGS       Pass these arguments to the extractor. See
                                "EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS" for details. You can
                                use this option multiple times to give
                                arguments for different extractors

CONFIGURATION

You can configure yt-dlp by placing any supported command line option to a configuration file. The configuration is loaded from the following locations:

1. Main Configuration: The file given by --config-location

2. Portable Configuration: yt-dlp.conf in the same directory as the bundled binary. If you are running from source-code (<root dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py), the root directory is used instead.

3. Home Configuration: yt-dlp.conf in the home path given by -P, or in the current directory if no such path is given

4. User Configuration:

   • %XDG_CONFIG_HOME%/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Linux/macOS)
   • %XDG_CONFIG_HOME%/yt-dlp.conf
   • %APPDATA%/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Windows)
   • %APPDATA%/yt-dlp/config.txt
   • ~/yt-dlp.conf
   • ~/yt-dlp.conf.txt

   %XDG_CONFIG_HOME% defaults to ~/.config if undefined. On windows, %APPDATA% generally points to C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming and ~ points to %HOME% if present, %USERPROFILE% (generally C:\Users\<user name>), or %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%

5. System Configuration: /etc/yt-dlp.conf

For example, with the following configuration file yt-dlp will always extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all videos under YouTube directory in your home directory:

# Lines starting with # are comments

# Always extract audio
-x

# Do not copy the mtime
--no-mtime

# Use this proxy
--proxy 127.0.0.1:3128

# Save all videos under YouTube directory in your home directory
-o ~/YouTube/%(title)s.%(ext)s

Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka switches used in regular command line calls; thus there must be no whitespace after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.

You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable all configuration files for a particular yt-dlp run. If --ignore-config is found inside any configuration file, no further configuration will be loaded. For example, having the option in the portable configuration file prevents loading of home, user, and system configurations. Additionally, (for backward compatibility) if --ignore-config is found inside the system configuration file, the user configuration is not loaded.

Authentication with .netrc file

You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as command line arguments on every yt-dlp execution and prevent tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve this using a .netrc file on a per extractor basis. For that you will need to create a .netrc file in --netrc-location and restrict permissions to read/write by only you:

touch $HOME/.netrc
chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc

After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following format, where extractor is the name of the extractor in lowercase:

machine <extractor> login <username> password <password>

For example:

machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password

To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc to yt-dlp or place it in the configuration file.

The default location of the .netrc file is $HOME (~) in UNIX. On Windows, it is %HOME% if present, %USERPROFILE% (generally C:\Users\<user name>) or %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%

OUTPUT TEMPLATE

The -o option is used to indicate a template for the output file names while -P option is used to specify the path each type of file should be saved to.

tl;dr: navigate me to examples.

The simplest usage of -o is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single file, like in yt-dlp -o funny_video.flv "https://some/video" (hard-coding file extension like this is not recommended and could break some post-processing).

It may however also contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according to Python string formatting operations. For example, %(NAME)s or %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses, followed by formatting operations.

The field names themselves (the part inside the parenthesis) can also have some special formatting:

1. Object traversal: The dictionaries and lists available in metadata can be traversed by using a . (dot) separator. You can also do python slicing using :. Eg: %(tags.0)s, %(subtitles.en.-1.ext)s, %(id.3:7:-1)s, %(formats.:.format_id)s. %()s refers to the entire infodict. Note that all the fields that become available using this method are not listed below. Use -j to see such fields

2. Addition: Addition and subtraction of numeric fields can be done using + and - respectively. Eg: %(playlist_index+10)03d, %(n_entries+1-playlist_index)d

3. Date/time Formatting: Date/time fields can be formatted according to strftime formatting by specifying it separated from the field name using a >. Eg: %(duration>%H-%M-%S)s, %(upload_date>%Y-%m-%d)s, %(epoch-3600>%H-%M-%S)s

4. Alternatives: Alternate fields can be specified separated with a ,. Eg: %(release_date>%Y,upload_date>%Y|Unknown)s

5. Replacement: A replacement value can specified using a & separator. If the field is not empty, this replacement value will be used instead of the actual field content. This is done after alternate fields are considered; thus the replacement is used if any of the alternative fields is not empty.

6. Default: A literal default value can be specified for when the field is empty using a | separator. This overrides --output-na-template. Eg: %(uploader|Unknown)s

7. More Conversions: In addition to the normal format types diouxXeEfFgGcrs, B, j, l, q, D, S can be used for converting to Bytes, json (flag # for pretty-printing), a comma separated list (flag # for \n newline-separated), a string quoted for the terminal (flag # to split a list into different arguments), to add Decimal suffixes (Eg: 10M) (flag # to use 1024 as factor), and to Sanitize as filename (flag # for restricted), respectively

8. Unicode normalization: The format type U can be used for NFC unicode normalization. The alternate form flag (#) changes the normalization to NFD and the conversion flag + can be used for NFKC/NFKD compatibility equivalence normalization. Eg: %(title)+.100U is NFKC

To summarize, the general syntax for a field is:

%(name[.keys][addition][>strf][,alternate][&replacement][|default])[flags][width][.precision][length]type

Additionally, you can set different output templates for the various metadata files separately from the general output template by specifying the type of file followed by the template separated by a colon :. The different file types supported are subtitle, thumbnail, description, annotation (deprecated), infojson, link, pl_thumbnail, pl_description, pl_infojson, chapter, pl_video. For example, -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -o "thumbnail:%(title)s\%(title)s.%(ext)s" will put the thumbnails in a folder with the same name as the video. If any of the templates is empty, that type of file will not be written. Eg: --write-thumbnail -o "thumbnail:" will write thumbnails only for playlists and not for video.

The available fields are:

• id (string): Video identifier
• title (string): Video title
• fulltitle (string): Video title ignoring live timestamp and generic title
• url (string): Video URL
• ext (string): Video filename extension
• alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
• description (string): The description of the video
• display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
• uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
• license (string): License name the video is licensed under
• creator (string): The creator of the video
• timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became available
• upload_date (string): Video upload date in UTC (YYYYMMDD)
• release_timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video was released
• release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was released in UTC
• modified_timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video was last modified
• modified_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was last modified in UTC
• uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
• channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on
• channel_id (string): Id of the channel
• channel_follower_count (numeric): Number of followers of the channel
• location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
• duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
• duration_string (string): Length of the video (HH:mm:ss)
• view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the platform
• like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
• dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
• repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
• average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale used depends on the webpage
• comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video (For some extractors, comments are only downloaded at the end, and so this field cannot be used)
• age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
• live_status (string): One of "is_live", "was_live", "is_upcoming", "not_live"
• is_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a fixed-length video
• was_live (boolean): Whether this video was originally a live stream
• playable_in_embed (string): Whether this video is allowed to play in embedded players on other sites
• availability (string): Whether the video is "private", "premium_only", "subscriber_only", "needs_auth", "unlisted" or "public"
• start_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should start, as specified in the URL
• end_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should end, as specified in the URL
• format (string): A human-readable description of the format
• format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
• format_note (string): Additional info about the format
• width (numeric): Width of the video
• height (numeric): Height of the video
• resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
• tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
• abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
• acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
• asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
• vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
• fps (numeric): Frame rate
• dynamic_range (string): The dynamic range of the video
• vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
• container (string): Name of the container format
• filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
• filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
• protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual download
• extractor (string): Name of the extractor
• extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
• epoch (numeric): Unix epoch of when the information extraction was completed
• autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each download, starting at --autonumber-start
• video_autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each video
• n_entries (numeric): Total number of extracted items in the playlist
• playlist_id (string): Identifier of the playlist that contains the video
• playlist_title (string): Name of the playlist that contains the video
• playlist (string): playlist_id or playlist_title
• playlist_count (numeric): Total number of items in the playlist. May not be known if entire playlist is not extracted
• playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded with leading zeros according the final index
• playlist_autonumber (numeric): Position of the video in the playlist download queue padded with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
• playlist_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader
• playlist_uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist uploader
• webpage_url (string): A URL to the video webpage which if given to yt-dlp should allow to get the same result again
• webpage_url_basename (string): The basename of the webpage URL
• webpage_url_domain (string): The domain of the webpage URL
• original_url (string): The URL given by the user (or same as webpage_url for playlist entries)

Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:

• chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
• chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
• chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to

Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:

• series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode belongs to
• season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
• season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode belongs to
• season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
• episode (string): Title of the video episode
• episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a season
• episode_id (string): Id of the video episode

Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:

• track (string): Title of the track
• track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disc
• track_id (string): Id of the track
• artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
• genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
• album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
• album_type (string): Type of the album
• album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
• disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs to
• release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released

Available only when using --download-sections and for chapter: prefix when using --split-chapters for videos with internal chapters:

• section_title (string): Title of the chapter
• section_number (numeric): Number of the chapter within the file
• section_start (numeric): Start time of the chapter in seconds
• section_end (numeric): End time of the chapter in seconds

Available only when used in --print:

• urls (string): The URLs of all requested formats, one in each line
• filename (string): Name of the video file. Note that the actual filename may be different due to post-processing. Use --exec echo to get the name after all postprocessing is complete
• formats_table (table): The video format table as printed by --list-formats
• thumbnails_table (table): The thumbnail format table as printed by --list-thumbnails
• subtitles_table (table): The subtitle format table as printed by --list-subs
• automatic_captions_table (table): The automatic subtitle format table as printed by --list-subs

Available only in --sponsorblock-chapter-title:

• start_time (numeric): Start time of the chapter in seconds
• end_time (numeric): End time of the chapter in seconds
• categories (list): The SponsorBlock categories the chapter belongs to
• category (string): The smallest SponsorBlock category the chapter belongs to
• category_names (list): Friendly names of the categories
• name (string): Friendly name of the smallest category

Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title yt-dlp test video and id BaW_jenozKc, this will result in a yt-dlp test video-BaW_jenozKc.mp4 file created in the current directory.

Note that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such sequences will be replaced with placeholder value provided with --output-na-placeholder (NA by default).

Tip: Look at the -j output to identify which fields are available for the particular URL

For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for example, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.

Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g. -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" which will result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for you.

To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to stdout use -o -.

The current default template is %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s.

In some cases, you don't want special characters such as 中, spaces, or &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title.

Output template and Windows batch files

If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become -o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion should stay intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".

Output template examples

$ yt-dlp --get-filename -o "test video.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
test video.webm    # Literal name with correct extension

$ yt-dlp --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.webm    # All kinds of weird characters

$ yt-dlp --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
youtube-dl_test_video_.webm    # Restricted file name

# Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
$ yt-dlp -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"

# Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directories according to their uploaded year
$ yt-dlp -o "%(upload_date>%Y)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"

# Prefix playlist index with " - " separator, but only if it is available
$ yt-dlp -o '%(playlist_index|)s%(playlist_index& - |)s%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc "https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists"

# Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
$ yt-dlp -o "%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists"

# Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
$ yt-dlp -u user -p password -P "~/MyVideos" -o "%(playlist)s/%(chapter_number)s - %(chapter)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.udemy.com/java-tutorial"

# Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
$ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -o "%(series)s/%(season_number)s - %(season)s/%(episode_number)s - %(episode)s.%(ext)s" "https://videomore.ru/kino_v_detalayah/5_sezon/367617"

# Download video as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\title.ext", subtitles as "C:\MyVideos\subs\uploader\title.ext"
# and put all temporary files in "C:\MyVideos\tmp"
$ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -P "temp:tmp" -P "subtitle:subs" -o "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenoz --write-subs

# Download video as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\title.ext" and subtitles as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\subs\title.ext"
$ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -o "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" -o "subtitle:%(uploader)s/subs/%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --write-subs

# Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
$ yt-dlp -o - BaW_jenozKc

FORMAT SELECTION

By default, yt-dlp tries to download the best available quality if you don't pass any options. This is generally equivalent to using -f bestvideo*+bestaudio/best. However, if multiple audiostreams is enabled (--audio-multistreams), the default format changes to -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best. Similarly, if ffmpeg is unavailable, or if you use yt-dlp to stream to stdout (-o -), the default becomes -f best/bestvideo+bestaudio.

Deprecation warning: Latest versions of yt-dlp can stream multiple formats to the stdout simultaneously using ffmpeg. So, in future versions, the default for this will be set to -f bv*+ba/b similar to normal downloads. If you want to preserve the -f b/bv+ba setting, it is recommended to explicitly specify it in the configuration options.

The general syntax for format selection is -f FORMAT (or --format FORMAT) where FORMAT is a selector expression, i.e. an expression that describes format or formats you would like to download.

tl;dr: navigate me to examples.

The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can get the list of available format codes for particular video using --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor specific.

You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as a single file.

You can use -f - to interactively provide the format selector for each video

You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:

• all: Select all formats separately
• mergeall: Select and merge all formats (Must be used with --audio-multistreams, --video-multistreams or both)
• b*, best*: Select the best quality format that contains either a video or an audio
• b, best: Select the best quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent to best*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]
• bv, bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format. Equivalent to best*[acodec=none]
• bv*, bestvideo*: Select the best quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to best*[vcodec!=none]
• ba, bestaudio: Select the best quality audio-only format. Equivalent to best*[vcodec=none]
• ba*, bestaudio*: Select the best quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent to best*[acodec!=none] (Do not use!)
• w*, worst*: Select the worst quality format that contains either a video or an audio
• w, worst: Select the worst quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent to worst*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]
• wv, worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format. Equivalent to worst*[acodec=none]
• wv*, worstvideo*: Select the worst quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to worst*[vcodec!=none]
• wa, worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio-only format. Equivalent to worst*[vcodec=none]
• wa*, worstaudio*: Select the worst quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent to worst*[acodec!=none]

For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use -f worstvideo. It is however recommended not to use worst and related options. When your format selector is worst, the format which is worst in all respects is selected. Most of the time, what you actually want is the video with the smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better to use -S +size or more rigorously, -S +size,+br,+res,+fps instead of -f worst. See sorting formats for more details.

You can select the n'th best format of a type by using best<type>.<n>. For example, best.2 will select the 2nd best combined format. Similarly, bv*.3 will select the 3rd best format that contains a video stream.

If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same formats available, you can specify the order of preference using slashes. Note that formats on the left hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format 22 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available, otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for download.

If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.

You can merge the video and audio of multiple formats into a single file using -f <format1>+<format2>+... (requires ffmpeg installed), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with ffmpeg.

Deprecation warning: Since the below described behavior is complex and counter-intuitive, this will be removed and multistreams will be enabled by default in the future. A new operator will be instead added to limit formats to single audio/video

Unless --video-multistreams is used, all formats with a video stream except the first one are ignored. Similarly, unless --audio-multistreams is used, all formats with an audio stream except the first one are ignored. For example, -f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --video-multistreams --audio-multistreams will download and merge all 3 given formats. The resulting file will have 2 video streams and 2 audio streams. But -f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --no-video-multistreams will download and merge only bestvideo and bestaudio. best is ignored since another format containing a video stream (bestvideo) has already been selected. The order of the formats is therefore important. -f best+bestaudio --no-audio-multistreams will download and merge both formats while -f bestaudio+best --no-audio-multistreams will ignore best and download only bestaudio.

Filtering Formats

You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").

The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >, >=, = (equals), != (not equals):

• filesize: The number of bytes, if known in advance
• width: Width of the video, if known
• height: Height of the video, if known
• tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
• abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
• vbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
• asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz
• fps: Frame rate

Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $= (ends with), *= (contains), ~= (matches regex) and following string meta fields:

• ext: File extension
• acodec: Name of the audio codec in use
• vcodec: Name of the video codec in use
• container: Name of the container format
• protocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download, lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m, ism, http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native)
• format_id: A short description of the format
• language: Language code

Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation ! in order to produce an opposite comparison, e.g. !*= (does not contain). The comparand of a string comparison needs to be quoted with either double or single quotes if it contains spaces or special characters other than ._-.

Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the website. Any other field made available by the extractor can also be used for filtering.

Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so -f "[height<=?720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s. You can also use the filters with all to download all formats that satisfy the filter. For example, -f "all[vcodec=none]" selects all audio-only formats.

Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if you want to download the best pre-merged mp4 and webm formats with a height lower than 480 you can use -f "(mp4,webm)[height<480]".

Sorting Formats

You can change the criteria for being considered the best by using -S (--format-sort). The general format for this is --format-sort field1,field2....

The available fields are:

• hasvid: Gives priority to formats that has a video stream
• hasaud: Gives priority to formats that has a audio stream
• ie_pref: The format preference
• lang: The language preference
• quality: The quality of the format
• source: The preference of the source
• proto: Protocol used for download (https/ftps > http/ftp > m3u8_native/m3u8 > http_dash_segments> websocket_frag > mms/rtsp > f4f/f4m)
• vcodec: Video Codec (av01 > vp9.2 > vp9 > h265 > h264 > vp8 > h263 > theora > other)
• acodec: Audio Codec (flac/alac > wav/aiff > opus > vorbis > aac > mp4a > mp3 > eac3 > ac3 > dts > other)
• codec: Equivalent to vcodec,acodec
• vext: Video Extension (mp4 > webm > flv > other). If --prefer-free-formats is used, webm is preferred.
• aext: Audio Extension (m4a > aac > mp3 > ogg > opus > webm > other). If --prefer-free-formats is used, the order changes to opus > ogg > webm > m4a > mp3 > aac.
• ext: Equivalent to vext,aext
• filesize: Exact filesize, if known in advance
• fs_approx: Approximate filesize calculated from the manifests
• size: Exact filesize if available, otherwise approximate filesize
• height: Height of video
• width: Width of video
• res: Video resolution, calculated as the smallest dimension.
• fps: Framerate of video
• hdr: The dynamic range of the video (DV > HDR12 > HDR10+ > HDR10 > HLG > SDR)
• tbr: Total average bitrate in KBit/s
• vbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
• abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
• br: Equivalent to using tbr,vbr,abr
• asr: Audio sample rate in Hz

Deprecation warning: Many of these fields have (currently undocumented) aliases, that may be removed in a future version. It is recommended to use only the documented field names.

All fields, unless specified otherwise, are sorted in descending order. To reverse this, prefix the field with a +. Eg: +res prefers format with the smallest resolution. Additionally, you can suffix a preferred value for the fields, separated by a :. Eg: res:720 prefers larger videos, but no larger than 720p and the smallest video if there are no videos less than 720p. For codec and ext, you can provide two preferred values, the first for video and the second for audio. Eg: +codec:avc:m4a (equivalent to +vcodec:avc,+acodec:m4a) sets the video codec preference to h264 > h265 > vp9 > vp9.2 > av01 > vp8 > h263 > theora and audio codec preference to mp4a > aac > vorbis > opus > mp3 > ac3 > dts. You can also make the sorting prefer the nearest values to the provided by using ~ as the delimiter. Eg: filesize~1G prefers the format with filesize closest to 1 GiB.

The fields hasvid and ie_pref are always given highest priority in sorting, irrespective of the user-defined order. This behaviour can be changed by using --format-sort-force. Apart from these, the default order used is: lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,codec:vp9.2,size,br,asr,proto,ext,hasaud,source,id. The extractors may override this default order, but they cannot override the user-provided order.

Note that the default has codec:vp9.2; i.e. av1 is not preferred. Similarly, the default for hdr is hdr:12; i.e. dolby vision is not preferred. These choices are made since DV and AV1 formats are not yet fully compatible with most devices. This may be changed in the future as more devices become capable of smoothly playing back these formats.

If your format selector is worst, the last item is selected after sorting. This means it will select the format that is worst in all respects. Most of the time, what you actually want is the video with the smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better to use -f best -S +size,+br,+res,+fps.

Tip: You can use the -v -F to see how the formats have been sorted (worst to best).

Format Selection examples

# Download and merge the best video-only format and the best audio-only format,
# or download the best combined format if video-only format is not available
$ yt-dlp -f "bv+ba/b"

# Download best format that contains video,
# and if it doesn't already have an audio stream, merge it with best audio-only format
$ yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba/b"

# Same as above
$ yt-dlp

# Download the best video-only format and the best audio-only format without merging them
# For this case, an output template should be used since
# by default, bestvideo and bestaudio will have the same file name.
$ yt-dlp -f "bv,ba" -o "%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s"

# Download and merge the best format that has a video stream,
# and all audio-only formats into one file
$ yt-dlp -f "bv*+mergeall[vcodec=none]" --audio-multistreams

# Download and merge the best format that has a video stream,
# and the best 2 audio-only formats into one file
$ yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba+ba.2" --audio-multistreams


# The following examples show the old method (without -S) of format selection
# and how to use -S to achieve a similar but (generally) better result

# Download the worst video available (old method)
$ yt-dlp -f "wv*+wa/w"

# Download the best video available but with the smallest resolution
$ yt-dlp -S "+res"

# Download the smallest video available
$ yt-dlp -S "+size,+br"



# Download the best mp4 video available, or the best video if no mp4 available
$ yt-dlp -f "bv*[ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[ext=mp4] / bv*+ba/b"

# Download the best video with the best extension
# (For video, mp4 > webm > flv. For audio, m4a > aac > mp3 ...)
$ yt-dlp -S "ext"



# Download the best video available but no better than 480p,
# or the worst video if there is no video under 480p
$ yt-dlp -f "bv*[height<=480]+ba/b[height<=480] / wv*+ba/w"

# Download the best video available with the largest height but no better than 480p,
# or the best video with the smallest resolution if there is no video under 480p
$ yt-dlp -S "height:480"

# Download the best video available with the largest resolution but no better than 480p,
# or the best video with the smallest resolution if there is no video under 480p
# Resolution is determined by using the smallest dimension.
# So this works correctly for vertical videos as well
$ yt-dlp -S "res:480"



# Download the best video (that also has audio) but no bigger than 50 MB,
# or the worst video (that also has audio) if there is no video under 50 MB
$ yt-dlp -f "b[filesize<50M] / w"

# Download largest video (that also has audio) but no bigger than 50 MB,
# or the smallest video (that also has audio) if there is no video under 50 MB
$ yt-dlp -f "b" -S "filesize:50M"

# Download best video (that also has audio) that is closest in size to 50 MB
$ yt-dlp -f "b" -S "filesize~50M"



# Download best video available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol,
# or the best video available via any protocol if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -f "(bv*+ba/b)[protocol^=http][protocol!*=dash] / (bv*+ba/b)"

# Download best video available via the best protocol
# (https/ftps > http/ftp > m3u8_native > m3u8 > http_dash_segments ...)
$ yt-dlp -S "proto"



# Download the best video with either h264 or h265 codec,
# or the best video if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -f "(bv*[vcodec~='^((he|a)vc|h26[45])']+ba) / (bv*+ba/b)"

# Download the best video with best codec no better than h264,
# or the best video with worst codec if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -S "codec:h264"

# Download the best video with worst codec no worse than h264,
# or the best video with best codec if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -S "+codec:h264"



# More complex examples

# Download the best video no better than 720p preferring framerate greater than 30,
# or the worst video (still preferring framerate greater than 30) if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -f "((bv*[fps>30]/bv*)[height<=720]/(wv*[fps>30]/wv*)) + ba / (b[fps>30]/b)[height<=720]/(w[fps>30]/w)"

# Download the video with the largest resolution no better than 720p,
# or the video with the smallest resolution available if there is no such video,
# preferring larger framerate for formats with the same resolution
$ yt-dlp -S "res:720,fps"



# Download the video with smallest resolution no worse than 480p,
# or the video with the largest resolution available if there is no such video,
# preferring better codec and then larger total bitrate for the same resolution
$ yt-dlp -S "+res:480,codec,br"

MODIFYING METADATA

The metadata obtained by the extractors can be modified by using --parse-metadata and --replace-in-metadata

--replace-in-metadata FIELDS REGEX REPLACE is used to replace text in any metadata field using python regular expression. Backreferences can be used in the replace string for advanced use.

The general syntax of --parse-metadata FROM:TO is to give the name of a field or an output template to extract data from, and the format to interpret it as, separated by a colon :. Either a python regular expression with named capture groups or a similar syntax to the output template (only %(field)s formatting is supported) can be used for TO. The option can be used multiple times to parse and modify various fields.

Note that any field created by this can be used in the output template and will also affect the media file's metadata added when using --add-metadata.

This option also has a few special uses:

• You can download an additional URL based on the metadata of the currently downloaded video. To do this, set the field additional_urls to the URL that you want to download. Eg: --parse-metadata "description:(?P<additional_urls>https?://www\.vimeo\.com/\d+) will download the first vimeo video found in the description

• You can use this to change the metadata that is embedded in the media file. To do this, set the value of the corresponding field with a meta_ prefix. For example, any value you set to meta_description field will be added to the description field in the file. For example, you can use this to set a different "description" and "synopsis". To modify the metadata of individual streams, use the meta<n>_ prefix (Eg: meta1_language). Any value set to the meta_ field will overwrite all default values.

Note: Metadata modification happens before format selection, post-extraction and other post-processing operations. Some fields may be added or changed during these steps, overriding your changes.

For reference, these are the fields yt-dlp adds by default to the file metadata:

Metadata fields	From
title	track or title
date	upload_date
description, synopsis	description
purl, comment	webpage_url
track	track_number
artist	artist, creator, uploader or uploader_id
genre	genre
album	album
album_artist	album_artist
disc	disc_number
show	series
season_number	season_number
episode_id	episode or episode_id
episode_sort	episode_number
language of each stream	the format's language

Note: The file format may not support some of these fields

Modifying metadata examples

# Interpret the title as "Artist - Title"
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "title:%(artist)s - %(title)s"

# Regex example
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "description:Artist - (?P<artist>.+)"

# Set title as "Series name S01E05"
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "%(series)s S%(season_number)02dE%(episode_number)02d:%(title)s"

# Prioritize uploader as the "artist" field in video metadata
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "%(uploader|)s:%(meta_artist)s" --add-metadata

# Set "comment" field in video metadata using description instead of webpage_url,
# handling multiple lines correctly
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "description:(?s)(?P<meta_comment>.+)" --add-metadata

# Remove "formats" field from the infojson by setting it to an empty string
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata ":(?P<formats>)" -j

# Replace all spaces and "_" in title and uploader with a `-`
$ yt-dlp --replace-in-metadata "title,uploader" "[ _]" "-"

EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS

Some extractors accept additional arguments which can be passed using --extractor-args KEY:ARGS. ARGS is a ; (semicolon) separated string of ARG=VAL1,VAL2. Eg: --extractor-args "youtube:player-client=android_embedded,web;include_live_dash" --extractor-args "funimation:version=uncut"

The following extractors use this feature:

youtube

• skip: One or more of hls, dash or translated_subs to skip extraction of the m3u8 manifests, dash manifests and auto-translated subtitles respectively
• player_client: Clients to extract video data from. The main clients are web, android and ios with variants _music, _embedded, _embedscreen, _creator (Eg: web_embedded); and mweb and tv_embedded (agegate bypass) with no variants. By default, android,web is used, but tv_embedded and creator variants are added as required for age-gated videos. Similarly the music variants are added for music.youtube.com urls. You can use all to use all the clients, and default for the default clients.
• player_skip: Skip some network requests that are generally needed for robust extraction. One or more of configs (skip client configs), webpage (skip initial webpage), js (skip js player). While these options can help reduce the number of requests needed or avoid some rate-limiting, they could cause some issues. See #860 for more details
• include_live_dash: Include live dash formats even without --live-from-start (These formats don't download properly)
• comment_sort: top or new (default) - choose comment sorting mode (on YouTube's side)
• max_comments: Limit the amount of comments to gather. Comma-separated list of integers representing max-comments,max-parents,max-replies,max-replies-per-thread. Default is all,all,all,all
  • E.g. all,all,1000,10 will get a maximum of 1000 replies total, with up to 10 replies per thread. 1000,all,100 will get a maximum of 1000 comments, with a maximum of 100 replies total
• innertube_host: Innertube API host to use for all API requests
  • e.g. studio.youtube.com, youtubei.googleapis.com
  • Note: Cookies exported from www.youtube.com will not work with hosts other than *.youtube.com
• innertube_key: Innertube API key to use for all API requests

youtubetab (YouTube playlists, channels, feeds, etc.)

• skip: One or more of webpage (skip initial webpage download), authcheck (allow the download of playlists requiring authentication when no initial webpage is downloaded. This may cause unwanted behavior, see #1122 for more details)
• approximate_date: Extract approximate upload_date in flat-playlist. This may cause date-based filters to be slightly off

funimation

• language: Languages to extract. Eg: funimation:language=english,japanese
• version: The video version to extract - uncut or simulcast

crunchyroll

• language: Languages to extract. Eg: crunchyroll:language=jaJp
• hardsub: Which hard-sub versions to extract. Eg: crunchyroll:hardsub=None,enUS

crunchyrollbeta

• format: Which stream type(s) to extract. Default is adaptive_hls Eg: crunchyrollbeta:format=vo_adaptive_hls
  • Potentially useful values include adaptive_hls, adaptive_dash, vo_adaptive_hls, vo_adaptive_dash, download_hls, trailer_hls, trailer_dash
• hardsub: Preference order for which hardsub versions to extract. Default is None (no hardsubs). Eg: crunchyrollbeta:hardsub=en-US,None

vikichannel

• video_types: Types of videos to download - one or more of episodes, movies, clips, trailers

niconico

• segment_duration: Segment duration in milliseconds for HLS-DMC formats. Use it at your own risk since this feature may result in your account termination.

youtubewebarchive

• check_all: Try to check more at the cost of more requests. One or more of thumbnails, captures

gamejolt

• comment_sort: hot (default), you (cookies needed), top, new - choose comment sorting mode (on GameJolt's side)

hotstar

• res: resolution to ignore - one or more of sd, hd, fhd
• vcodec: vcodec to ignore - one or more of h264, h265, dvh265
• dr: dynamic range to ignore - one or more of sdr, hdr10, dv

tiktok

• app_version: App version to call mobile APIs with - should be set along with manifest_app_version. (e.g. 20.2.1)
• manifest_app_version: Numeric app version to call mobile APIs with. (e.g. 221)

rokfinchannel

• tab: Which tab to download. One of new, top, videos, podcasts, streams, stacks. (E.g. rokfinchannel:tab=streams)

NOTE: These options may be changed/removed in the future without concern for backward compatibility

PLUGINS

Plugins are loaded from <root-dir>/ytdlp_plugins/<type>/__init__.py; where <root-dir> is the directory of the binary (<root-dir>/yt-dlp), or the root directory of the module if you are running directly from source-code (<root dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py). Plugins are currently not supported for the pip version

Plugins can be of <type>s extractor or postprocessor. Extractor plugins do not need to be enabled from the CLI and are automatically invoked when the input URL is suitable for it. Postprocessor plugins can be invoked using --use-postprocessor NAME.

See ytdlp_plugins for example plugins.

Note that all plugins are imported even if not invoked, and that there are no checks performed on plugin code. Use plugins at your own risk and only if you trust the code

If you are a plugin author, add ytdlp-plugins as a topic to your repository for discoverability

EMBEDDING YT-DLP

yt-dlp makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and thus should be callable from any programming language.

Your program should avoid parsing the normal stdout since they may change in future versions. Instead they should use options such as -J, --print, --progress-template, --exec etc to create console output that you can reliably reproduce and parse.

From a Python program, you can embed yt-dlp in a more powerful fashion, like this:

from yt_dlp import YoutubeDL

URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']
with YoutubeDL() as ydl:
    ydl.download(URLS)

Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options available, have a look at yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py.

Tip: If you are porting your code from youtube-dl to yt-dlp, one important point to look out for is that we do not guarantee the return value of YoutubeDL.extract_info to be json serializable, or even be a dictionary. It will be dictionary-like, but if you want to ensure it is a serializable dictionary, pass it through YoutubeDL.sanitize_info as shown in the example below

Embedding examples

Extracting information

import json
import yt_dlp

URL = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'

# ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.YoutubeDL) for a list of available options and public functions
ydl_opts = {}
with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
    info = ydl.extract_info(URL, download=False)

    # ℹ️ ydl.sanitize_info makes the info json-serializable
    print(json.dumps(ydl.sanitize_info(info)))

Download using an info-json

import yt_dlp

INFO_FILE = 'path/to/video.info.json'

with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL() as ydl:
    error_code = ydl.download_with_info_file(INFO_FILE)

print('Some videos failed to download' if error_code
      else 'All videos successfully downloaded')

Extract audio

import yt_dlp

URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']

ydl_opts = {
    'format': 'm4a/bestaudio/best',
    # ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.postprocessor) for a list of available Postprocessors and their arguments
    'postprocessors': [{  # Extract audio using ffmpeg
        'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
        'preferredcodec': 'm4a',
    }]
}

with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
    error_code = ydl.download(URLS)

Filter videos

import yt_dlp

URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']

def longer_than_a_minute(info, *, incomplete):
    """Download only videos longer than a minute (or with unknown duration)"""
    duration = info.get('duration')
    if duration and duration < 60:
        return 'The video is too short'

ydl_opts = {
    'match_filter': longer_than_a_minute,
}

with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
    error_code = ydl.download(URLS)

Adding logger and progress hook

import yt_dlp

URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']

class MyLogger:
    def debug(self, msg):
        # For compatibility with youtube-dl, both debug and info are passed into debug
        # You can distinguish them by the prefix '[debug] '
        if msg.startswith('[debug] '):
            pass
        else:
            self.info(msg)

    def info(self, msg):
        pass

    def warning(self, msg):
        pass

    def error(self, msg):
        print(msg)


# ℹ️ See "progress_hooks" in help(yt_dlp.YoutubeDL)
def my_hook(d):
    if d['status'] == 'finished':
        print('Done downloading, now post-processing ...')


ydl_opts = {
    'logger': MyLogger(),
    'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
}

with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
    ydl.download(URLS)

Add a custom PostProcessor

import yt_dlp

URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']

# ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.postprocessor.PostProcessor)
class MyCustomPP(yt_dlp.postprocessor.PostProcessor):
    def run(self, info):
        self.to_screen('Doing stuff')
        return [], info


with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL() as ydl:
    ydl.add_post_processor(MyCustomPP())
    ydl.download(URLS)

Use a custom format selector

import yt_dlp

URL = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']

def format_selector(ctx):
    """ Select the best video and the best audio that won't result in an mkv.
    NOTE: This is just an example and does not handle all cases """

    # formats are already sorted worst to best
    formats = ctx.get('formats')[::-1]

    # acodec='none' means there is no audio
    best_video = next(f for f in formats
                      if f['vcodec'] != 'none' and f['acodec'] == 'none')

    # find compatible audio extension
    audio_ext = {'mp4': 'm4a', 'webm': 'webm'}[best_video['ext']]
    # vcodec='none' means there is no video
    best_audio = next(f for f in formats if (
        f['acodec'] != 'none' and f['vcodec'] == 'none' and f['ext'] == audio_ext))

    # These are the minimum required fields for a merged format
    yield {
        'format_id': f'{best_video["format_id"]}+{best_audio["format_id"]}',
        'ext': best_video['ext'],
        'requested_formats': [best_video, best_audio],
        # Must be + separated list of protocols
        'protocol': f'{best_video["protocol"]}+{best_audio["protocol"]}'
    }


ydl_opts = {
    'format': format_selector,
}

with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
    ydl.download(URLS)

DEPRECATED OPTIONS

These are all the deprecated options and the current alternative to achieve the same effect

Almost redundant options

While these options are almost the same as their new counterparts, there are some differences that prevents them being redundant

-j, --dump-json                  --print "%()j"
-F, --list-formats               --print formats_table
--list-thumbnails                --print thumbnails_table --print playlist:thumbnails_table
--list-subs                      --print automatic_captions_table --print subtitles_table

Redundant options

While these options are redundant, they are still expected to be used due to their ease of use

--get-description                --print description
--get-duration                   --print duration_string
--get-filename                   --print filename
--get-format                     --print format
--get-id                         --print id
--get-thumbnail                  --print thumbnail
-e, --get-title                  --print title
-g, --get-url                    --print urls
--match-title REGEX              --match-filter "title ~= (?i)REGEX"
--reject-title REGEX             --match-filter "title !~= (?i)REGEX"
--min-views COUNT                --match-filter "view_count >=? COUNT"
--max-views COUNT                --match-filter "view_count <=? COUNT"
--user-agent UA                  --add-header "User-Agent:UA"
--referer URL                    --add-header "Referer:URL"

Not recommended

While these options still work, their use is not recommended since there are other alternatives to achieve the same

--exec-before-download CMD       --exec "before_dl:CMD"
--no-exec-before-download        --no-exec
--all-formats                    -f all
--all-subs                       --sub-langs all --write-subs
--print-json                     -j --no-simulate
--autonumber-size NUMBER         Use string formatting. Eg: %(autonumber)03d
--autonumber-start NUMBER        Use internal field formatting like %(autonumber+NUMBER)s
--id                             -o "%(id)s.%(ext)s"
--metadata-from-title FORMAT     --parse-metadata "%(title)s:FORMAT"
--hls-prefer-native              --downloader "m3u8:native"
--hls-prefer-ffmpeg              --downloader "m3u8:ffmpeg"
--list-formats-old               --compat-options list-formats (Alias: --no-list-formats-as-table)
--list-formats-as-table          --compat-options -list-formats [Default] (Alias: --no-list-formats-old)
--youtube-skip-dash-manifest     --extractor-args "youtube:skip=dash" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-dash-manifest)
--youtube-skip-hls-manifest      --extractor-args "youtube:skip=hls" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-hls-manifest)
--youtube-include-dash-manifest  Default (Alias: --no-youtube-skip-dash-manifest)
--youtube-include-hls-manifest   Default (Alias: --no-youtube-skip-hls-manifest)

Developer options

These options are not intended to be used by the end-user

--test                           Download only part of video for testing extractors
--load-pages                     Load pages dumped by --write-pages
--youtube-print-sig-code         For testing youtube signatures
--allow-unplayable-formats       List unplayable formats also
--no-allow-unplayable-formats    Default

Old aliases

These are aliases that are no longer documented for various reasons

--avconv-location                --ffmpeg-location
--clean-infojson                 --clean-info-json
--cn-verification-proxy URL      --geo-verification-proxy URL
--dump-headers                   --print-traffic
--dump-intermediate-pages        --dump-pages
--force-write-download-archive   --force-write-archive
--load-info                      --load-info-json
--no-clean-infojson              --no-clean-info-json
--no-split-tracks                --no-split-chapters
--no-write-srt                   --no-write-subs
--prefer-unsecure                --prefer-insecure
--rate-limit RATE                --limit-rate RATE
--split-tracks                   --split-chapters
--srt-lang LANGS                 --sub-langs LANGS
--trim-file-names LENGTH         --trim-filenames LENGTH
--write-srt                      --write-subs
--yes-overwrites                 --force-overwrites

Sponskrub Options

Support for SponSkrub has been deprecated in favor of the --sponsorblock options

--sponskrub                      --sponsorblock-mark all
--no-sponskrub                   --no-sponsorblock
--sponskrub-cut                  --sponsorblock-remove all
--no-sponskrub-cut               --sponsorblock-remove -all
--sponskrub-force                Not applicable
--no-sponskrub-force             Not applicable
--sponskrub-location             Not applicable
--sponskrub-args                 Not applicable

No longer supported

These options may no longer work as intended

--prefer-avconv                  avconv is not officially supported by yt-dlp (Alias: --no-prefer-ffmpeg)
--prefer-ffmpeg                  Default (Alias: --no-prefer-avconv)
-C, --call-home                  Not implemented
--no-call-home                   Default
--include-ads                    No longer supported
--no-include-ads                 Default
--write-annotations              No supported site has annotations now
--no-write-annotations           Default

Removed

These options were deprecated since 2014 and have now been entirely removed.

-A, --auto-number                -o "%(autonumber)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"
-t, -l, --title, --literal       -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"

 

from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

-----

YT4KDownloader，B站/油管视频下载器

正如上面所说，youtube-dl功能强大，支持全球各大主流视频站，同时具备丰富的命令，奈何由于版权原因，项目基本已经不再维护，同时在使用上有一定限制，让人实在感到可惜。好在，它的衍生项目yt-dlp一直在积极更新，在集成了前者的优秀特性基础上，增添了许多新特性，是目前活跃的优秀youtube-dl衍生项目。

YT4KDownloader，是基于yt-dlp项目开发的GUI版，简单的说就是提供了软件界面，让操作更加简单。yt-dlp项目本身支持的视频网站众多，全球范围内主流的视频网址均可解析，在YT4KDownloader中，主要是用于下载油管与B站视频。

首先YT4KDownloader的界面相当简洁，使用时只需粘贴视频链接，添加下载任务即可。

根据阿刚的实测，针对油管，它可以解析出最高画质，默认是选择最大体积，你也可以在解析完成后在列表自由选择自由组合。

针对B站，你甚至无需登录账号就可以解析下载最高8k的画质。

YT4KDownloader内置了FFmpeg，在下载完成后自动将视频、音频合并。

小结：

yt-dlp在Github备受好评，是一款强大的视频解析下载工具，YT4KDownloader使得它变的更加简单易上手，几乎是一键式下载视频。

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YoutubeDownloader，简单好用的油管视频下载工具

诸如youtube-dl这样的命令行工具，起初主要是为了解析下载Youtube视频。作为全球最大的视频平台，youtube拥有海量的音视频资源内容，但本身不提供下载。因此相关的工具一直是香饽饽，一些在线解析站居然靠此收费，上面介绍的you-get和annie都可以下载Youtube，如果你不喜欢命令行，可以试试这款YoutubeDownloader。

YoutubeDownloader是github上一个开源项目，顾名思义，它主要用于下载youtube视频，只需复制粘贴播放地址，即可解析下载。它的主要功能：

    支持单个视频，播放列表，频道和搜索查询

    多种输出格式：mp4，webm，mp3，ogg

    可选择视频质量

    可同时批量下载

    音频自动标记

工具非常的简洁，使用超简单，粘贴播放地址选择你想下载的画质即可，当然前提必须能正常观看油管才行。

https://github.com/search?q=YoutubeDownloader&type=repositories