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# yt-dlp

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yt-dlp is a command-line program that lets you easily download videos and audio from more than a thousand websites. See the list of supported sites.

Note yt-dlp is a fork of youtube-dl that was created after the parent project became stagnant. The upstream youtube-dl can still be installed as youtube-dlAUR; commands on this page should still work, but check the list of differences.

## Installation

Install the yt-dlp package. See the optional dependencies, a notable one to install is FFmpeg for muxing on some sites.

There are also various graphical frontends to yt-dlp, such as tartubeAUR and yt-dlg-gitAUR.

You can also install yt-dlp-drop-inAUR which provides a dummy `/usr/bin/youtube-dl` executable (that just redirects to yt-dlp) for outdated programs that still look for a youtube-dl executable.

## Configuration

The system-wide configuration file is `/etc/yt-dlp.conf` and the user-specific configuration file is `~/.config/yt-dlp/config`. The syntax is simply one command-line option per line. Example configuration:

    --ignore-errors
    # --no-playlist

    # Save in ~/Videos
    -o ~/Videos/%(title)s.%(ext)s

    # Prefer 1080p or lower resolutions
    -f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best

See [1] for more information.

A custom configuration file can also be specified with:

    $ yt-dlp URL --config-locations PATH

## Usage

See yt-dlp(1) for the manual.

    $ yt-dlp [OPTIONS] URL

Tip In some cases (like YouTube) `URL` can be substituted with the video ID.

### Format selection

When multiple formats of a video are available, youtube-dl will download the best ones by default.

To get a list of the available formats:

    $ yt-dlp -F URL

To select a specific one to download:

    $ yt-dlp -f format URL

To automatically select the best video format, but exclude specific formats - for example, when the system does not support H.265:

    $ yt-dlp -f "bestvideo[vcodec!=h265]+bestaudio" URL

### Extract audio

Use `-x` for audio-only downloads (requires FFmpeg):

    $ yt-dlp -x -f bestaudio URL

Depending on the available source streams, this will often correct the audio-only container. If an audio-only stream is not available, exclude `-f bestaudio` from the example above. This will download the video and copy its audio as post process. By default this will remove the downloaded video, include `-k` to keep it.

To also include album art (requires atomicparsley):

    $ yt-dlp -x -f bestaudio[ext=m4a] --add-metadata --embed-thumbnail URL

### Subtitles

To see which languages are available:

    $ yt-dlp --list-subs URL

To download a video with selected subtitles (comma separated):

    $ yt-dlp --write-sub --sub-lang LANG URL

For auto-generated subtitles:

    $ yt-dlp --write-auto-sub --sub-lang LANG URL

Add `--skip-download` to get only subtitles.

### Cookies

To import cookies add the `--cookies-from-browser <browser>`

Example of importing cookies from chromium

    $ yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser chromium URL

## Tips and tricks

### Faster downloads

Some websites throttle transfer speeds. You can often get around this by choosing non DASH streams or by using aria2, an external downloader which supports multi-connection downloads. For example:

    $ yt-dlp --downloader aria2c --downloader-args '-c -j 3 -x 3 -s 3 -k 1M' URL

### Playlist

Using youtube-dl for a playlist usually boils down to the following options:

    $ yt-dlp --ignore-errors --continue --no-overwrites --download-archive progress.txt usual options URL

This set of options allow for the download to effectively continue even after interruption. If you are archiving, add the usual `--write-xxx` and `--embed-xxx` options you may have.

### Trim (partial download)

Parts of videos can be downloaded by using the output of `yt-dlp -g -f format URL` as ffmpeg input with the `-ss` (for input), `-t` and `-c copy` options.

### URL from clipboard

A shell alias, a desktop launcher or a keyboard shortcut can be set to download a video (or audio) of a selected (or copied) URL by outputting it from the X selection. See Clipboard#Tools.

## See also

- GitHub repository for documentation.

Categories:

- Download utilities
- Streaming

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