youtube-dl - ArchWiki

# youtube-dl

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- mpv
- FFmpeg

youtube-dl 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.

## Installation

Install the youtube-dl package, or youtube-dl-gitAUR for the development version. It is recommended to also install FFmpeg as it is used for muxing for some sites. See the optional dependencies.

## Configuration

The system-wide configuration file is `/etc/youtube-dl.conf` and the user-specific configuration file is `~/.config/youtube-dl/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[ext=mp4][height<1200]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestvideo[ext=webm][height<1200]+bestaudio[ext=webm]/bestvideo[height<1200]+bestaudio/best[height<1200]/best

See [1] for more information.

## Usage

See youtube-dl(1) for the manual.

    $ youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL

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

### Format selection

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

To select a specific one to download, first get a list of the available formats:

    $ youtube-dl -F URL

Note the code of the format you want, then run:

    $ youtube-dl -f format URL

### Extract audio

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

    $ youtube-dl -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):

    $ youtube-dl -x -f bestaudio[ext=m4a] --embed-thumbnail URL

### Subtitles

To see which languages are available:

    $ youtube-dl --list-subs URL

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

    $ youtube-dl --write-sub --sub-lang LANG URL

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

## 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:

    $ youtube-dl --external-downloader aria2c --external-downloader-args '-c -j 3 -x 3 -s 3 -k 1M' URL

### Trim (partial download)

Parts of videos can be downloaded by using the output of `youtube-dl -g -f format URL` as ffmpeg input with the `-ss`, `-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