README

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

- INSTALLATION
- DESCRIPTION
- OPTIONS
- CONFIGURATION
- OUTPUT TEMPLATE
- FORMAT SELECTION
- VIDEO SELECTION
- FAQ
- DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
- EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
- BUGS
- COPYRIGHT

 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
                              

Top issues

Latest release

This release is old and has many known issues. See "... commits to master since this release" above.

You almost certainly want the nightly build release, and not this one. The nightly build is created from the master branch of this repo if changes have been committed since the last build. Read about Installation of the nightly build. Major fixes in the nightly build are listed here.

Core
 [postprocessor/ffmpeg] Show ffmpeg output on error (22680, 29336)

Extractors
 [youtube] Update signature function patterns (30363, 30366)
 [peertube] Only call description endpoint if necessary (2