Introduction to yt-dlp

Overview

yt-dlp is a command-line tool for downloading audio and video from YouTube and other sites. This post will serve as a basic introduction to the program.

yt-dlp is a maintained fork of youtube-dl with many new features and improvements. It allows extensive control over the output of the command, from format to quality to file name.

Installing yt-dlp

yt-dlp is available from these package managers with the following package names (non-exhaustive):

• APT: yt-dlp
• DNF: yt-dlp
• Homebrew: yt-dlp
• Pacman: yt-dlp
• Pip: yt-dlp
• Winget: yt-dlp

If your preferred package is not listed or you wish to install yt-dlp manually, consult the installation page of the yt-dlp wiki.

Basic usage

To use yt-dlp, simply open a terminal in whichever folder you want to download to and type yt-dlp <URL>.

FFmpeg

To access most of the more advanced features of yt-dlp, you will likely need to install FFmpeg. FFmpeg is a tool for processing audio and video and adds functionality to yt-dlp. Like yt-dlp, FFmpeg is available from a variety of package managers (non-exhaustive):

• APT: ffmpeg
• DNF: ffmpeg-free
• Homebrew: ffmpeg
• Pacman: ffmpeg
• Winget: Gyan.FFmpeg

For other package managers, see the Repology page for FFmpeg. Alternatively, download FFmpeg manually from their site.

Options

yt-dlp has a vast selection of command options that allow fine-grained control over the output. They can be found in the man page (man yt-dlp), help command (yt-dlp -h or yt-dlp --help), or on the yt-dlp README.

Some common yt-dlp options are:

• -f or --format: specify video format. For example, yt-dlp -f mkv <URL> will output the specified video in Matroska format. Also takes arguments like bestvideo and bestaudio.
• -x or --extract-audio: extract only the audio from the given video.
• --audio-format: specify the audio format. Useful in conjuction with -x. For example, yt-dlp -x --audio-format opus <URL> will output the given URL as Opus audio.
• -o or --output: specify the output template (file name). Supports a variety of field names (e.g. ‘title’, ‘artist’, ‘uploader’, etc.) and Python string formatting. Read the output template section of the yt-dlp README to get the most out of it.