yt-dlp - A youtube-dl fork with additional features and
patches
yt-dlp [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
yt-dlp is a youtube-dl (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl)
fork based on the now inactive youtube-dlc
(https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc). The main focus of this project is
adding new features and patches while also keeping up to date with the
original project
- -h, --help
- Print this help text and exit
- --version
- Print program version and exit
- -U, --update
- Update this program to the latest version
- --no-update
- Do not check for updates (default)
- --update-to
[CHANNEL]@[TAG]
- Upgrade/downgrade to a specific version. CHANNEL and TAG defaults to
"stable" and "latest" respectively if omitted; See
"UPDATE" for details. Supported channels: stable, nightly
- -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 all supported extractors and exit
- Output descriptions of all supported extractors and exit
- Extractor names to use separated by commas. You can also use regexes,
"all", "default" and "end" (end URL
matching); e.g. --ies "holodex.*,end,youtube". Prefix the name
with a "-" to exclude it, e.g. --ies default,-generic. Use
--list-extractors for a list of extractor names. (Alias: --ies)
- --default-search
PREFIX
- Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. E.g. "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 (Alias: --no-colours)
- --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. E.g. --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 careful 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
- --proxy URL
- Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy. To enable SOCKS proxy, specify a
proper scheme, e.g. 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
- --enable-file-urls
- Enable file:// URLs. This is disabled by default for security
reasons.
- --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
- -I, --playlist-items
ITEM_SPEC
- Comma separated playlist_index of the items to download. You can specify a
range using "[START]:[STOP][:STEP]". For backward compatibility,
START-STOP is also supported. Use negative indices to count from the right
and negative STEP to download in reverse order. E.g. "-I
1:3,7,-5::2" used on a playlist of size 15 will download the items at
index 1,2,3,7,11,13,15
- --min-filesize
SIZE
- Abort download if filesize is smaller than SIZE, e.g. 50k or 44.6M
- --max-filesize
SIZE
- Abort download if filesize is 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]]. E.g. "--date
today-2weeks" downloads only videos uploaded on the same day two
weeks ago
- --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. E.g. --match-filter !is_live --match-filter
"like_count>?100 & description~='(?i)& dogs" 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 any --match-filter (default)
- --break-match-filters
FILTER
- Same as "--match-filters" but stops the download process when a
video is rejected
- --no-break-match-filters
- Do not use any --break-match-filters (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-per-input
- Alters --max-downloads, --break-on-existing, --break-match-filter, and
autonumber to reset per 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
- -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
- Time to sleep between retries in seconds (optionally) prefixed by the type
of retry (http (default), fragment, file_access, extractor) 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, e.g. --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-fragments)
- --abort-on-unavailable-fragments
- 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-random
- Download playlist videos in random order
- --lazy-playlist
- Process entries in the playlist as they are received. This disables
n_entries, --playlist-random and --playlist-reverse
- --no-lazy-playlist
- Process videos in the playlist only after the entire playlist is parsed
(default)
- --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. Needs ffmpeg.
This option can be used multiple times to download multiple
sections, e.g. --download-sections "10:15-inf"
--download-sections "intro"
- --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. E.g. --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)
- -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
- 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)
- 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][::CONTAINER]
- The name of the browser to load cookies from. Currently supported browsers
are: brave, chrome, chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari, vivaldi.
Optionally, the KEYRING used for decrypting Chromium cookies on Linux, the
name/path of the PROFILE to load cookies from, and the CONTAINER name (if
Firefox) ("none" for no container) can be given with their
respective seperators. By default, all containers of the most recently
accessed profile are used. 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 yt-dlp can store some downloaded
information (such as client ids and signatures) permanently. By default
${XDG_CACHE_HOME}/yt-dlp
- --no-cache-dir
- Disable filesystem caching
- --rm-cache-dir
- Delete all filesystem cache files
- --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
- -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 (default:
video). 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
- --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)
- 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
- -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
- Containers that may be used when merging formats, separated by
"/", e.g. "mp4/mkv". Ignored if no merge is required.
(currently supported: avi, flv, mkv, mov, mp4, webm)
- --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, e.g. "srt" or
"ass/srt/best"
- --sub-langs
LANGS
- Languages of the subtitles to download (can be regex) or "all"
separated by commas, e.g. --sub-langs "en.*,ja". You can prefix
the language code with a "-" to exclude it from the requested
languages, e.g. --sub-langs all,-live_chat. Use --list-subs for a list of
available language tags
- -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
- -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), aac, alac, flac, m4a, mp3, opus, vorbis, 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:
avi, flv, gif, mkv, mov, mp4, webm, aac, aiff, alac, flac, m4a, mka, mp3,
ogg, opus, vorbis, wav). If target container does not support the
video/audio codec, remuxing will fail. You can specify multiple rules;
e.g. "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, e.g. --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
[WHEN:]FROM:TO
- Parse additional metadata like title/artist from other fields; see
"MODIFYING METADATA" for details. Supported values of
"WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default:
pre_process)
- --replace-in-metadata
[WHEN:]FIELDS REGEX REPLACE
- Replace text in a metadata field using the given regex. This option can be
used multiple times. Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as
that of --use-postprocessor (default: pre_process)
- --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, separated
by a ":". Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as
that of --use-postprocessor (default: after_move). 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,_filename|)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: ass, lrc,
srt, vtt) (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),
"video" (after --format; before --print/--output),
"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
Make chapter entries for, or remove various segments (sponsor,
introductions, etc.) from downloaded YouTube videos using the SponsorBlock
API (https://sponsor.ajay.app)
- SponsorBlock categories to create chapters for, separated by commas.
Available categories are sponsor, intro, outro, selfpromo, preview,
filler, interaction, music_offtopic, poi_highlight, chapter, all and
default (=all). You can prefix the category with a "-" to
exclude it. See [1] for description of the categories. E.g.
--sponsorblock-mark all,-preview [1]
https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Segment_Categories
- 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, chapter are not available
- 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"
- Disable both --sponsorblock-mark and --sponsorblock-remove
- SponsorBlock API location, defaults to https://sponsor.ajay.app
- 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)
- Pass ARGS arguments to the IE_KEY extractor. See "EXTRACTOR
ARGUMENTS" for details. You can use this option multiple times to
give arguments for different extractors
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: (Recommended for portable
installations)
- •
- If using a binary, yt-dlp.conf in the same directory as the binary
- •
- If running from source-code, yt-dlp.conf in the parent directory of
yt_dlp
- 3.
- Home Configuration:
- •
- yt-dlp.conf in the home path given by -P
- •
- If -P is not given, the current directory is searched
- 4.
- User Configuration:
- •
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp.conf
- •
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Linux/macOS)
- •
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/config.txt
- •
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp.conf
- •
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Windows)
- •
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/config.txt
- •
- ~/yt-dlp.conf
- •
- ~/yt-dlp.conf.txt
- •
- ~/.yt-dlp/config
- •
- ~/.yt-dlp/config.txt See also: Notes about environment variables
- 5.
- System Configuration:
- •
- /etc/yt-dlp.conf
- •
- /etc/yt-dlp/config
- •
- /etc/yt-dlp/config.txt
E.g. 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: 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. They must also be quoted when necessary as-if it were a UNIX
shell.
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.
The configuration files are decoded according to the UTF BOM if
present, and in the encoding from system locale otherwise.
If you want your file to be decoded differently, add # coding:
ENCODING to the beginning of the file (e.g. # coding: shift-jis). There must
be no characters before that, even spaces or BOM.
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 (https://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info) 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>
E.g.
-
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 ~ (see below).
- •
- Environment variables are normally specified as ${VARIABLE}/$VARIABLE on
UNIX and %VARIABLE% on Windows; but is always shown as ${VARIABLE} in this
documentation
- •
- yt-dlp also allow using UNIX-style variables on Windows for path-like
options; e.g. --output, --config-location
- •
- If unset, ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME} defaults to ~/.config and ${XDG_CACHE_HOME}
to ~/.cache
- •
- On Windows, ~ points to ${HOME} if present; or, ${USERPROFILE} or
${HOMEDRIVE}${HOMEPATH} otherwise
- •
- On Windows, ${USERPROFILE} generally points to C:\Users\<user name>
and ${APPDATA} to ${USERPROFILE}\AppData\Roaming
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.
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
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting),
e.g. %(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; e.g. %(tags.0)s,
%(subtitles.en.-1.ext)s. You can do Python slicing with colon :; E.g.
%(id.3:7:-1)s, %(formats.:.format_id)s. Curly braces {} can be used to
build dictionaries with only specific keys; e.g.
%(formats.:.{format_id,height})#j. An empty field name %()s refers to the
entire infodict; e.g. %(.{id,title})s. 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. E.g. %(playlist_index+10)03d,
%(n_entries+1-playlist_index)d
- 3.
- Date/time Formatting: Date/time fields can be formatted according
to strftime formatting
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-format-codes)
by specifying it separated from the field name using a >. E.g.
%(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 ,.
E.g. %(release_date>%Y,upload_date>%Y|Unknown)s
- 5.
- Replacement: A replacement value can be 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-placeholder. E.g. %(uploader|Unknown)s
- 7.
- More Conversions: In addition to the normal format types
diouxXeEfFgGcrs, yt-dlp additionally supports converting to B =
Bytes, j = json (flag # for pretty-printing, + for Unicode),
h = HTML escaping, l = a comma separated list (flag # for \n
newline-separated), q = a string quoted for the terminal (flag # to
split a list into different arguments), D = add Decimal suffixes
(e.g. 10M) (flag # to use 1024 as factor), and S = Sanitize as
filename (flag # for restricted)
- 8.
- Unicode normalization: The format type U can be used for NFC
Unicode normalization
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/unicodedata.html#unicodedata.normalize).
The alternate form flag (#) changes the normalization to NFD and the
conversion flag + can be used for NFKC/NFKD compatibility equivalence
normalization. E.g. %(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. E.g. -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. E.g. --write-thumbnail -o
"thumbnail:" will write thumbnails only for playlists and not for
video.
Note: Due to post-processing (i.e. merging etc.), the
actual output filename might differ. Use --print after_move:filepath to get
the name after all post-processing is complete.
The available fields are:
- •
- id (string): Video identifier
- •
- title (string): Video title
- •
- fulltitle (string): Video title ignoring live timestamp and generic
title
- •
- 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
- •
- concurrent_view_count (numeric): How many users are currently watching 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 "not_live", "is_live",
"is_upcoming", "was_live", "post_live" (was
live, but VOD is not yet processed)
- •
- 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
- •
- 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)
All the fields in Filtering Formats can also be used
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 differ
- •
- 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
(https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Types#Category) 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
- •
- type (string): The SponsorBlock action type
(https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Types#Action_Type) of the chapter
Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template
will be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name.
E.g. 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: 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
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting);
e.g. %(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.
-
$ yt-dlp --print filename -o "test video.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
test video.webm # Literal name with correct extension
$ yt-dlp --print filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.webm # All kinds of weird characters
$ yt-dlp --print 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
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.
The simplest case is requesting a specific format; e.g. 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 or both (ie; vcodec!=none or acodec!=none)
- •
- 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!
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/979#issuecomment-919629354))
- •
- 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; e.g. -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); e.g. -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. E.g. -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 only best while -f bestaudio+best
--no-audio-multistreams will ignore best and download only 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
- •
- filesize_approx: An estimate for the number of bytes
- •
- width: Width of the video, if known
- •
- height: Height of the video, if known
- •
- aspect_ratio: Aspect ratio 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
- •
- audio_channels: The number of audio channels
- •
- stretched_ratio: width:height of the video's pixels, if not square
Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with),
$= (ends with), *= (contains), ~= (matches regex) and following string meta
fields:
- •
- url: Video URL
- •
- 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)
- •
- language: Language code
- •
- dynamic_range: The dynamic range of the video
- •
- format_id: A short description of the format
- •
- format: A human-readable description of the format
- •
- format_note: Additional info about the format
- •
- resolution: Textual description of width and height
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: 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, e.g. -f "all[vcodec=none]" selects all
audio-only formats.
Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses; e.g. -f
"(mp4,webm)[height<480]" will download the best pre-merged mp4
and webm formats with a height lower than 480.
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 have a video stream
- •
- hasaud: Gives priority to formats that have an 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 > ac4 > eac3 > ac3 > dts >
other)
- •
- codec: Equivalent to vcodec,acodec
- •
- vext: Video Extension (mp4 > mov > 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 ogg
> opus > webm > mp3 > m4a > 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)
- •
- channels: The number of audio channels
- •
- 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 +. E.g. +res prefers format
with the smallest resolution. Additionally, you can suffix a preferred value
for the fields, separated by a :. E.g. 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. E.g. +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. E.g. 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,vcodec:vp9.2,channels,acodec,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 vcodec: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).
-
# 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 > mov > 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"
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
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#regular-expression-syntax).
Backreferences
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html?highlight=backreferences#re.sub)
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
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#regular-expression-syntax) with
named capture groups, a single field name, 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 these options preserve their relative order, allowing
replacements to be made in parsed fields and viceversa. Also, any field thus
created can be used in the output template and will also affect the media
file's metadata added when using --embed-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. E.g. --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 - you can use this to set a
different "description" and "synopsis". To modify the
metadata of individual streams, use the meta<n>_ prefix (e.g.
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
-
# 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" --embed-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>.+)" --embed-metadata
# Do not set any "synopsis" in the video metadata
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata ":(?P<meta_synopsis>)"
# 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" "[ _]" "-"
Some extractors accept additional arguments which can be passed
using --extractor-args KEY:ARGS. ARGS is a ; (semicolon) separated string of
ARG=VAL1,VAL2. E.g. --extractor-args
"youtube:player-client=android_embedded,web;include_live_dash"
--extractor-args "funimation:version=uncut"
Note: In CLI, ARG can use - instead of _; e.g.
youtube:player-client" becomes youtube:player_client"
The following extractors use this feature:
- •
- lang: Prefer translated metadata (title, description etc) of this language
code (case-sensitive). By default, the video primary language metadata is
preferred, with a fallback to en translated. See youtube.py
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/c26f9b991a0681fd3ea548d535919cec1fbbd430/yt_dlp/extractor/youtube.py#L381-L390)
for list of supported content language codes
- •
- skip: One or more of hls, dash or translated_subs to skip extraction of
the m3u8 manifests, dash manifests and auto-translated subtitles
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/4090#issuecomment-1158102032)
respectively
- •
- player_client: Clients to extract video data from. The main clients are
web, android and ios with variants _music, _embedded, _embedscreen,
_creator (e.g. 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
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/860) for more details
- •
- 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
- •
- include_incomplete_formats: Extract formats that cannot be downloaded
completely (live dash and post-live m3u8)
- •
- innertube_host: Innertube API host to use for all API requests; e.g.
studio.youtube.com, youtubei.googleapis.com. Note that cookies exported
from one subdomain will not work on others
- •
- innertube_key: Innertube API key to use for all API requests
- •
- 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
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/1122) for more details)
- •
- approximate_date: Extract approximate upload_date and timestamp in
flat-playlist. This may cause date-based filters to be slightly off
- •
- fragment_query: Passthrough any query in mpd/m3u8 manifest URLs to their
fragments. Does not apply to ffmpeg
- •
- language: Audio languages to extract, e.g.
funimation:language=english,japanese
- •
- version: The video version to extract - uncut or simulcast
- •
- format: Which stream type(s) to extract (default: adaptive_hls).
Potentially useful values include adaptive_hls, adaptive_dash,
vo_adaptive_hls, vo_adaptive_dash, download_hls, download_dash,
multitrack_adaptive_hls_v2
- •
- hardsub: Preference order for which hardsub versions to extract, or all
(default: None = no hardsubs), e.g.
crunchyrollbeta:hardsub=en-US,None
- •
- video_types: Types of videos to download - one or more of episodes,
movies, clips, trailers
- •
- 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.
- •
- check_all: Try to check more at the cost of more requests. One or more of
thumbnails, captures
- •
- comment_sort: hot (default), you (cookies needed), top, new - choose
comment sorting mode (on GameJolt's side)
- •
- 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
- •
- api_hostname: Hostname to use for mobile API requests, e.g.
api-h2.tiktokv.com
- •
- 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
- •
- tab: Which tab to download - one of new, top, videos, podcasts, streams,
stacks
- •
- force_graphql: Force usage of the GraphQL API. By default it will only be
used if login cookies are provided
Note: These options may be changed/removed in the future
without concern for backward compatibility
You can install yt-dlp using the binaries, PIP
(https://pypi.org/project/yt-dlp) or one using a third-party package
manager. See the wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation)
for detailed instructions
You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the release
binaries
If you installed with PIP
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation#with-pip), simply re-run
the same command that was used to install the program
For other third-party package managers, see the wiki
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation#third-party-package-managers)
or refer their documentation
There are currently two release channels for binaries, stable and
nightly. stable is the default channel, and many of its changes have been
tested by users of the nightly channel. The nightly channel has releases
built after each push to the master branch, and will have the most recent
fixes and additions, but also have more risk of regressions. They are
available in their own repo
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases).
When using --update/-U, a release binary will only update to its
current channel. This release channel can be changed by using the
--update-to option. --update-to can also be used to upgrade or downgrade to
specific tags from a channel.
Example usage: * yt-dlp --update-to nightly change to nightly
channel and update to its latest release * yt-dlp --update-to
stable@2023.02.17 upgrade/downgrade to release to stable channel tag
2023.02.17 * yt-dlp --update-to 2023.01.06 upgrade/downgrade to tag
2023.01.06 if it exists on the current channel
Note: The manpages, shell completion files etc. are
available inside the source tarball
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp.tar.gz)
Python versions 3.7+ (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 (https://www.ffmpeg.org) - Required for
merging separate video and audio files as well as for various
post-processing tasks. License depends on the build
(https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html)
There are bugs in ffmpeg that causes various issues when used
alongside yt-dlp. Since ffmpeg is such an important dependency, we provide
custom builds
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds#ffmpeg-static-auto-builds) with
patches for some of these issues at yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds). See the readme
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds#patches-applied) for details on the
specific issues solved by these builds
Important: What you need is ffmpeg binary,
NOT the python package of the same name
(https://pypi.org/project/ffmpeg)
- •
- certifi (https://github.com/certifi/python-certifi)* - Provides
Mozilla's root certificate bundle. Licensed under MPLv2
(https://github.com/certifi/python-certifi/blob/master/LICENSE)
- •
- brotli (https://github.com/google/brotli)* or brotlicffi
(https://github.com/python-hyper/brotlicffi) - Brotli
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotli) content encoding support. Both
licensed under MIT 1
(https://github.com/google/brotli/blob/master/LICENSE) 2
(https://github.com/python-hyper/brotlicffi/blob/master/LICENSE)
- •
- websockets (https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets)* - For
downloading over websocket. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
(https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets/blob/main/LICENSE)
- •
- mutagen (https://github.com/quodlibet/mutagen)* - For
--embed-thumbnail in certain formats. Licensed under GPLv2+
(https://github.com/quodlibet/mutagen/blob/master/COPYING)
- •
- AtomicParsley (https://github.com/wez/atomicparsley) - For
--embed-thumbnail in mp4/m4a files when mutagen/ffmpeg cannot. Licensed
under GPLv2+
(https://github.com/wez/atomicparsley/blob/master/COPYING)
- •
- xattr (https://github.com/xattr/xattr), pyxattr
(https://github.com/iustin/pyxattr) or setfattr
(http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/attr) - For writing xattr metadata
(--xattr) on Linux. Licensed under MIT
(https://github.com/xattr/xattr/blob/master/LICENSE.txt), LGPL2.1
(https://github.com/iustin/pyxattr/blob/master/COPYING) and GPLv2+
(http://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/attr.git/tree/doc/COPYING)
respectively
- •
- pycryptodomex (https://github.com/Legrandin/pycryptodome)* - For
decrypting AES-128 HLS streams and various other data. Licensed under
BSD-2-Clause
(https://github.com/Legrandin/pycryptodome/blob/master/LICENSE.rst)
- •
- phantomjs (https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs) - Used in extractors
where javascript needs to be run. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
(https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/LICENSE.BSD)
- •
- secretstorage (https://github.com/mitya57/secretstorage) - For
--cookies-from-browser to access the Gnome keyring while decrypting
cookies of Chromium-based browsers on Linux. Licensed under
BSD-3-Clause
(https://github.com/mitya57/secretstorage/blob/master/LICENSE)
- •
- Any external downloader that you want to use with --downloader
- •
- avconv and avprobe (https://www.libav.org) - Now
deprecated alternative to ffmpeg. License depends on the build
(https://libav.org/legal)
- •
- sponskrub (https://github.com/faissaloo/SponSkrub) - For using the
now deprecated sponskrub options. Licensed under GPLv3+
(https://github.com/faissaloo/SponSkrub/blob/master/LICENCE.md)
- •
- rtmpdump (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu) - For downloading rtmp
streams. ffmpeg can be used instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed
under GPLv2+ (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu)
- •
- mplayer (http://mplayerhq.hu/design7/info.html) or mpv
(https://mpv.io) - For downloading rstp/mms streams. ffmpeg can be used
instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+
(https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/Copyright)
To use or redistribute the dependencies, you must agree to their
respective licensing terms.
The standalone release binaries are built with the Python
interpreter and the packages marked with * included.
If you do not have the necessary dependencies for a task you are
attempting, yt-dlp will warn you. All the currently available dependencies
are visible at the top of the --verbose output
To build the standalone executable, you must have Python and
pyinstaller (plus any of yt-dlp's optional dependencies if needed). Once you
have all the necessary dependencies installed, simply run pyinst.py. The
executable will be built for the same architecture (x86/ARM, 32/64 bit) as
the Python used.
-
python3 -m pip install -U pyinstaller -r requirements.txt
python3 devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py
python3 pyinst.py
On some systems, you may need to use py or python instead of
python3.
pyinst.py accepts any arguments that can be passed to pyinstaller,
such as --onefile/-F or --onedir/-D, which is further documented here
(https://pyinstaller.org/en/stable/usage.html#what-to-generate).
Note: Pyinstaller versions below 4.4 do not support
(https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller#requirements-and-tested-platforms)
Python installed from the Windows store without using a virtual
environment.
Important: Running pyinstaller directly without
using pyinst.py is not officially supported. This may or may not work
correctly.
You will need the build tools python (3.7+), zip, make (GNU),
pandoc* and pytest*.
After installing these, simply run make.
You can also run make yt-dlp instead to compile only the binary
without updating any of the additional files. (The build tools marked with
* are not needed for this)
While we provide the option to build with py2exe
(https://www.py2exe.org), it is recommended to build using PyInstaller
instead since the py2exe builds cannot contain
pycryptodomex/certifi and needs VC++14 on the target
computer to run.
If you wish to build it anyway, install Python and py2exe, and
then simply run setup.py py2exe
-
py -m pip install -U py2exe -r requirements.txt
py devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py
py setup.py py2exe
- •
- devscripts/update-version.py - Update the version number
based on current date.
- •
- devscripts/set-variant.py - Set the build variant of the
executable.
- •
- devscripts/make_changelog.py - Create a markdown changelog
using short commit messages and update CONTRIBUTORS file.
- •
- devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py - Create lazy extractors.
Running this before building the binaries (any variant) will improve their
startup performance. Set the environment variable
YTDLP_NO_LAZY_EXTRACTORS=1 if you wish to forcefully disable lazy
extractor loading.
Note: See their --help for more info.
If you fork the project on GitHub, you can run your fork's build
workflow to automatically build the selected version(s) as artifacts.
Alternatively, you can run the release workflow or enable the nightly
workflow to create full (pre-)releases.
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!
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. - Extractor
plugins take priority over builtin extractors. - Postprocessor plugins can
be invoked using --use-postprocessor NAME.
Plugins are loaded from the namespace packages
yt_dlp_plugins.extractor and yt_dlp_plugins.postprocessor.
In other words, the file structure on the disk looks something
like:
-
yt_dlp_plugins/
extractor/
myplugin.py
postprocessor/
myplugin.py
yt-dlp looks for these yt_dlp_plugins namespace folders in many
locations (see below) and loads in plugins from all of them.
See the wiki for some known plugins
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Plugins)
Plugins can be installed using various methods and locations.
- 1.
- Configuration directories: Plugin packages (containing a
yt_dlp_plugins namespace folder) can be dropped into the following
standard configuration locations:
- •
- User Plugins
- •
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
(recommended on Linux/macOS)
- •
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp-plugins/<package
name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- •
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
(recommended on Windows)
- •
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- •
- ~/.yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- •
- ~/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- •
- System Plugins
- •
- /etc/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- •
- /etc/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- 2.
- Executable location: Plugin packages can similarly be installed in
a yt-dlp-plugins directory under the executable location:
- •
- Binary: where <root-dir>/yt-dlp.exe,
<root-dir>/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- •
- Source: where <root-dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py,
<root-dir>/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- 3.
- pip and other locations in PYTHONPATH
- •
- Plugin packages can be installed and managed using pip. See
yt-dlp-sample-plugins (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-sample-plugins)
for an example.
- •
- Note: plugin files between plugin packages installed with pip must have
unique filenames.
- •
- Any path in PYTHONPATH is searched in for the yt_dlp_plugins namespace
folder.
- •
- Note: This does not apply for Pyinstaller/py2exe builds.
.zip, .egg and .whl archives containing a yt_dlp_plugins namespace
folder in their root are also supported as plugin packages. * e.g.
${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/mypluginpkg.zip where mypluginpkg.zip
contains yt_dlp_plugins/<type>/myplugin.py
Run yt-dlp with --verbose to check if the plugin has been
loaded.
See the yt-dlp-sample-plugins
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-sample-plugins) repo for a template plugin
package and the Plugin Development
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Plugin-Development) section of the
wiki for a plugin development guide.
All public classes with a name ending in IE/PP are imported from
each file for extractors and postprocessors repectively. This respects
underscore prefix (e.g. _MyBasePluginIE is private) and __all__. Modules can
similarly be excluded by prefixing the module name with an underscore (e.g.
_myplugin.py).
To replace an existing extractor with a subclass of one, set the
plugin_name class keyword argument (e.g. class MyPluginIE(ABuiltInIE,
plugin_name='myplugin') will replace ABuiltInIE with MyPluginIE). Since the
extractor replaces the parent, you should exclude the subclass extractor
from being imported separately by making it private using one of the methods
described above.
If you are a plugin author, add yt-dlp-plugins
(https://github.com/topics/yt-dlp-plugins) as a topic to your repository for
discoverability.
See the Developer Instructions
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#developer-instructions)
on how to write and test an extractor.
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
-
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)))
-
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')
-
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)
-
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)
-
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)
-
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:
# ℹ️ "when" can take any value in yt_dlp.utils.POSTPROCESS_WHEN
ydl.add_post_processor(MyCustomPP(), when='pre_process')
ydl.download(URLS)
-
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)
- •
- Merged with youtube-dl v2021.12.17+ commit/2dd6c6e
(https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/2dd6c6e) (exceptions
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/21)) and youtube-dlc
v2020.11.11-3+ commit/f9401f2
(https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc/commit/f9401f2a91987068139c5f757b12fc711d4c0cee):
You get all the features and patches of youtube-dlc
(https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc) in addition to the latest
youtube-dl (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl)
- •
- SponsorBlock Integration: You can mark/remove sponsor sections in
YouTube videos by utilizing the SponsorBlock (https://sponsor.ajay.app)
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
(https://github.com/animelover1984/youtube-dl) including --write-comments,
BiliBiliSearch, BilibiliChannel, Embedding thumbnail in mp4/ogg/opus,
playlist infojson etc. Note that NicoNico livestreams are not available.
See #31 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/31) for details.
- •
- YouTube improvements:
- •
- Supports Clips, Stories (ytstories:<channel UCID>), Search
(including filters)*, YouTube Music Search, Channel-specific
search, Search prefixes (ytsearch:, ytsearchdate:)*, Mixes, YouTube
Music Albums/Channels (except self-uploaded music
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/723)), and Feeds (:ytfav,
:ytwatchlater, :ytsubs, :ythistory, :ytrec, :ytnotif)
- •
- Fix for n-sig based throttling
(https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326) *
- •
- Supports some (but not all) age-gated content without cookies
- •
- Download livestreams from the start using --live-from-start
(experimental)
- •
- 255kbps audio is extracted (if available) from YouTube Music when premium
cookies are given
- •
- Channel URLs download all uploads of the channel, including shorts and
live
- •
- Cookies from browser: Cookies can be automatically extracted from
all major web browsers using --cookies-from-browser
BROWSER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE][::CONTAINER]
- •
- 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 etc.
- •
- Subtitle extraction from manifests: Subtitles can be extracted from
streaming media manifests. See commit/be6202f
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/be6202f12b97858b9d716e608394b51065d0419f)
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-match-filter 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, and
downgraded using --update-to if required
- •
- Nightly builds: Automated nightly builds can be used with
--update-to nightly
See changelog or commits
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commits) for the full list of changes
Features marked with a * have been back-ported to
youtube-dl
Some of yt-dlp's default options are different from that of
youtube-dl and youtube-dlc:
- •
- yt-dlp supports only Python 3.7+, and may remove support for more
versions as they become EOL
(https://devguide.python.org/versions/#python-release-cycle); while
youtube-dl still supports Python 2.6+ and 3.2+
(https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/30568#issue-1118238743)
- •
- 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
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/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
- •
- Live chats (if available) are considered as subtitles. Use --sub-langs
all,-live_chat to download all subtitles except live chat. You can also
use --compat-options no-live-chat to prevent any live chat/danmaku from
downloading
- •
- YouTube channel URLs download all uploads of the channel. To download only
the videos in a specific tab, pass the tab's URL. 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
- •
- The upload dates extracted from YouTube are in UTC when available
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/89e4d86171c7b7c997c77d4714542e0383bf0db0/yt_dlp/extractor/youtube.py#L3898-L3900).
Use --compat-options no-youtube-prefer-utc-upload-date to prefer the
non-UTC upload date.
- •
- 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)
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/630#issuecomment-893659460) 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 system certificates (e.g. self-signed), use --compat-options
no-certifi
- •
- yt-dlp's sanitization of invalid characters in filenames is
different/smarter than in youtube-dl. You can use --compat-options
filename-sanitization to revert to youtube-dl's behavior
- •
- yt-dlp tries to parse the external downloader outputs into the standard
progress output if possible (Currently implemented: [STRIKEOUT:aria2c]
(https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/5931)). You can use
--compat-options no-external-downloader-progress to get the downloader
output as-is
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
- •
- --compat-options 2021: Same as --compat-options
2022,no-certifi,filename-sanitization,no-youtube-prefer-utc-upload-date
- •
- --compat-options 2022: Same as --compat-options
no-external-downloader-progress. Use this to enable all future compat
options
These are all the deprecated options and the current alternative
to achieve the same effect
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
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"
--break-on-reject Use --break-match-filter
--user-agent UA --add-header "User-Agent:UA"
--referer URL --add-header "Referer:URL"
--playlist-start NUMBER -I NUMBER:
--playlist-end NUMBER -I :NUMBER
--playlist-reverse -I ::-1
--no-playlist-reverse Default
While these options still work, their use is not recommended since
there are other alternatives to achieve the same
-
--force-generic-extractor --ies generic,default
--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, e.g. %(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)
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
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
Support for SponSkrub (https://github.com/faissaloo/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
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
--compat-options seperate-video-versions No longer needed
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"
See CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions on Opening an Issue and
Contributing code to the project
See the Wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki) for more
information