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yt-dlp(1) yt-dlp(1) NAME yt-dlp - A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader SYNOPSIS yt-dlp [OPTIONS] URL [URL...] DESCRIPTION yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with sup- port for thousands of sites. The project is a fork of youtube-dl (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl) based on the now inactive youtube-dlc (https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc). OPTIONS General Options: -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 can be a repository as well. CHANNEL and TAG default to "stable" and "latest" respectively if omitted; See "UPDATE" for details. Supported channels: stable, nightly, master -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 un- available videos in a playlist (default) --abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos if an error occurs (Alias: --no-ignore-errors) --list-extractors List all supported extractors and exit --extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported extractors and exit --use-extractors NAMES 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_warn- ing" 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 to --config-locations. For backward compatibility, if this option is found inside the system configuration file, the user configu- ration is not loaded. (Alias: --no-config) --no-config-locations Do not load any custom configuration files (default). When giv- en inside a configuration file, ignore all previous --config-lo- cations 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 --plugin-dirs DIR Path to an additional directory to search for plugins. This op- tion can be used multiple times to add multiple directories. Use "default" to search the default plugin directories (default) --no-plugin-dirs Clear plugin directories to search, including defaults and those provided by previous --plugin-dirs --js-runtimes RUNTIME[:PATH] Additional JavaScript runtime to enable, with an optional loca- tion for the runtime (either the path to the binary or its con- taining directory). This option can be used multiple times to enable multiple runtimes. Supported runtimes are (in order of priority, from highest to lowest): deno, node, quickjs, bun. Only "deno" is enabled by default. The highest priority runtime that is both enabled and available will be used. In order to use a lower priority runtime when "deno" is available, --no-js- runtimes needs to be passed before enabling other runtimes --no-js-runtimes Clear JavaScript runtimes to enable, including defaults and those provided by previous --js-runtimes --remote-components COMPONENT Remote components to allow yt-dlp to fetch when required. This option is currently not needed if you are using an official exe- cutable or have the requisite version of the yt-dlp-ejs package installed. You can use this option multiple times to allow mul- tiple components. Supported values: ejs:npm (external JavaScript components from npm), ejs:github (external JavaScript components from yt-dlp-ejs GitHub). By default, no remote com- ponents are allowed --no-remote-components Disallow fetching of all remote components, including any previ- ously allowed by --remote-components or defaults. --flat-playlist Do not extract a playlist's URL result entries; some entry meta- data may be missing and downloading may be bypassed --no-flat-playlist Fully extract the videos of a playlist (default) --live-from-start Download livestreams from the start. Currently experimental and only supported for YouTube, Twitch, and TVer --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 mini- mum 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) --color [STREAM:]POLICY Whether to emit color codes in output, optionally prefixed by the STREAM (stdout or stderr) to apply the setting to. Can be one of "always", "auto" (default), "never", or "no_color" (use non color terminal sequences). Use "auto-tty" or "no_color-tty" to decide based on terminal support only. Can be used multiple times --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 op- tions can trigger more aliases; so be careful to avoid defining recursive options. As a safety measure, each alias may be trig- gered a maximum of 100 times. This option can be used multiple times -t, --preset-alias PRESET Applies a predefined set of options. e.g. --preset-alias mp3. The following presets are available: mp3, aac, mp4, mkv, sleep. See the "Preset Aliases" section at the end for more info. This option can be used multiple times Network Options: --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 --impersonate CLIENT[:OS] Client to impersonate for requests. E.g. chrome, chrome-110, chrome:windows-10. Pass --impersonate="" to impersonate any client. Note that forcing impersonation for all requests may have a detrimental impact on download speed and stability --list-impersonate-targets List available clients to impersonate. -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-restriction: --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 --xff VALUE How to fake X-Forwarded-For HTTP header to try bypassing geo- graphic restriction. One of "default" (only when known to be useful), "never", an IP block in CIDR notation, or a two-letter ISO 3166-2 country code Video Selection: -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 in- dices 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|yester- day][-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 are the same as --date --dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after this date. The date formats accepted are the same as --date --match-filters FILTER Generic video filter. Any "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" field can be com- pared 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 at least one of the conditions is met. E.g. --match-filters !is_live --match-filters "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-filters -" to interactively ask whether to download each video --no-match-filters Do not use any --match-filters (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 supplied with the --download-archive option --no-break-on-existing Do not stop the download process when encountering a file that is in the archive (default) --break-per-input Alters --max-downloads, --break-on-existing, --break-match-fil- ters, 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 Download Options: -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, ex- tractor) to apply the sleep to. EXPR can be a number, lin- ear=START[:END[:STEP=1]] or exp=START[:END[:BASE=2]]. This op- tion can be used multiple times to set the sleep for the differ- ent 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 (de- fault) --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 band- width 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 dis- ables n_entries, --playlist-random and --playlist-reverse --no-lazy-playlist Process videos in the playlist only after the entire playlist is parsed (default) --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 that match the regular expression. A "*" prefix denotes time-range instead of chapter. Negative time- stamps are calculated from the end. "*from-url" can be used to download between the "start_time" and "end_time" extracted from the URL. 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) pre- fixed by the protocols (http, ftp, m3u8, dash, rstp, rtmp, mms) to use it for. Currently supports native, aria2c, 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 down- loaders (Alias: --external-downloader-args) Filesystem Options: -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 al- so 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 fin- ished. 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 (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 Sanitize filenames only minimally --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 (de- fault) -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 --no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set the file modification time (default) --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 per- sonal 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 internal metadata such as filenames from the infoj- son (default) --no-clean-info-json Write all fields to the infojson --write-comments Retrieve video comments to be placed in the infojson. The com- ments are fetched even without this option if the extraction is known to be quick (Alias: --get-comments) --no-write-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 sup- ported browsers are: brave, chrome, chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari, vivaldi, whale. Optionally, the KEYRING used for decrypting Chromium cookies on Linux, the name/path of the PRO- FILE to load cookies from, and the CONTAINER name (if Firefox) ("none" for no container) can be given with their respective separators. By default, all containers of the most recently ac- cessed profile are used. Currently supported keyrings are: ba- sictext, gnomekeyring, kwallet, kwallet5, kwallet6 --no-cookies-from-browser Do not load cookies from browser (default) --cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where yt-dlp can store some down- loaded information (such as client ids and signatures) perma- nently. By default ${XDG_CACHE_HOME}/yt-dlp --no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching --rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files Thumbnail Options: --write-thumbnail Write thumbnail image to disk --no-write-thumbnail Do not write thumbnail image to disk (default) --write-all-thumbnails Write all thumbnail image formats to disk --list-thumbnails List available thumbnails of each video. Simulate unless --no- simulate is used Internet Shortcut Options: --write-link Write an internet shortcut file, depending on the current plat- form (.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 Verbosity and Simulation Options: -q, --quiet Activate quiet mode. If used with --verbose, print the log to stderr --no-quiet Deactivate quiet mode. (Default) --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 (ex- perimental) --no-ignore-no-formats-error Throw error when no downloadable video formats are found (de- fault) --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 TEM- PLATE are the same as that of --print. FILE uses the same syn- tax as the output template. This option can be used multiple times -j, --dump-json Quiet, but print JSON information for each video. Simulate un- less --no-simulate is used. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a de- scription 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:%(in- fo.id)s-%(progress.eta)s" --progress-delta SECONDS Time between progress output (default: 0) -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 di- rectory to debug problems --print-traffic Display sent and read HTTP traffic Workarounds: --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) --add-headers FIELD:VALUE 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. Re- quires bidiv or fribidi executable in PATH --sleep-requests SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep between requests during data extrac- tion --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 Video Format Options: -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-reset Disregard previous user specified sort order and reset to the default --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 (de- fault) --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 (de- fault) --prefer-free-formats Prefer video formats with free containers over non-free ones of the 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-sim- ulate 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. (cur- rently supported: avi, flv, mkv, mov, mp4, webm) Subtitle Options: --write-subs Write subtitle file --no-write-subs Do not write subtitle file (default) --write-auto-subs Write automatically generated subtitle file (Alias: --write-au- tomatic-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 separated by "/", 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" (where "en.*" is a regex pattern that matches "en" followed by 0 or more of any character). 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 lan- guage tags Authentication Options: -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 --netrc-cmd NETRC_CMD Command to execute to get the credentials for an extractor. --video-password PASSWORD Video-specific password --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 interac- tively Post-Processing Options: -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg and ff- probe) --audio-format FORMAT Format to convert the audio to when -x is used. (currently sup- ported: 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 the 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 any- thing else to mkv --recode-video FORMAT Re-encode the video into another format if necessary. The syn- tax and supported formats are the same as --remux-video --postprocessor-args NAME:ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessors. Specify the post- processor/executable name and the arguments separated by a colon ":" to give the argument to the specified postprocessor/exe- cutable. Supported PP are: Merger, ModifyChapters, SplitChap- ters, ExtractAudio, VideoRemuxer, VideoConvertor, Metadata, Em- bedSubtitle, EmbedThumbnail, SubtitlesConvertor, ThumbnailsCon- vertor, 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/ff- probe, "_i"/"_o" can be appended to the prefix optionally fol- lowed by a number to pass the argument before the specified in- put/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 (de- fault) --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 the same codecs and number of streams to be concatenable. 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 the file if we can, warn otherwise), force (try fixing even if the 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). The same syntax as the output template can be used to pass any field as arguments to the command. 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). Use "--convert-subs none" to disable con- version (default) (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". Use "--convert- thumbnails none" to disable conversion (default) --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 TEM- PLATE" for details --no-split-chapters Do not split video based on chapters (default) --remove-chapters REGEX Remove chapters whose title matches the given regular expres- sion. The syntax is the same as --download-sections. This op- tion 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 sec- tions. This is slow due to needing a re-encode, but the result- ing video may have fewer artifacts around the cuts --no-force-keyframes-at-cuts Do not force keyframes around the chapters when cutting/split- ting (default) --use-postprocessor NAME[:ARGS] The (case-sensitive) name of plugin postprocessors to be en- abled, 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 postproces- sor is invoked. It can be one of "pre_process" (after video ex- traction), "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 the video file to its final location), "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 postproces- sors SponsorBlock Options: Make chapter entries for, or remove various segments (sponsor, intro- ductions, etc.) from downloaded YouTube videos using the SponsorBlock API (https://sponsor.ajay.app) --sponsorblock-mark CATS SponsorBlock categories to create chapters for, separated by commas. Available categories are sponsor, intro, outro, self- promo, preview, filler, interaction, music_offtopic, hook, poi_highlight, chapter, all and default (=all). You can prefix the category with a "-" to exclude it. See [1] for descriptions of the categories. E.g. --sponsorblock-mark all,-preview [1] https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Segment_Categories --sponsorblock-remove CATS SponsorBlock categories to be removed from the video file, sepa- rated by commas. If a category is present in both mark and re- move, remove takes precedence. The syntax and available cate- gories are the same as for --sponsorblock-mark except that "de- fault" refers to "all,-filler" and poi_highlight, chapter are not available --sponsorblock-chapter-title TEMPLATE 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, catego- ry_names. Defaults to "[SponsorBlock]: %(category_names)l" --no-sponsorblock Disable both --sponsorblock-mark and --sponsorblock-remove --sponsorblock-api URL SponsorBlock API location, defaults to https://sponsor.ajay.app Extractor Options: --extractor-retries RETRIES Number of retries for known extractor errors (default is 3), or "infinite" --allow-dynamic-mpd Process dynamic DASH manifests (default) (Alias: --no-ignore-dy- namic-mpd) --ignore-dynamic-mpd Do not process dynamic DASH manifests (Alias: --no-allow-dynam- ic-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 into different formats at discontinu- ities such as ad breaks (default) --extractor-args IE_KEY:ARGS Pass ARGS arguments to the IE_KEY extractor. See "EXTRACTOR AR- GUMENTS" for details. You can use this option multiple times to give arguments for different extractors Preset Aliases: Predefined aliases for convenience and ease of use. Note that future versions of yt-dlp may add or adjust presets, but the existing preset names will not be changed or removed -t mp3 -f 'ba[acodec^=mp3]/ba/b' -x --audio-format mp3 -t aac -f 'ba[acodec^=aac]/ba[acodec^=mp4a.40.]/ba/b' -x --audio-format aac -t mp4 --merge-output-format mp4 --remux-video mp4 -S vcodec:h264,lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,a codec:aac -t mkv --merge-output-format mkv --remux-video mkv -t sleep --sleep-subtitles 5 --sleep-requests 0.75 --sleep-interval 10 --max-sleep-interval 20 CONFIGURATION You can configure yt-dlp by placing any supported command line option in a configuration file. The configuration is loaded from the follow- ing locations: 1. Main Configuration: • The file given to --config-locations 2. Portable Configuration: (Recommended for portable installations) • If using a binary, yt-dlp.conf in the same directory as the bina- ry • 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 to -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, 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 # Copy the mtime --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 a 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. Configuration file encoding 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. Authentication with netrc You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for ex- tractors 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). As an alternative to using the .netrc file, which has the disadvantage of keeping your passwords in a plain text file, you can configure a custom shell command to provide the credentials for an extractor. This is done by providing the --netrc-cmd parameter, it shall output the credentials in the netrc format and return 0 on success, other values will be treated as an error. {} in the command will be replaced by the name of the extractor to make it possible to select the credentials for the right extractor. E.g. To use an encrypted .netrc file stored as .authinfo.gpg yt-dlp --netrc-cmd 'gpg --decrypt ~/.authinfo.gpg' 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc' Notes about environment variables • 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 allows using UNIX-style variables on Windows for path- like options; e.g. --output, --config-locations • 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 OUTPUT TEMPLATE 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 rec- ommended 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 per- cent 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)s, %(id.6:2:-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. Arithmetic: Simple arithmetic can be done on numeric fields using +, - and *. E.g. %(playlist_index+10)03d, %(n_entries+1-playlist_in- dex)d 3. Date/time Formatting: Date/time fields can be formatted according to strftime formatting (https://docs.python.org/3/library/date- time.html#strftime-and-strptime-format-codes) by specifying it sepa- rated 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 & separa- tor according to the str.format mini-language (https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#format-specification- mini-language). If the field is not empty, this replacement value will be used instead of the actual field content. This is done af- ter alternate fields are considered; thus the replacement is used if any of the alternative fields is not empty. E.g. %(chapters&has chapters|no chapters)s, %(title&TITLE={:>20}|NO TITLE)s 6. Default: A literal default value can be specified for when the field is empty using a | separator. This overrides --output-na-placehold- er. E.g. %(uploader|Unknown)s 7. More Conversions: In addition to the normal format types diouxXeEf- FgGcrs, 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 differ- ent arguments), D = add Decimal suffixes (e.g. 10M) (flag # to use 1024 as factor), and S = Sanitize as filename (flag # for restrict- ed) 8. Unicode normalization: The format type U can be used for NFC Unicode normalization (https://docs.python.org/3/library/unicodeda- ta.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. %(ti- tle)+.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 specify- ing the type of file followed by the template separated by a colon :. The different file types supported are subtitle, thumbnail, descrip- tion, annotation (deprecated), infojson, link, pl_thumbnail, pl_de- scription, pl_infojson, chapter, pl_video. E.g. -o "%(ti- tle)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 • uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader • uploader_url (string): URL to the video uploader's profile • license (string): License name the video is licensed under • creators (list): The creators of the video • creator (string): The creators of the video; comma-separated • 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 re- leased in UTC • release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the video or album was re- leased • 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 • channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on • channel_id (string): Id of the channel • channel_url (string): URL of the channel • channel_follower_count (numeric): Number of followers of the channel • channel_is_verified (boolean): Whether the channel is verified on the platform • 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 watch- ing 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 given 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) • save_count (numeric): Number of times the video has been saved or bookmarked • 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_on- ly", "subscriber_only", "needs_auth", "unlisted" or "public" • media_type (string): The type of media as classified by the site, e.g. "episode", "clip", "trailer" • 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 down- load, starting at --autonumber-start, padded with leading zeros to 5 digits • 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_title if available or else playlist_id • 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 up- loader • playlist_channel (string): Display name of the channel that uploaded the playlist • playlist_channel_id (string): Identifier of the channel that uploaded the playlist • playlist_webpage_url (string): URL of the playlist webpage • webpage_url (string): A URL to the video webpage which, if given to yt-dlp, should yield 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 the same as web- page_url for playlist entries) • categories (list): List of categories the video belongs to • tags (list): List of tags assigned to the video • cast (list): List of cast members All the fields in Filtering Formats can also be used Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or sec- tion: • 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 program: • series (string): Title of the series or program the video episode be- longs to • series_id (string): Id of the series or program the video episode be- longs to • season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to • season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode be- longs 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 • artists (list): Artist(s) of the track • artist (string): Artist(s) of the track; comma-separated • genres (list): Genre(s) of the track • genre (string): Genre(s) of the track; comma-separated • composers (list): Composer(s) of the piece • composer (string): Composer(s) of the piece; comma-separated • album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to • album_type (string): Type of the album • album_artists (list): All artists appeared on the album • album_artist (string): All artists appeared on the album; comma-sepa- rated • disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs to 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 after the video is downloaded (post_process/after_move): • filepath: Actual path of downloaded video file 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.spon- sor.ajay.app/w/Types#Category) the chapter belongs to • category (string): The smallest SponsorBlock category the chapter be- longs 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.spon- sor.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 --out- put-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 , spaces, or &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows sys- tem or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title. Output template examples $ 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 ''_.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%(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_jenozKc --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 FORMAT SELECTION 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 en- abled (--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 for- mats to the stdout simultaneously using ffmpeg. So, in future ver- sions, the default for this will be set to -f bv*+ba/b similar to nor- mal 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 FOR- MAT) 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-for- mats 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 (i.e.; 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#issuecom- ment-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. Equiva- lent 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. Equiva- lent to worst*[vcodec=none] • wa*, worstaudio*: Select the worst quality format that contains au- dio. 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 actu- ally 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. Similar- ly, 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 slash- es. 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 for- mats 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 for- mats, 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 en- abled 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-multi- streams 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 for- mat 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. Filtering Formats You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brack- ets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]" since filters without a selector are interpreted as best). 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 kbps • abr: Average audio bitrate in kbps • vbr: Average video bitrate in kbps • 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 pro- duce an opposite comparison, e.g. !*= (does not contain). The com- parand 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 the par- ticular extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the website. Any oth- er field made available by the extractor can also be used for filter- ing. 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 "bv[height<=?720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 kbps. You can also use the filters with all to download all formats that sat- isfy 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. Sorting Formats 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 as determined by the extractor (e.g. original language preferred over audio description) • quality: The quality of the format • source: The preference of the source • proto: Protocol used for download (https/ftps > http/ftp > m3u8_na- tive/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 • 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 kbps • vbr: Average video bitrate in kbps • abr: Average audio bitrate in kbps • br: Average bitrate in kbps, 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 pre- ferred 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 behavior can be changed by using --format-sort-force. Apart from these, the default order used is: lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,vcodec,chan- nels,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 for hdr is hdr:12; i.e. Dolby Vision is not pre- ferred. This choice was made since DV formats are not yet fully com- patible with most devices. This may be changed in the future. If your format selector is worst, the last item is selected after sort- ing. This means it will select the format that is worst in all re- spects. 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. If you use the -S/--format-sort option multiple times, each subsequent sorting argument will be prepended to the previous one, and only the highest priority entry of any duplicated field will be preserved. E.g. -S proto -S res is equivalent to -S res,proto, and -S res:720,fps -S vcodec,res:1080 is equivalent to -S vcodec,res:1080,fps. You can use --format-sort-reset to disregard any previously passed -S/--format-sort arguments and reset to the default order. Tip: You can use the -v -F to see how the formats have been sorted (worst to best). Format Selection examples # 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 the 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 the 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" MODIFYING METADATA 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?high- light=backreferences#re.sub) can be used in the replace string for ad- vanced 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 in- terpret it as, separated by a colon :. Either a Python regular expres- sion (https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#regular-expression-syn- tax) with named capture groups, a single field name, or a similar syn- tax 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 re- placements to be made in parsed fields and vice versa. 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 cur- rently downloaded video. To do this, set the field additional_urls to the URL that you want to download. E.g. --parse-metadata "de- scription:(?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-ex- traction 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, artists, creator, creators, uploader or uploader_id composer composer or composers genre genre, genres, categories or tags album album or series album_artist album_artist or album_artists 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 Modifying metadata examples # 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>.+)" # Copy the episode field to the title field (with FROM and TO as single fields) $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "episode:title" # 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 "video::(?P<formats>)" --write-info-json # Replace all spaces and "_" in title and uploader with a `-` $ yt-dlp --replace-in-metadata "title,uploader" "[ _]" "-" EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS 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=tv,mweb;formats=incomplete" --extractor-args "twitter:api=syndi- cation" Note: In CLI, ARG can use - instead of _; e.g. youtube:player-client" becomes youtube:player_client" The following extractors use this feature: youtube • lang: Prefer translated metadata (title, description etc) of this language code (case-sensitive). By default, the video primary lan- guage metadata is preferred, with a fallback to en translated. See youtube/_base.py (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt- dlp/blob/415b4c9f955b1a0391204bd24a7132590e7b3bdb/yt_dlp/extrac- tor/youtube/_base.py#L402-L409) for the 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#issuecom- ment-1158102032) respectively • player_client: Clients to extract video data from. The currently available clients are web, web_safari, web_embedded, web_music, web_creator, mweb, ios, android, android_vr, tv, tv_downgraded, and tv_simply. By default, android_vr,web_safari is used. If no JavaScript runtime/engine is available, then only android_vr is used. If logged-in cookies are passed to yt-dlp, then tv_downgraded,web_sa- fari is used for free accounts and tv_downgraded,web_creator is used for premium accounts. The web_music client is added for mu- sic.youtube.com URLs when logged-in cookies are used. The web_embed- ded client is added for age-restricted videos but only successfully works around the age-restriction sometimes (e.g. if the video is em- beddable), and may be added as a fallback if android_vr is unable to access a video. The web_creator client is added for age-restricted videos if account age-verification is required. Some clients, such as web_creator and web_music, require a po_token for their formats to be downloadable. Some clients, such as web_creator, will only work with authentication. Not all clients support authentication via cookies. You can use default for the default clients, or you can use all for all clients (not recommended). You can prefix a client with - to exclude it, e.g. youtube:player_client=default,-web_safari • 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), initial_data (skip initial data/next ep request). While these options can help reduce the number of requests needed or avoid some rate-limiting, they could cause issues such as missing formats or metadata. See #860 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/860) and #12826 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/12826) for more details • webpage_skip: Skip extraction of embedded webpage data. One or both of player_response, initial_data. These options are for testing pur- poses and don't skip any network requests. Neither is skipped by de- fault; however, if a player_js_version value other than actual is used, then webpage_skip=player_response is implied • webpage_client: Client to use for the video webpage request. One of web or web_safari (default) • player_params: YouTube player parameters to use for player requests. Will overwrite any default ones set by yt-dlp. • player_js_variant: The player javascript variant to use for n/sig de- ciphering. The known variants are: main, tcc, tce, es5, es6, es6_tcc, es6_tce, tv, tv_es6, phone, house. The default is main, and the others are for debugging purposes. You can use actual to go with what is prescribed by the site • player_js_version: The player javascript version to use for n/sig de- ciphering, in the format of signature_timestamp@hash (e.g. 20348@0004de42). The default is to use what is prescribed by the site, and can be selected with actual. Using any other value will imply webpage_skip=player_response • comment_sort: top or new (default) - choose comment sorting mode (on YouTube's side) • max_comments: Limit the amount of comments to gather. Comma-separat- ed list of integers representing max-comments,max-parents,max- replies,max-replies-per-thread,max-depth. Default is all,all,all,all,all • A max-depth value of 1 will discard all replies, regardless of the max-replies or max-replies-per-thread values given • E.g. all,all,1000,10,2 will get a maximum of 1000 replies total, with up to 10 replies per thread, and only 2 levels of depth (i.e. top-level comments plus their immediate replies). 1000,all,100 will get a maximum of 1000 comments, with a maximum of 100 replies total • formats: Change the types of formats to return. dashy (convert HTTP to DASH), duplicate (identical content but different URLs or proto- col; includes dashy), incomplete (cannot be downloaded completely - live dash, live adaptive https, and post-live m3u8), missing_pot (in- clude formats that require a PO Token but are missing one) • innertube_host: Innertube API host to use for all API requests; e.g. studio.youtube.com, youtubei.googleapis.com. Note that cookies ex- ported from one subdomain will not work on others • innertube_key: Innertube API key to use for all API requests. By de- fault, no API key is used • raise_incomplete_data: Incomplete Data Received raises an error in- stead of reporting a warning • data_sync_id: Overrides the account Data Sync ID used in Innertube API requests. This may be needed if you are using an account with youtube:player_skip=webpage,configs or youtubetab:skip=webpage • visitor_data: Overrides the Visitor Data used in Innertube API re- quests. This should be used with player_skip=webpage,configs and without cookies. Note: this may have adverse effects if used improp- erly. If a session from a browser is wanted, you should pass cookies instead (which contain the Visitor ID) • po_token: Proof of Origin (PO) Token(s) to use. Comma-separated list of PO Tokens in the format CLIENT.CONTEXT+PO_TOKEN, e.g. youtube:po_token=web.gvs+XXX,web.player=XXX,web_safari.gvs+YYY. Con- text can be any of gvs (Google Video Server URLs), player (Innertube player request) or subs (Subtitles) • pot_trace: Enable debug logging for PO Token fetching. Either true or false (default) • fetch_pot: Policy to use for fetching a PO Token from providers. One of always (always try fetch a PO Token regardless if the client re- quires one for the given context), never (never fetch a PO Token), or auto (default; only fetch a PO Token if the client requires one for the given context) • jsc_trace: Enable debug logging for JS Challenge fetching. Either true or false (default) • use_ad_playback_context: Skip preroll ads to eliminate the mandatory wait period before download. Do NOT use this when passing premium account cookies to yt-dlp, as it will result in a loss of premium formats. Only effective with the mweb and web_music player clients. Either true or false (default) youtube-ejs • jitless: Run supported Javascript engines in JIT-less mode. Support- ed runtimes are deno, node and bun. Provides better security at the cost of performance/speed. Do note that node and bun are still con- sidered insecure. Either true or false (default) youtubepot-webpo • bind_to_visitor_id: Whether to use the Visitor ID instead of Visitor Data for caching WebPO tokens. Either true (default) or false youtubetab (YouTube playlists, channels, feeds, etc.) • skip: One or more of webpage (skip initial webpage download), au- thcheck (allow the download of playlists requiring authentication when no initial webpage is downloaded. This may cause unwanted be- havior, 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 generic • fragment_query: Passthrough any query in mpd/m3u8 manifest URLs to their fragments if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as fragment_query=VALUE. Note that if the stream has an HLS AES-128 key, then the query parameters will be passed to the key URI as well, unless the key_query extractor-arg is passed, or unless an external key URI is provided via the hls_key extractor-arg. Does not apply to ffmpeg • variant_query: Passthrough the master m3u8 URL query to its variant playlist URLs if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as variant_query=VALUE • key_query: Passthrough the master m3u8 URL query to its HLS AES-128 decryption key URI if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as key_query=VALUE. Note that this will have no effect if the key URI is provided via the hls_key extractor-arg. Does not apply to ffmpeg • hls_key: An HLS AES-128 key URI or key (as hex), and optionally the IV (as hex), in the form of (URI|KEY)[,IV]; e.g. gener- ic:hls_key=ABCDEF1234567980,0xFEDCBA0987654321. Passing any of these values will force usage of the native HLS downloader and override the corresponding values found in the m3u8 playlist • is_live: Bypass live HLS detection and manually set live_status - a value of false will set not_live, any other value (or no value) will set is_live • impersonate: Target(s) to try and impersonate with the initial web- page request; e.g. generic:impersonate=safari,chrome-110. Use generic:impersonate to impersonate any available target, and use generic:impersonate=false to disable impersonation (default) vikichannel • video_types: Types of videos to download - one or more of episodes, movies, clips, trailers youtubewebarchive • check_all: Try to check more at the cost of more requests. One or more of thumbnails, captures gamejolt • comment_sort: hot (default), you (cookies needed), top, new - choose comment sorting mode (on GameJolt's side) hotstar • 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 instagram • app_id: The value of the X-IG-App-ID header used for API requests. Default is the web app ID, 936619743392459 niconicochannelplus • max_comments: Maximum number of comments to extract - default is 120 tiktok • api_hostname: Hostname to use for mobile API calls, e.g. api22-nor- mal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com • app_name: Default app name to use with mobile API calls, e.g. trill • app_version: Default app version to use with mobile API calls - should be set along with manifest_app_version, e.g. 34.1.2 • manifest_app_version: Default numeric app version to use with mobile API calls, e.g. 2023401020 • aid: Default app ID to use with mobile API calls, e.g. 1180 • app_info: Enable mobile API extraction with one or more app info strings in the format of <iid>/[app_name]/[app_version]/[mani- fest_app_version]/[aid], where iid is the unique app install ID. iid is the only required value; all other values and their / separators can be omitted, e.g. tiktok:app_info=1234567890123456789 or tik- tok:app_info=123,456/trill///1180,789//34.0.1/340001 • device_id: Enable mobile API extraction with a genuine device ID to be used with mobile API calls. Default is a random 19-digit string rokfinchannel • tab: Which tab to download - one of new, top, videos, podcasts, streams, stacks twitter • api: Select one of graphql (default), legacy or syndication as the API for tweet extraction. Has no effect if logged in stacommu, wrestleuniverse • device_id: UUID value assigned by the website and used to enforce de- vice limits for paid livestream content. Can be found in browser lo- cal storage twitch • client_id: Client ID value to be sent with GraphQL requests, e.g. twitch:client_id=kimne78kx3ncx6brgo4mv6wki5h1ko nhkradirulive (NHK LIVE) • area: Which regional variation to extract. Valid areas are: sapporo, sendai, tokyo, nagoya, osaka, hiroshima, matsuyama, fukuoka. De- faults to tokyo nflplusreplay • type: Type(s) of game replays to extract. Valid types are: full_game, full_game_spanish, condensed_game and all_22. You can use all to extract all available replay types, which is the default jiocinema • refresh_token: The refreshToken UUID from browser local storage can be passed to extend the life of your login session when logging in with token as username and the accessToken from browser local storage as password jiosaavn • bitrate: Audio bitrates to request. One or more of 16, 32, 64, 128, 320. Default is 128,320 afreecatvlive • cdn: One or more CDN IDs to use with the API call for stream URLs, e.g. gcp_cdn, gs_cdn_pc_app, gs_cdn_mobile_web, gs_cdn_pc_web soundcloud • formats: Formats to request from the API. Requested values should be in the format of {protocol}_{codec}, e.g. hls_opus,http_aac. The * character functions as a wildcard, e.g. *_mp3, and can be passed by itself to request all formats. Known protocols include http, hls and hls-aes; known codecs include aac, opus and mp3. Original download formats are always extracted. Default is http_aac,hls_aac,http_opus,hls_opus,http_mp3,hls_mp3 orfon (orf:on) • prefer_segments_playlist: Prefer a playlist of program segments in- stead of a single complete video when available. If individual seg- ments are desired, use --concat-playlist never --extractor-args "or- fon:prefer_segments_playlist" bilibili • prefer_multi_flv: Prefer extracting flv formats over mp4 for older videos that still provide legacy formats sonylivseries • sort_order: Episode sort order for series extraction - one of asc (ascending, oldest first) or desc (descending, newest first). De- fault is asc tver • backend: Backend API to use for extraction - one of streaks (default) or brightcove (deprecated) vimeo • client: Client to extract video data from. The currently available clients are android, ios, macos and web. Only one client can be used. The macos client is used by default, but the web client is used when logged-in. The web client only works with account cookies or login credentials. The android and ios clients only work with previously cached OAuth tokens • original_format_policy: Policy for when to try extracting original formats. One of always, never, or auto. The default auto policy tries to avoid exceeding the web client's API rate-limit by only mak- ing an extra request when Vimeo publicizes the video's downloadabili- ty Note: These options may be changed/removed in the future without con- cern for backward compatibility INSTALLATION 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/Installa- tion) for detailed instructions Note: The manpages, shell completion (autocomplete) files etc. are available inside the source tarball (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt- dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp.tar.gz) UPDATE 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/In- stallation#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-pack- age-managers) or refer to their documentation There are currently three release channels for binaries: stable, night- ly and master. • stable is the default channel, and many of its changes have been tested by users of the nightly and master channels. • The nightly channel has releases scheduled to build every day around midnight UTC, for a snapshot of the project's new patches and changes. This is the recommended channel for regular users of yt- dlp. The nightly releases are available from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly- builds (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases) or as development releases of the yt-dlp PyPI package (which can be in- stalled with pip's --pre flag). • The master channel features releases that are built after each push to the master branch, and these will have the very latest fixes and additions, but may also be more prone to regressions. They are available from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-master-builds (https://github.com/yt- dlp/yt-dlp-master-builds/releases). When using --update/-U, a release binary will only update to its cur- rent channel. --update-to CHANNEL can be used to switch to a different channel when a newer version is available. --update-to [CHANNEL@]TAG can also be used to upgrade or downgrade to specific tags from a chan- nel. You may also use --update-to <repository> (<owner>/<repository>) to up- date to a channel on a completely different repository. Be careful with what repository you are updating to though, there is no verifica- tion done for binaries from different repositories. Example usage: • yt-dlp --update-to master switch to the master channel and update to its latest release • yt-dlp --update-to stable@2023.07.06 upgrade/downgrade to release to stable channel tag 2023.07.06 • yt-dlp --update-to 2023.10.07 upgrade/downgrade to tag 2023.10.07 if it exists on the current channel • yt-dlp --update-to example/yt-dlp@2023.09.24 upgrade/downgrade to the release from the example/yt-dlp repository, tag 2023.09.24 Important: Any user experiencing an issue with the stable release should install or update to the nightly release before submitting a bug report: # To update to nightly from stable executable/binary: yt-dlp --update-to nightly # To install nightly with pip: python -m pip install -U --pre "yt-dlp[default]" When running a yt-dlp version that is older than 90 days, you will see a warning message suggesting to update to the latest version. You can suppress this warning by adding --no-update to your command or configu- ration file. DEPENDENCIES Python versions 3.10+ (CPython) and 3.11+ (PyPy) are supported. Other versions and implementations may or may not work correctly. While all the other dependencies are optional, ffmpeg, ffprobe, yt-dlp- ejs and a supported JavaScript runtime/engine are highly recommended Strongly recommended • ffmpeg and ffprobe (https://www.ffmpeg.org) - Required for merging separate video and audio files, as well as for various post-process- ing tasks. License depends on the build (https://www.ffmpeg.org/le- gal.html) There are bugs in ffmpeg that cause various issues when used along- side yt-dlp. Since ffmpeg is such an important dependency, we pro- vide 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) • yt-dlp-ejs (https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs) - Required for full YouTube support. Licensed under Unlicense (https://github.com/yt- dlp/ejs/blob/main/LICENSE), bundles MIT (https://github.com/davidbon- net/astring/blob/main/LICENSE) and ISC (https://github.com/meriyah/meriyah/blob/main/LICENSE.md) components. A JavaScript runtime/engine like deno (https://deno.land) (recommend- ed), node.js (https://nodejs.org), bun (https://bun.sh), or QuickJS (https://bellard.org/quickjs/) is also required to run yt-dlp-ejs. See the wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS). Networking • 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/mas- ter/LICENSE) 2 (https://github.com/python-hyper/brotlicffi/blob/mas- ter/LICENSE) • websockets (https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets)* - For download- ing over websocket. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets/blob/main/LICENSE) • requests (https://github.com/psf/requests)* - HTTP library. For HTTPS proxy and persistent connections support. Licensed under Apache-2.0 (https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/main/LICENSE) Impersonation The following provide support for impersonating browser requests. This may be required for some sites that employ TLS fingerprinting. • curl_cffi (https://github.com/lexiforest/curl_cffi) (recommended) - Python binding for curl-impersonate (https://github.com/lexifor- est/curl-impersonate). Provides impersonation targets for Chrome, Edge and Safari. Licensed under MIT (https://github.com/lexifor- est/curl_cffi/blob/main/LICENSE) • Can be installed with the curl-cffi extra, e.g. pip install "yt- dlp[default,curl-cffi]" • Currently included in most builds except yt-dlp (Unix zipimport bi- nary), yt-dlp_x86 (Windows 32-bit) and yt-dlp_musllinux_aarch64 Metadata • mutagen (https://github.com/quodlibet/mutagen)* - For --embed-thumb- nail 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 un- der GPLv2+ (https://github.com/wez/atomicparsley/blob/master/COPYING) • xattr (https://github.com/xattr/xattr), pyxattr (https://github.com/iustin/pyxattr) or setfattr (http://savan- nah.nongnu.org/projects/attr) - For writing xattr metadata (--xattrs) on Mac and BSD. Licensed under MIT (https://github.com/xattr/xat- tr/blob/master/LICENSE.txt), LGPL2.1 (https://github.com/iustin/pyx- attr/blob/master/COPYING) and GPLv2+ (http://git.savan- nah.nongnu.org/cgit/attr.git/tree/doc/COPYING) respectively Misc • pycryptodomex (https://github.com/Legrandin/pycryptodome)* - For de- crypting AES-128 HLS streams and various other data. Licensed under BSD-2-Clause (https://github.com/Legrandin/pycryptodome/blob/mas- ter/LICENSE.rst) • phantomjs (https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs) - Used in some extrac- tors where JavaScript needs to be run. No longer used for YouTube. To be deprecated in the near future. 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/mas- ter/LICENSE) • Any external downloader that you want to use with --downloader Deprecated • rtmpdump (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu) - For downloading rtmp streams. ffmpeg can be used instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Li- censed 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 re- spective 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 at- tempting, yt-dlp will warn you. All the currently available dependen- cies are visible at the top of the --verbose output COMPILE Standalone PyInstaller Builds To build the standalone executable, you must have Python and pyin- staller (plus any of yt-dlp's optional dependencies if needed). The executable will be built for the same CPU architecture as the Python used. You can run the following commands: python devscripts/install_deps.py --include-extra pyinstaller python devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py python -m bundle.pyinstaller On some systems, you may need to use py or python3 instead of python. python -m bundle.pyinstaller 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 vir- tual environment. Important: Running pyinstaller directly instead of using python -m bun- dle.pyinstaller is not officially supported. This may or may not work correctly. Platform-independent Binary (UNIX) You will need the build tools python (3.10+), 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) Related scripts • devscripts/install_deps.py - Install dependencies for yt-dlp. • devscripts/update-version.py - Update the version number based on the 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_EX- TRACTORS to something nonempty to forcefully disable lazy extractor loading. Note: See their --help for more info. Forking the project If you fork the project on GitHub, you can run your fork's build work- flow to automatically build the selected version(s) as artifacts. Al- ternatively, you can run the release workflow or enable the nightly workflow to create full (pre-)releases. PLUGINS 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 plu- gins do not need to be enabled from the CLI and are automatically in- voked when the input URL is suitable for it. - Extractor plugins take priority over built-in extractors. - Postprocessor plugins can be in- voked 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 loca- tions (see below) and loads in plugins from all of them. Set the envi- ronment variable YTDLP_NO_PLUGINS to something nonempty to disable loading plugins entirely. See the wiki for some known plugins (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt- dlp/wiki/Plugins) Installing Plugins Plugins can be installed using various methods and locations. 1. Configuration directories: Plugin packages (containing a yt_dlp_plu- gins namespace folder) can be dropped into the following standard configuration locations: • User Plugins • ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plug- ins/ (recommended on Linux/macOS) • ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plug- ins/ • ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/ (rec- ommended 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 (recommended for portable installations): • Binary: where <root-dir>/yt-dlp.exe, <root-dir>/yt-dlp-plug- ins/<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-plug- ins) 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 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 myplug- inpkg.zip contains yt_dlp_plugins/<type>/myplugin.py Run yt-dlp with --verbose to check if the plugin has been loaded. Developing Plugins 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 respectively. This respects un- derscore prefix (e.g. _MyBasePluginIE is private) and __all__. Mod- ules can similarly be excluded by prefixing the module name with an un- derscore (e.g. _myplugin.py). To replace an existing extractor with a subclass of one, set the plug- in_name class keyword argument (e.g. class MyPluginIE(ABuiltInIE, plu- gin_name='myplugin') will replace ABuiltInIE with MyPluginIE). Since the extractor replaces the parent, you should exclude the subclass ex- tractor 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/top- ics/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. EMBEDDING YT-DLP 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 or help(yt_dlp.YoutubeDL) in a Python shell. If you are already familiar with the CLI, you can use devscripts/cli_to_api.py (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt- dlp/blob/master/devscripts/cli_to_api.py) to translate any CLI switches to YoutubeDL params. Tip: If you are porting your code from youtube-dl to yt-dlp, one impor- tant 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 dictio- nary. 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 Embedding examples Extracting information import json import yt_dlp URL = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc' # 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) # ydl.sanitize_info makes the info json-serializable print(json.dumps(ydl.sanitize_info(info))) Download using an info-json 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') Extract audio import yt_dlp URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'] ydl_opts = { 'format': 'm4a/bestaudio/best', # 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) Filter videos 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) Adding logger and progress hook 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) # 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) Add a custom PostProcessor import yt_dlp URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'] # 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: # "when" can take any value in yt_dlp.utils.POSTPROCESS_WHEN ydl.add_post_processor(MyCustomPP(), when='pre_process') ydl.download(URLS) Use a custom format selector import yt_dlp URLS = ['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) CHANGES FROM YOUTUBE-DL New features • Forked from yt-dlc@f9401f2 (https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt- dlc/commit/f9401f2a91987068139c5f757b12fc711d4c0cee) and merged with youtube-dl@a08f2b7 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/com- mit/a08f2b7e4567cdc50c0614ee0a4ffdff49b8b6e6) (exceptions (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/21)) • SponsorBlock Integration: You can mark/remove sponsor sections in YouTube videos by utilizing the SponsorBlock (https://spon- sor.ajay.app) API • Format Sorting: The default format sorting options have been changed so that higher resolution and better codecs will be now preferred in- stead of simply using larger bitrate. Furthermore, you can now spec- ify the sort order using -S. This allows for much easier format se- lection 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-com- ments, BiliBiliSearch, BilibiliChannel, Embedding thumbnail in mp4/ogg/opus, playlist infojson etc. See #31 (https://github.com/yt- dlp/yt-dlp/pull/31) for details. • YouTube improvements: • Supports Clips, Stories (ytstories:<channel UCID>), Search (includ- ing filters)*, YouTube Music Search, Channel-specific search, Search prefix (ytsearch:)*, Mixes, and Feeds (:ytfav, :ytwatch- later, :ytsubs, :ythistory, :ytrec, :ytnotif) • Fix for n-sig based throttling (https://github.com/ytdl- org/youtube-dl/issues/29326) * • Download livestreams from the start using --live-from-start (exper- imental) • 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 BROWS- ER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE][::CONTAINER] • Download time range: Videos can be downloaded partially based on ei- ther 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/com- mit/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 tem- plate 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-filters etc • Improvements: Regex and other operators in --format/--match-filters, 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 down- graded using --update-to if required • Automated builds: Nightly/master builds can be used with --update-to nightly and --update-to master 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 Differences in default behavior Some of yt-dlp's default options are different from that of youtube-dl and youtube-dlc: • yt-dlp supports only Python 3.10+, and will remove support for more versions as they become EOL (https://devguide.python.org/ver- sions/#python-release-cycle); while youtube-dl still supports Python 2.6+ and 3.2+ (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/is- sues/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 pre- fer, or use --compat-options format-sort to use youtube-dl's sorting order. Older versions of yt-dlp preferred VP9 due to its broader compatibility; you can use --compat-options prefer-vp9-sort to revert to that format sorting preference. These two compat options cannot be used together • The default format selector is bv*+ba/b. This means that if a com- bined 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 au- dio/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 infoj- son, 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-em- bed-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 con- tains 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 down- load 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-op- tions no-youtube-channel-redirect to revert all these redirections • Unavailable videos are also listed for YouTube playlists. Use --com- pat-options no-youtube-unavailable-videos to remove this • The upload dates extracted from YouTube are in UTC. • 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 internal metadata 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 sep- arate file. See #630 (comment) (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/is- sues/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-op- tions no-certifi • yt-dlp's sanitization of invalid characters in filenames is differ- ent/smarter than in youtube-dl. You can use --compat-options file- name-sanitization to revert to youtube-dl's behavior • [STRIKEOUT:yt-dlp tries to parse the external downloader outputs into the standard progress output if possible (Currently implemented: aria2c (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/5931)). You can use --compat-options no-external-downloader-progress to get the down- loader output as-is] • yt-dlp versions between 2021.09.01 and 2023.01.02 applies --match- filters to nested playlists. This was an unintentional side-effect of 8f18ac (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/com- mit/8f18aca8717bb0dd49054555af8d386e5eda3a88) and is fixed in d7b460 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/com- mit/d7b460d0e5fc710950582baed2e3fc616ed98a80). Use --compat-options playlist-match-filter to revert this • yt-dlp versions between 2021.11.10 and 2023.06.21 estimated file- size_approx values for fragmented/manifest formats. This was added for convenience in f2fe69 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/com- mit/f2fe69c7b0d208bdb1f6292b4ae92bc1e1a7444a), but was reverted in 0dff8e (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/com- mit/0dff8e4d1e6e9fb938f4256ea9af7d81f42fd54f) due to the potentially extreme inaccuracy of the estimated values. Use --compat-options manifest-filesize-approx to keep extracting the estimated values • yt-dlp uses modern http client backends such as requests. Use --com- pat-options prefer-legacy-http-handler to prefer the legacy http han- dler (urllib) to be used for standard http requests. • The sub-modules swfinterp, casefold are removed. • Passing --simulate (or calling extract_info with download=False) no longer alters the default format selection. See #9843 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/9843) for details. • yt-dlp no longer applies the server modified time to downloaded files by default. Use --mtime or --compat-options mtime-by-default to re- vert this. For convenience, there are some compat option aliases available to use: • --compat-options all: Use all compat options (Do NOT use this!) • --compat-options youtube-dl: Same as --compat-options all,-multi- streams,-playlist-match-filter,-manifest-filesize-approx,-allow-un- safe-ext,-prefer-vp9-sort • --compat-options youtube-dlc: Same as --compat-options all,-no-live- chat,-no-youtube-channel-redirect,-playlist-match-filter,-manifest- filesize-approx,-allow-unsafe-ext,-prefer-vp9-sort • --compat-options 2021: Same as --compat-options 2022,no-certifi,file- name-sanitization • --compat-options 2022: Same as --compat-options 2023,playlist-match- filter,no-external-downloader-progress,prefer-legacy-http-han- dler,manifest-filesize-approx • --compat-options 2023: Same as --compat-options 2024,prefer-vp9-sort • --compat-options 2024: Same as --compat-options 2025,mtime-by-default • --compat-options 2025: Currently does nothing. Use this to enable all future compat options Using one of the yearly compat option aliases will pin yt-dlp's default behavior to what it was at the end of that calendar year. The following compat options restore vulnerable behavior from before security patches: • --compat-options allow-unsafe-ext: Allow files with any extension (including unsafe ones) to be downloaded (GHSA-79w7-vh3h-8g4j (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GH- SA-79w7-vh3h-8g4j)) :warning: Only use if a valid file download is rejected be- cause its extension is detected as uncommon This option can enable remote code execution! Consider open- ing an issue (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/is- sues/new/choose) instead! Deprecated options These are all the deprecated options and the current alternative to achieve the same effect Almost redundant options 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 Redundant options 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-filters "title ~= (?i)REGEX" --reject-title REGEX --match-filters "title !~= (?i)REGEX" --min-views COUNT --match-filters "view_count >=? COUNT" --max-views COUNT --match-filters "view_count <=? COUNT" --break-on-reject Use --break-match-filters --user-agent UA --add-headers "User-Agent:UA" --referer URL --add-headers "Referer:URL" --playlist-start NUMBER -I NUMBER: --playlist-end NUMBER -I :NUMBER --playlist-reverse -I ::-1 --no-playlist-reverse Default --no-colors --color no_color Not recommended 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] --geo-bypass --xff "default" --no-geo-bypass --xff "never" --geo-bypass-country CODE --xff CODE --geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK --xff IP_BLOCK Developer options 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 --allow-unplayable-formats List unplayable formats also --no-allow-unplayable-formats Default Old aliases These are aliases that are no longer documented for various reasons --clean-infojson --clean-info-json --force-write-download-archive --force-write-archive --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 Sponskrub Options Support for SponSkrub (https://github.com/faissaloo/SponSkrub) has been removed 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 No longer supported 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 --avconv-location Removed alias for --ffmpeg-location --cn-verification-proxy URL Removed alias for --geo-verification-proxy URL --dump-headers Removed alias for --print-traffic --dump-intermediate-pages Removed alias for --dump-pages --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Removed alias for --extractor-args "youtube:skip=dash" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-dash-manifest) --youtube-skip-hls-manifest Removed alias for --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) --youtube-print-sig-code Removed testing functionality --dump-user-agent No longer supported --xattr-set-filesize No longer supported --compat-options seperate-video-versions No longer needed --compat-options no-youtube-prefer-utc-upload-date No longer supported Removed These options were deprecated since 2014 and have now been entirely re- moved -A, --auto-number -o "%(autonumber)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" -t, -l, --title, --literal -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" CONTRIBUTING See CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions on Opening an Issue and Contribut- ing code to the project WIKI See the Wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki) for more informa- tion yt-dlp(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION | OUTPUT TEMPLATE | FORMAT SELECTION | MODIFYING METADATA | EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS | INSTALLATION | PLUGINS | EMBEDDING YT-DLP | CHANGES FROM YOUTUBE-DL | CONTRIBUTING | WIKI
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