youtube-dl
A platform-independent command-line program for downloading videos from YouTube and 1000+ sites. Supports playlists, subtitles, and multiple formats.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application types
EUAlerts
- Discontinued
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Python
- TrueOS
Last version was in December 2021. An active fork is 
yt-dlp.
Features
Properties
- Customizable
Features
- YouTube Downloader
- Download YouTube Playlist
- Command line interface
- Video Download
- Convert YouTube videos to Mp3
- Youtube support
- SoundCloud Downloader
- Automatic conversion to multiple formats
- Ad-free
- Automatic subtitles download
- Automatic downloading
- No registration required
- Selecting songs
- Rewind button
- Uninstall without uninstaller
- Support for 4K
Tags
- Google Chrome Extension
- online-video-downloader
- youtube-video-downloader
- youtube-converter
- videos
- media-downloaders
- downloaders
- youtube-videos
youtube-dl News & Activities
Recent News
- Danilo_Venom published news article about youtube-dl
Youtube-dl website has been taken down by Uberspace following court-ordered banThe widely used video downloading tool, youtube-dl, has been blocked due to copyright infringement ...
- IanDorfman published news article about youtube-dl
GitHub restores youtube-dl repository, overhauls DMCA claim review processGitHub has relisted the youtube-dl open source streaming video site downloader after being taken do...
- IanDorfman published news article about youtube-dl
Open source YouTube video downloader taken down from GitHub by RIAAThe youtube-dl GitHub repository has been taken following a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedo...
Recent activities
TheEmperorArt added youtube-dl as alternative to Donemax Video Downloader
TheEmperorArt added youtube-dl as alternative to EaseUs Video Downloader
SH20RAJ added youtube-dl as alternative to 30tools- official-lil-homie liked youtube-dl
yazeedaloyoun added youtube-dl as alternative to Video Downloader Pro by PlugMonkey- 6zjqcm7byh-coder liked youtube-dl
kiwidget added youtube-dl as alternative to Kiwidget
POX added youtube-dl as alternative to YTPTube
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What is youtube-dl?
youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from 
YouTube and more than 1000 sites. It requires the Python interpreter and is therefore platform-independent.
It augmentable with front-ends such as 
Youtube-DLG. It can be integrated in other programs and so be used to watch online videos in local applications such as 
MPV.
The GitHub repository was shut down in October 2020. It was restored the following November. Meanwhile, youtube-dl was forked to youtube-dlc (a.k.a yt-dlc) during this time. The development of youtube-dlc was soon discontinued. But further youtube-dlc forked to yt-dlp.
The development of youtube-dl began in 2006 by rg3. rg3 withdrew in 2011 and the lead developer has changed.
youtube-dl information
Developed by
Ricardo Garcia Licensing
Open Source (Unlicense) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.6Alternatives
251 alternatives listedNews
3 news article related to youtube-dlSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
Audio & Music, Video & Movies, OS & Utilities, File Sharing, Web BrowsersGitHub repository
- 139,134 Stars
- 10,573 Forks
- 4119 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
simple but efficient commandline tool. I used it to download complete playlists of videos from Youtube with there original subtitles.
youtube-dl can be slow with some versions!
I confirm 50 KiB/s speeds with version 2021.12.17 (latest release on GitHub) right now with googlevideo.com. Read these topics for more examples:
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/30184 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/30102
youtube-dl is a command-line program –– can anyone recommend a graphical program for downloading videos?
https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/
The fact that it's free and open source is reason enough to use it.
I liked youtube-dl. I used it in 2013-2015, it seemed to stop working. Today (2022) I downloaded it, and it seems to work again,yeah! I use it to cache movies that are slow to download so I can watch them later with out waiting for buffering.
Because it is simple
there are lots of features