

youtube-dl
455 likes
A platform-independent command-line program for downloading videos from YouTube and 1000+ sites. Supports playlists, subtitles, and multiple formats.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application types
Country of Origin
Spain
EU
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Python
- TrueOS
Discontinued
Last version was in December 2021. An active fork is yt-dlp.
Features
youtube-dl News & Activities
Highlights All activities
Recent News
- Danilo_Venom published news article about youtube-dlYoutube-dl website has been taken down by Uberspace following court-ordered ban
The widely used video downloading tool, youtube-dl, has been blocked due to copyright infringement ...
- IanDorfman published news article about youtube-dlGitHub restores youtube-dl repository, overhauls DMCA claim review process
GitHub has relisted the youtube-dl open source streaming video site downloader after being taken do...
- IanDorfman published news article about youtube-dlOpen source YouTube video downloader taken down from GitHub by RIAA
The youtube-dl GitHub repository has been taken following a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedo...
Recent activities
- 1winner137 added youtube-dl as alternative to yt-dlite
- TheJNXx added youtube-dl as alternative to litube
- bigsmilescartoons added youtube-dl as alternative to Downr
- Marta- added youtube-dl as alternative to Toolsmart YouTube to MP3
- alternativeto-dingo898 liked youtube-dl
What is youtube-dl?
youtube-dl information
AlternativeTo Categories
Audio & Music, Video & Movies, OS & Utilities, File Sharing, Web BrowsersGitHub repository
- 136,043 Stars
- 10,363 Forks
- 4148 Open Issues
- Updated May 4, 2025
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