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.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Python
- PC-BSD
Last version was in December 2021. An active fork is 
yt-dlp.
Features
- YouTube Downloader
- Download YouTube Playlist
- Command line interface
- Video Download
- Convert YouTube videos to Mp3
- Youtube support
- Customizable
- SoundCloud Downloader
- Automatic conversion to multiple formats
- Ad-free
- Automatic downloading
- Automatic subtitles download
- Uninstall without uninstaller
- Selecting songs
- Rewind button
- Support for 4K
- No registration required
youtube-dl News & Activities
Recent News
Recent activities
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youtube-dl information
Developed by
Ricardo GarciaLicensing
Open Source (Unlicense) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.7Alternatives
253 alternatives listedNews
3 news article related to youtube-dlSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
Audio & Music, Video & Movies, File Sharing, Web Browsers, OS & UtilitiesGitHub repository
- 131,251 Stars
- 9,934 Forks
- 4201 Open Issues
- Updated Sep 11, 2024
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.
Comments and Reviews
simple but efficient commandline tool. I used it to download complete playlists of videos from Youtube with there original subtitles.
Does what it needs to do, has format options, no bullshit. Also downloads from other video hosts. You know what I mean. Non-technical users may find the CLI weird, welcome to computers! Remember to update frequently.
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