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[YT-DLP]
[Release version] [PyPi] [Donate] [Matrix] [Discord] [Supported Sites]
[License: Unlicense] [CI Status] [Commits] [Last Commit]
yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork based on the now inactive youtube-dlc. The
main focus of this project is adding new features and patches while also
keeping up to date with the original project
- NEW FEATURES
- Differences in default behavior
- INSTALLATION
- Detailed instructions
- Update
- Release Files
- Dependencies
- Compile
- USAGE AND OPTIONS
- General Options
- Network Options
- Geo-restriction
- Video Selection
- Download Options
- Filesystem Options
- Thumbnail Options
- Internet Shortcut Options
- Verbosity and Simulation Options
- Workarounds
- Video Format Options
- Subtitle Options
- Authentication Options
- Post-processing Options
- SponsorBlock Options
- Extractor Options
- CONFIGURATION
- Configuration file encoding
- Authentication with .netrc file
- Notes about environment variables
- OUTPUT TEMPLATE
- Output template examples
- FORMAT SELECTION
- Filtering Formats
- Sorting Formats
- Format Selection examples
- MODIFYING METADATA
- Modifying metadata examples
- EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS
- PLUGINS
- Installing Plugins
- Developing Plugins
- EMBEDDING YT-DLP
- Embedding examples
- DEPRECATED OPTIONS
- CONTRIBUTING
- Opening an Issue
- Developer Instructions
- WIKI
- FAQ
NEW FEATURES
- Merged with youtube-dl v2021.12.17+ commit/2dd6c6e (exceptions) and
youtube-dlc v2020.11.11-3+ commit/f9401f2: You get all the features
and patches of youtube-dlc in addition to the latest youtube-dl
- SponsorBlock Integration: You can mark/remove sponsor sections in
YouTube videos by utilizing the SponsorBlock API
- Format Sorting: The default format sorting options have been changed
so that higher resolution and better codecs will be now preferred
instead of simply using larger bitrate. Furthermore, you can now
specify the sort order using -S. This allows for much easier format
selection than what is possible by simply using --format (examples)
- Merged with animelover1984/youtube-dl: You get most of the features
and improvements from animelover1984/youtube-dl including
--write-comments, BiliBiliSearch, BilibiliChannel, Embedding
thumbnail in mp4/ogg/opus, playlist infojson etc. Note that NicoNico
livestreams are not available. See #31 for details.
- YouTube improvements:
- Supports Clips, Stories (ytstories:<channel UCID>), Search
(including filters)*, YouTube Music Search, Channel-specific
search, Search prefixes (ytsearch:, ytsearchdate:)*, Mixes,
YouTube Music Albums/Channels (except self-uploaded music), and
Feeds (:ytfav, :ytwatchlater, :ytsubs, :ythistory, :ytrec,
:ytnotif)
- Fix for n-sig based throttling *
- Supports some (but not all) age-gated content without cookies
- Download livestreams from the start using --live-from-start
(experimental)
- 255kbps audio is extracted (if available) from YouTube Music
when premium cookies are given
- Channel URLs download all uploads of the channel, including
shorts and live
- Cookies from browser: Cookies can be automatically extracted from
all major web browsers using
--cookies-from-browser BROWSER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE][::CONTAINER]
- Download time range: Videos can be downloaded partially based on
either timestamps or chapters using --download-sections
- Split video by chapters: Videos can be split into multiple files
based on chapters using --split-chapters
- Multi-threaded fragment downloads: Download multiple fragments of
m3u8/mpd videos in parallel. Use --concurrent-fragments (-N) option
to set the number of threads used
- Aria2c with HLS/DASH: You can use aria2c as the external downloader
for DASH(mpd) and HLS(m3u8) formats
- New and fixed extractors: Many new extractors have been added and a
lot of existing ones have been fixed. See the changelog or the list
of supported sites
- New MSOs: Philo, Spectrum, SlingTV, Cablevision, RCN etc.
- Subtitle extraction from manifests: Subtitles can be extracted from
streaming media manifests. See commit/be6202f for details
- Multiple paths and output templates: You can give different output
templates and download paths for different types of files. You can
also set a temporary path where intermediary files are downloaded to
using --paths (-P)
- Portable Configuration: Configuration files are automatically loaded
from the home and root directories. See CONFIGURATION for details
- Output template improvements: Output templates can now have
date-time formatting, numeric offsets, object traversal etc. See
output template for details. Even more advanced operations can also
be done with the help of --parse-metadata and --replace-in-metadata
- Other new options: Many new options have been added such as --alias,
--print, --concat-playlist, --wait-for-video, --retry-sleep,
--sleep-requests, --convert-thumbnails, --force-download-archive,
--force-overwrites, --break-match-filter etc
- Improvements: Regex and other operators in --format/--match-filter,
multiple --postprocessor-args and --downloader-args, faster archive
checking, more format selection options, merge multi-video/audio,
multiple --config-locations, --exec at different stages, etc
- Plugins: Extractors and PostProcessors can be loaded from an
external file. See plugins for details
- Self updater: The releases can be updated using yt-dlp -U, and
downgraded using --update-to if required
- Nightly builds: Automated nightly builds can be used with
--update-to nightly
See changelog or commits 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 3.7+, and may remove support for more
versions as they become EOL; while youtube-dl still supports Python
2.6+ and 3.2+
- The options --auto-number (-A), --title (-t) and --literal (-l), no
longer work. See removed options for details
- avconv is not supported as an alternative to ffmpeg
- yt-dlp stores config files in slightly different locations to
youtube-dl. See CONFIGURATION for a list of correct locations
- The default output template is %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s. There is
no real reason for this change. This was changed before yt-dlp was
ever made public and now there are no plans to change it back to
%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s. Instead, you may use
--compat-options filename
- The default format sorting is different from youtube-dl and prefers
higher resolution and better codecs rather than higher bitrates. You
can use the --format-sort option to change this to any order you
prefer, or use --compat-options format-sort to use youtube-dl's
sorting order
- The default format selector is bv*+ba/b. This means that if a
combined video + audio format that is better than the best
video-only format is found, the former will be preferred. Use
-f bv+ba/b or --compat-options format-spec to revert this
- Unlike youtube-dlc, yt-dlp does not allow merging multiple
audio/video streams into one file by default (since this conflicts
with the use of -f bv*+ba). If needed, this feature must be enabled
using --audio-multistreams and --video-multistreams. You can also
use --compat-options multistreams to enable both
- --no-abort-on-error is enabled by default. Use --abort-on-error or
--compat-options abort-on-error to abort on errors instead
- When writing metadata files such as thumbnails, description or
infojson, the same information (if available) is also written for
playlists. Use --no-write-playlist-metafiles or
--compat-options no-playlist-metafiles to not write these files
- --add-metadata attaches the infojson to mkv files in addition to
writing the metadata when used with --write-info-json. Use
--no-embed-info-json or --compat-options no-attach-info-json to
revert this
- Some metadata are embedded into different fields when using
--add-metadata as compared to youtube-dl. Most notably, comment
field contains the webpage_url and synopsis contains the
description. You can use --parse-metadata to modify this to your
liking or use --compat-options embed-metadata to revert this
- playlist_index behaves differently when used with options like
--playlist-reverse and --playlist-items. See #302 for details. You
can use --compat-options playlist-index if you want to keep the
earlier behavior
- The output of -F is listed in a new format. Use
--compat-options list-formats to revert this
- Live chats (if available) are considered as subtitles. Use
--sub-langs all,-live_chat to download all subtitles except live
chat. You can also use --compat-options no-live-chat to prevent any
live chat/danmaku from downloading
- YouTube channel URLs download all uploads of the channel. To
download only the videos in a specific tab, pass the tab's URL. If
the channel does not show the requested tab, an error will be
raised. Also, /live URLs raise an error if there are no live videos
instead of silently downloading the entire channel. You may use
--compat-options no-youtube-channel-redirect to revert all these
redirections
- Unavailable videos are also listed for YouTube playlists. Use
--compat-options no-youtube-unavailable-videos to remove this
- The upload dates extracted from YouTube are in UTC when available.
Use --compat-options no-youtube-prefer-utc-upload-date to prefer the
non-UTC upload date.
- If ffmpeg is used as the downloader, the downloading and merging of
formats happen in a single step when possible. Use
--compat-options no-direct-merge to revert this
- Thumbnail embedding in mp4 is done with mutagen if possible. Use
--compat-options embed-thumbnail-atomicparsley to force the use of
AtomicParsley instead
- Some private fields such as filenames are removed by default from
the infojson. Use --no-clean-infojson or
--compat-options no-clean-infojson to revert this
- When --embed-subs and --write-subs are used together, the subtitles
are written to disk and also embedded in the media file. You can use
just --embed-subs to embed the subs and automatically delete the
separate file. See #630 (comment) for more info.
--compat-options no-keep-subs can be used to revert this
- certifi will be used for SSL root certificates, if installed. If you
want to use system certificates (e.g. self-signed), use
--compat-options no-certifi
- yt-dlp's sanitization of invalid characters in filenames is
different/smarter than in youtube-dl. You can use
--compat-options filename-sanitization to revert to youtube-dl's
behavior
- yt-dlp tries to parse the external downloader outputs into the
standard progress output if possible (Currently implemented:
~~aria2c~~). You can use
--compat-options no-external-downloader-progress to get the
downloader output as-is
For ease of use, a few more compat options are available:
- --compat-options all: Use all compat options (Do NOT use)
- --compat-options youtube-dl: Same as
--compat-options all,-multistreams
- --compat-options youtube-dlc: Same as
--compat-options all,-no-live-chat,-no-youtube-channel-redirect
- --compat-options 2021: Same as
--compat-options 2022,no-certifi,filename-sanitization,no-youtube-prefer-utc-upload-date
- --compat-options 2022: Same as
--compat-options no-external-downloader-progress. Use this to enable
all future compat options
INSTALLATION
[Windows] [Unix] [MacOS] [PyPi] [Source Tarball] [Other variants] [All
versions]
You can install yt-dlp using the binaries, PIP or one using a
third-party package manager. See the wiki for detailed instructions
UPDATE
You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the release binaries
If you installed with PIP, simply re-run the same command that was used
to install the program
For other third-party package managers, see the wiki or refer their
documentation
There are currently two release channels for binaries, stable and
nightly. stable is the default channel, and many of its changes have
been tested by users of the nightly channel. The nightly channel has
releases built after each push to the master branch, and will have the
most recent fixes and additions, but also have more risk of regressions.
They are available in their own repo.
When using --update/-U, a release binary will only update to its current
channel. This release channel can be changed by using the --update-to
option. --update-to can also be used to upgrade or downgrade to specific
tags from a channel.
Example usage: * yt-dlp --update-to nightly change to nightly channel
and update to its latest release * yt-dlp --update-to stable@2023.02.17
upgrade/downgrade to release to stable channel tag 2023.02.17 *
yt-dlp --update-to 2023.01.06 upgrade/downgrade to tag 2023.01.06 if it
exists on the current channel
RELEASE FILES
Recommended
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
File Description
----------------------------------- -----------------------------------
yt-dlp Platform-independent zipimport
binary. Needs Python (recommended
for Linux/BSD)
yt-dlp.exe Windows (Win7 SP1+) standalone x64
binary (recommended for Windows)
yt-dlp_macos Universal MacOS (10.15+) standalone
executable (recommended for MacOS)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Alternatives
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
File Description
----------------------------------- -----------------------------------
yt-dlp_x86.exe Windows (Vista SP2+) standalone x86
(32-bit) binary
yt-dlp_min.exe Windows (Win7 SP1+) standalone x64
binary built with py2exe (Not
recommended)
yt-dlp_linux Linux standalone x64 binary
yt-dlp_linux.zip Unpackaged Linux executable (no
auto-update)
yt-dlp_linux_armv7l Linux standalone armv7l (32-bit)
binary
yt-dlp_linux_aarch64 Linux standalone aarch64 (64-bit)
binary
yt-dlp_win.zip Unpackaged Windows executable (no
auto-update)
yt-dlp_macos.zip Unpackaged MacOS (10.15+)
executable (no auto-update)
yt-dlp_macos_legacy MacOS (10.9+) standalone x64
executable
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Misc
File Description
------------------ ------------------------------------
yt-dlp.tar.gz Source tarball
SHA2-512SUMS GNU-style SHA512 sums
SHA2-512SUMS.sig GPG signature file for SHA512 sums
SHA2-256SUMS GNU-style SHA256 sums
SHA2-256SUMS.sig GPG signature file for SHA256 sums
The public key that can be used to verify the GPG signatures is
available here Example usage:
curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/raw/master/public.key | gpg --import
gpg --verify SHA2-256SUMS.sig SHA2-256SUMS
gpg --verify SHA2-512SUMS.sig SHA2-512SUMS
Note: The manpages, shell completion files etc. are available inside the
source tarball
DEPENDENCIES
Python versions 3.7+ (CPython and PyPy) are supported. Other versions
and implementations may or may not work correctly.
While all the other dependencies are optional, ffmpeg and ffprobe are
highly recommended
Strongly recommended
- ffmpeg and ffprobe - Required for merging separate video and audio
files as well as for various post-processing tasks. License depends
on the build
There are bugs in ffmpeg that causes various issues when used
alongside yt-dlp. Since ffmpeg is such an important dependency, we
provide custom builds with patches for some of these issues at
yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds. See the readme 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
Networking
- certifi* - Provides Mozilla's root certificate bundle. Licensed
under MPLv2
- brotli* or brotlicffi - Brotli content encoding support. Both
licensed under MIT 1 2
- websockets* - For downloading over websocket. Licensed under
BSD-3-Clause
Metadata
- mutagen* - For --embed-thumbnail in certain formats. Licensed under
GPLv2+
- AtomicParsley - For --embed-thumbnail in mp4/m4a files when
mutagen/ffmpeg cannot. Licensed under GPLv2+
- xattr, pyxattr or setfattr - For writing xattr metadata (--xattr) on
Linux. Licensed under MIT, LGPL2.1 and GPLv2+ respectively
Misc
- pycryptodomex* - For decrypting AES-128 HLS streams and various
other data. Licensed under BSD-2-Clause
- phantomjs - Used in extractors where javascript needs to be run.
Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
- secretstorage - For --cookies-from-browser to access the Gnome
keyring while decrypting cookies of Chromium-based browsers on
Linux. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
- Any external downloader that you want to use with --downloader
Deprecated
- avconv and avprobe - Now deprecated alternative to ffmpeg. License
depends on the build
- sponskrub - For using the now deprecated sponskrub options. Licensed
under GPLv3+
- rtmpdump - For downloading rtmp streams. ffmpeg can be used instead
with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+
- mplayer or mpv - For downloading rstp/mms streams. ffmpeg can be
used instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+
To use or redistribute the dependencies, you must agree to their
respective licensing terms.
The standalone release binaries are built with the Python interpreter
and the packages marked with * included.
If you do not have the necessary dependencies for a task you are
attempting, yt-dlp will warn you. All the currently available
dependencies are visible at the top of the --verbose output
COMPILE
Standalone PyInstaller Builds
To build the standalone executable, you must have Python and pyinstaller
(plus any of yt-dlp's optional dependencies if needed). Once you have
all the necessary dependencies installed, simply run pyinst.py. The
executable will be built for the same architecture (x86/ARM, 32/64 bit)
as the Python used.
python3 -m pip install -U pyinstaller -r requirements.txt
python3 devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py
python3 pyinst.py
On some systems, you may need to use py or python instead of python3.
pyinst.py accepts any arguments that can be passed to pyinstaller, such
as --onefile/-F or --onedir/-D, which is further documented here.
Note: Pyinstaller versions below 4.4 do not support Python installed
from the Windows store without using a virtual environment.
Important: Running pyinstaller directly without using pyinst.py is not
officially supported. This may or may not work correctly.
Platform-independent Binary (UNIX)
You will need the build tools python (3.7+), zip, make (GNU), pandoc*
and pytest*.
After installing these, simply run make.
You can also run make yt-dlp instead to compile only the binary without
updating any of the additional files. (The build tools marked with * are
not needed for this)
Standalone Py2Exe Builds (Windows)
While we provide the option to build with py2exe, it is recommended to
build using PyInstaller instead since the py2exe builds cannot contain
pycryptodomex/certifi and needs VC++14 on the target computer to run.
If you wish to build it anyway, install Python and py2exe, and then
simply run setup.py py2exe
py -m pip install -U py2exe -r requirements.txt
py devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py
py setup.py py2exe
Related scripts
- devscripts/update-version.py - Update the version number based on
current date.
- devscripts/set-variant.py - Set the build variant of the executable.
- devscripts/make_changelog.py - Create a markdown changelog using
short commit messages and update CONTRIBUTORS file.
- devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py - Create lazy extractors. Running
this before building the binaries (any variant) will improve their
startup performance. Set the environment variable
YTDLP_NO_LAZY_EXTRACTORS=1 if you wish to forcefully disable lazy
extractor loading.
Note: See their --help for more info.
Forking the project
If you fork the project on GitHub, you can run your fork's build
workflow to automatically build the selected version(s) as artifacts.
Alternatively, you can run the release workflow or enable the nightly
workflow to create full (pre-)releases.
USAGE AND OPTIONS
yt-dlp [OPTIONS] [--] URL [URL...]
Ctrl+F is your friend :D
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 and TAG defaults to "stable" and
"latest" respectively if omitted; See
"UPDATE" for details. Supported channels:
stable, nightly
-i, --ignore-errors Ignore download and postprocessing errors.
The download will be considered successful
even if the postprocessing fails
--no-abort-on-error Continue with next video on download errors;
e.g. to skip unavailable videos in a
playlist (default)
--abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos if an
error occurs (Alias: --no-ignore-errors)
--dump-user-agent Display the current user-agent and exit
--list-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_warning" to emit a warning when
guessing). "error" just throws an error. The
default value "fixup_error" repairs broken
URLs, but emits an error if this is not
possible instead of searching
--ignore-config Don't load any more configuration files
except those given by --config-locations.
For backward compatibility, if this option
is found inside the system configuration
file, the user configuration is not loaded.
(Alias: --no-config)
--no-config-locations Do not load any custom configuration files
(default). When given inside a configuration
file, ignore all previous --config-locations
defined in the current file
--config-locations PATH Location of the main configuration file;
either the path to the config or its
containing directory ("-" for stdin). Can be
used multiple times and inside other
configuration files
--flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
only list them
--no-flat-playlist Extract the videos of a playlist
--live-from-start Download livestreams from the start.
Currently only supported for YouTube
(Experimental)
--no-live-from-start Download livestreams from the current time
(default)
--wait-for-video MIN[-MAX] Wait for scheduled streams to become
available. Pass the minimum number of
seconds (or range) to wait between retries
--no-wait-for-video Do not wait for scheduled streams (default)
--mark-watched Mark videos watched (even with --simulate)
--no-mark-watched Do not mark videos watched (default)
--no-colors Do not emit color codes in output (Alias:
--no-colours)
--compat-options OPTS Options that can help keep compatibility
with youtube-dl or youtube-dlc
configurations by reverting some of the
changes made in yt-dlp. See "Differences in
default behavior" for details
--alias ALIASES OPTIONS Create aliases for an option string. Unless
an alias starts with a dash "-", it is
prefixed with "--". Arguments are parsed
according to the Python string formatting
mini-language. E.g. --alias get-audio,-X
"-S=aext:{0},abr -x --audio-format {0}"
creates options "--get-audio" and "-X" that
takes an argument (ARG0) and expands to
"-S=aext:ARG0,abr -x --audio-format ARG0".
All defined aliases are listed in the --help
output. Alias options can trigger more
aliases; so be careful to avoid defining
recursive options. As a safety measure, each
alias may be triggered a maximum of 100
times. This option can be used multiple times
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
-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
--geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking
X-Forwarded-For HTTP header (default)
--no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via
faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
--geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with
explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
country code
--geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK Force bypass geographic restriction with
explicitly provided IP block in CIDR notation
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 indices to count from the right
and negative STEP to download in reverse
order. E.g. "-I 1:3,7,-5::2" used on a
playlist of size 15 will download the items
at index 1,2,3,7,11,13,15
--min-filesize SIZE Abort download if filesize is smaller than
SIZE, e.g. 50k or 44.6M
--max-filesize SIZE Abort download if filesize is larger than
SIZE, e.g. 50k or 44.6M
--date DATE Download only videos uploaded on this date.
The date can be "YYYYMMDD" or in the format
[now|today|yesterday][-N[day|week|month|year]].
E.g. "--date today-2weeks" downloads only
videos uploaded on the same day two weeks ago
--datebefore DATE Download only videos uploaded on or before
this date. The date formats accepted is the
same as --date
--dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after
this date. The date formats accepted is the
same as --date
--match-filters FILTER Generic video filter. Any "OUTPUT TEMPLATE"
field can be compared with a number or a
string using the operators defined in
"Filtering Formats". You can also simply
specify a field to match if the field is
present, use "!field" to check if the field
is not present, and "&" to check multiple
conditions. Use a "\" to escape "&" or
quotes if needed. If used multiple times,
the filter matches if atleast one of the
conditions are met. E.g. --match-filter
!is_live --match-filter "like_count>?100 &
description~='(?i)\bcats \& dogs\b'" matches
only videos that are not live OR those that
have a like count more than 100 (or the like
field is not available) and also has a
description that contains the phrase "cats &
dogs" (caseless). Use "--match-filter -" to
interactively ask whether to download each
video
--no-match-filter Do not use any --match-filter (default)
--break-match-filters FILTER Same as "--match-filters" but stops the
download process when a video is rejected
--no-break-match-filters Do not use any --break-match-filters (default)
--no-playlist Download only the video, if the URL refers
to a video and a playlist
--yes-playlist Download the playlist, if the URL refers to
a video and a playlist
--age-limit YEARS Download only videos suitable for the given
age
--download-archive FILE Download only videos not listed in the
archive file. Record the IDs of all
downloaded videos in it
--no-download-archive Do not use archive file (default)
--max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
--break-on-existing Stop the download process when encountering
a file that is in the archive
--break-per-input Alters --max-downloads, --break-on-existing,
--break-match-filter, and autonumber to
reset per input URL
--no-break-per-input --break-on-existing and similar options
terminates the entire download queue
--skip-playlist-after-errors N Number of allowed failures until the rest of
the playlist is skipped
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,
extractor) to apply the sleep to. EXPR can
be a number, linear=START[:END[:STEP=1]] or
exp=START[:END[:BASE=2]]. This option can be
used multiple times to set the sleep for the
different retry types, e.g. --retry-sleep
linear=1::2 --retry-sleep fragment:exp=1:20
--skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments for DASH,
hlsnative and ISM downloads (default)
(Alias: --no-abort-on-unavailable-fragments)
--abort-on-unavailable-fragments
Abort download if a fragment is unavailable
(Alias: --no-skip-unavailable-fragments)
--keep-fragments Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
downloading is finished
--no-keep-fragments Delete downloaded fragments after
downloading is finished (default)
--buffer-size SIZE Size of download buffer, e.g. 1024 or 16K
(default is 1024)
--resize-buffer The buffer size is automatically resized
from an initial value of --buffer-size
(default)
--no-resize-buffer Do not automatically adjust the buffer size
--http-chunk-size SIZE Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP
downloading, e.g. 10485760 or 10M (default
is disabled). May be useful for bypassing
bandwidth throttling imposed by a webserver
(experimental)
--playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order
--lazy-playlist Process entries in the playlist as they are
received. This disables n_entries,
--playlist-random and --playlist-reverse
--no-lazy-playlist Process videos in the playlist only after
the entire playlist is parsed (default)
--xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
expected file size
--hls-use-mpegts Use the mpegts container for HLS videos;
allowing some players to play the video
while downloading, and reducing the chance
of file corruption if download is
interrupted. This is enabled by default for
live streams
--no-hls-use-mpegts Do not use the mpegts container for HLS
videos. This is default when not downloading
live streams
--download-sections REGEX Download only chapters whose title matches
the given regular expression. Time ranges
prefixed by a "*" can also be used in place
of chapters to download the specified range.
Needs ffmpeg. This option can be used
multiple times to download multiple
sections, e.g. --download-sections
"*10:15-inf" --download-sections "intro"
--downloader [PROTO:]NAME Name or path of the external downloader to
use (optionally) prefixed by the protocols
(http, ftp, m3u8, dash, rstp, rtmp, mms) to
use it for. Currently supports native,
aria2c, avconv, axel, curl, ffmpeg, httpie,
wget. You can use this option multiple times
to set different downloaders for different
protocols. E.g. --downloader aria2c
--downloader "dash,m3u8:native" will use
aria2c for http/ftp downloads, and the
native downloader for dash/m3u8 downloads
(Alias: --external-downloader)
--downloader-args NAME:ARGS Give these arguments to the external
downloader. Specify the downloader name and
the arguments separated by a colon ":". For
ffmpeg, arguments can be passed to different
positions using the same syntax as
--postprocessor-args. You can use this
option multiple times to give different
arguments to different downloaders (Alias:
--external-downloader-args)
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 also provide "home"
(default) and "temp" paths. All intermediary
files are first downloaded to the temp path
and then the final files are moved over to
the home path after download is finished.
This option is ignored if --output is an
absolute path
-o, --output [TYPES:]TEMPLATE Output filename template; see "OUTPUT
TEMPLATE" for details
--output-na-placeholder TEXT Placeholder for unavailable fields in
"OUTPUT TEMPLATE" (default: "NA")
--restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters,
and avoid "&" and spaces in filenames
--no-restrict-filenames Allow Unicode characters, "&" and spaces in
filenames (default)
--windows-filenames Force filenames to be Windows-compatible
--no-windows-filenames Make filenames Windows-compatible only if
using Windows (default)
--trim-filenames LENGTH Limit the filename length (excluding
extension) to the specified number of
characters
-w, --no-overwrites Do not overwrite any files
--force-overwrites Overwrite all video and metadata files. This
option includes --no-continue
--no-force-overwrites Do not overwrite the video, but overwrite
related files (default)
-c, --continue Resume partially downloaded files/fragments
(default)
--no-continue Do not resume partially downloaded
fragments. If the file is not fragmented,
restart download of the entire file
--part Use .part files instead of writing directly
into output file (default)
--no-part Do not use .part files - write directly into
output file
--mtime Use the Last-modified header to set the file
modification time (default)
--no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set
the file modification time
--write-description Write video description to a .description file
--no-write-description Do not write video description (default)
--write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file
(this may contain personal information)
--no-write-info-json Do not write video metadata (default)
--write-playlist-metafiles Write playlist metadata in addition to the
video metadata when using --write-info-json,
--write-description etc. (default)
--no-write-playlist-metafiles Do not write playlist metadata when using
--write-info-json, --write-description etc.
--clean-info-json Remove some private fields such as filenames
from the infojson. Note that it could still
contain some personal information (default)
--no-clean-info-json Write all fields to the infojson
--write-comments Retrieve video comments to be placed in the
infojson. The comments are fetched even
without this option if the extraction is
known to be quick (Alias: --get-comments)
--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 supported browsers are:
brave, chrome, chromium, edge, firefox,
opera, safari, vivaldi. Optionally, the
KEYRING used for decrypting Chromium cookies
on Linux, the name/path of the PROFILE to
load cookies from, and the CONTAINER name
(if Firefox) ("none" for no container) can
be given with their respective seperators.
By default, all containers of the most
recently accessed profile are used.
Currently supported keyrings are: basictext,
gnomekeyring, kwallet
--no-cookies-from-browser Do not load cookies from browser (default)
--cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where yt-dlp can
store some downloaded information (such as
client ids and signatures) permanently. By
default ${XDG_CACHE_HOME}/yt-dlp
--no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching
--rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files
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 platform (.url, .webloc or
.desktop). The URL may be cached by the OS
--write-url-link Write a .url Windows internet shortcut. The
OS caches the URL based on the file path
--write-webloc-link Write a .webloc macOS internet shortcut
--write-desktop-link Write a .desktop Linux internet shortcut
Verbosity and Simulation Options:
-q, --quiet Activate quiet mode. If used with --verbose,
print the log to stderr
--no-warnings Ignore warnings
-s, --simulate Do not download the video and do not write
anything to disk
--no-simulate Download the video even if printing/listing
options are used
--ignore-no-formats-error Ignore "No video formats" error. Useful for
extracting metadata even if the videos are
not actually available for download
(experimental)
--no-ignore-no-formats-error Throw error when no downloadable video
formats are found (default)
--skip-download Do not download the video but write all
related files (Alias: --no-download)
-O, --print [WHEN:]TEMPLATE Field name or output template to print to
screen, optionally prefixed with when to
print it, separated by a ":". Supported
values of "WHEN" are the same as that of
--use-postprocessor (default: video).
Implies --quiet. Implies --simulate unless
--no-simulate or later stages of WHEN are
used. This option can be used multiple times
--print-to-file [WHEN:]TEMPLATE FILE
Append given template to the file. The
values of WHEN and TEMPLATE are same as that
of --print. FILE uses the same syntax as the
output template. This option can be used
multiple times
-j, --dump-json Quiet, but print JSON information for each
video. Simulate unless --no-simulate is
used. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a
description of available keys
-J, --dump-single-json Quiet, but print JSON information for each
url or infojson passed. Simulate unless
--no-simulate is used. If the URL refers to
a playlist, the whole playlist information
is dumped in a single line
--force-write-archive Force download archive entries to be written
as far as no errors occur, even if -s or
another simulation option is used (Alias:
--force-download-archive)
--newline Output progress bar as new lines
--no-progress Do not print progress bar
--progress Show progress bar, even if in quiet mode
--console-title Display progress in console titlebar
--progress-template [TYPES:]TEMPLATE
Template for progress outputs, optionally
prefixed with one of "download:" (default),
"download-title:" (the console title),
"postprocess:", or "postprocess-title:".
The video's fields are accessible under the
"info" key and the progress attributes are
accessible under "progress" key. E.g.
--console-title --progress-template
"download-title:%(info.id)s-%(progress.eta)s"
-v, --verbose Print various debugging information
--dump-pages Print downloaded pages encoded using base64
to debug problems (very verbose)
--write-pages Write downloaded intermediary pages to files
in the current directory to debug problems
--print-traffic Display sent and read HTTP traffic
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. Requires bidiv
or fribidi executable in PATH
--sleep-requests SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep between requests
during data extraction
--sleep-interval SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each
download. This is the minimum time to sleep
when used along with --max-sleep-interval
(Alias: --min-sleep-interval)
--max-sleep-interval SECONDS Maximum number of seconds to sleep. Can only
be used along with --min-sleep-interval
--sleep-subtitles SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each
subtitle download
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-force Force user specified sort order to have
precedence over all fields, see "Sorting
Formats" for more details (Alias: --S-force)
--no-format-sort-force Some fields have precedence over the user
specified sort order (default)
--video-multistreams Allow multiple video streams to be merged
into a single file
--no-video-multistreams Only one video stream is downloaded for each
output file (default)
--audio-multistreams Allow multiple audio streams to be merged
into a single file
--no-audio-multistreams Only one audio stream is downloaded for each
output file (default)
--prefer-free-formats Prefer video formats with free containers
over non-free ones of same quality. Use with
"-S ext" to strictly prefer free containers
irrespective of quality
--no-prefer-free-formats Don't give any special preference to free
containers (default)
--check-formats Make sure formats are selected only from
those that are actually downloadable
--check-all-formats Check all formats for whether they are
actually downloadable
--no-check-formats Do not check that the formats are actually
downloadable
-F, --list-formats List available formats of each video.
Simulate unless --no-simulate is used
--merge-output-format FORMAT Containers that may be used when merging
formats, separated by "/", e.g. "mp4/mkv".
Ignored if no merge is required. (currently
supported: avi, flv, mkv, mov, mp4, webm)
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-automatic-subs)
--no-write-auto-subs Do not write auto-generated subtitles
(default) (Alias: --no-write-automatic-subs)
--list-subs List available subtitles of each video.
Simulate unless --no-simulate is used
--sub-format FORMAT Subtitle format; accepts formats preference,
e.g. "srt" or "ass/srt/best"
--sub-langs LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download (can
be regex) or "all" separated by commas, e.g.
--sub-langs "en.*,ja". You can prefix the
language code with a "-" to exclude it from
the requested languages, e.g. --sub-langs
all,-live_chat. Use --list-subs for a list
of available language tags
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
--video-password PASSWORD Video password (vimeo, youku)
--ap-mso MSO Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for
a list of available MSOs
--ap-username USERNAME Multiple-system operator account login
--ap-password PASSWORD Multiple-system operator account password.
If this option is left out, yt-dlp will ask
interactively
--ap-list-mso List all supported multiple-system operators
--client-certificate CERTFILE Path to client certificate file in PEM
format. May include the private key
--client-certificate-key KEYFILE
Path to private key file for client
certificate
--client-certificate-password PASSWORD
Password for client certificate private key,
if encrypted. If not provided, and the key
is encrypted, yt-dlp will ask interactively
Post-Processing Options:
-x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files
(requires ffmpeg and ffprobe)
--audio-format FORMAT Format to convert the audio to when -x is
used. (currently supported: best (default),
aac, alac, flac, m4a, mp3, opus, vorbis,
wav). You can specify multiple rules using
similar syntax as --remux-video
--audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg audio quality to use when
converting the audio with -x. Insert a value
between 0 (best) and 10 (worst) for VBR or a
specific bitrate like 128K (default 5)
--remux-video FORMAT Remux the video into another container if
necessary (currently supported: avi, flv,
gif, mkv, mov, mp4, webm, aac, aiff, alac,
flac, m4a, mka, mp3, ogg, opus, vorbis,
wav). If target container does not support
the video/audio codec, remuxing will fail.
You can specify multiple rules; e.g.
"aac>m4a/mov>mp4/mkv" will remux aac to m4a,
mov to mp4 and anything else to mkv
--recode-video FORMAT Re-encode the video into another format if
necessary. The syntax and supported formats
are the same as --remux-video
--postprocessor-args NAME:ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessors.
Specify the postprocessor/executable name
and the arguments separated by a colon ":"
to give the argument to the specified
postprocessor/executable. Supported PP are:
Merger, ModifyChapters, SplitChapters,
ExtractAudio, VideoRemuxer, VideoConvertor,
Metadata, EmbedSubtitle, EmbedThumbnail,
SubtitlesConvertor, ThumbnailsConvertor,
FixupStretched, FixupM4a, FixupM3u8,
FixupTimestamp and FixupDuration. The
supported executables are: AtomicParsley,
FFmpeg and FFprobe. You can also specify
"PP+EXE:ARGS" to give the arguments to the
specified executable only when being used by
the specified postprocessor. Additionally,
for ffmpeg/ffprobe, "_i"/"_o" can be
appended to the prefix optionally followed
by a number to pass the argument before the
specified input/output file, e.g. --ppa
"Merger+ffmpeg_i1:-v quiet". You can use
this option multiple times to give different
arguments to different postprocessors.
(Alias: --ppa)
-k, --keep-video Keep the intermediate video file on disk
after post-processing
--no-keep-video Delete the intermediate video file after
post-processing (default)
--post-overwrites Overwrite post-processed files (default)
--no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files
--embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4,
webm and mkv videos)
--no-embed-subs Do not embed subtitles (default)
--embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the video as cover art
--no-embed-thumbnail Do not embed thumbnail (default)
--embed-metadata Embed metadata to the video file. Also
embeds chapters/infojson if present unless
--no-embed-chapters/--no-embed-info-json are
used (Alias: --add-metadata)
--no-embed-metadata Do not add metadata to file (default)
(Alias: --no-add-metadata)
--embed-chapters Add chapter markers to the video file
(Alias: --add-chapters)
--no-embed-chapters Do not add chapter markers (default) (Alias:
--no-add-chapters)
--embed-info-json Embed the infojson as an attachment to
mkv/mka video files
--no-embed-info-json Do not embed the infojson as an attachment
to the video file
--parse-metadata [WHEN:]FROM:TO
Parse additional metadata like title/artist
from other fields; see "MODIFYING METADATA"
for details. Supported values of "WHEN" are
the same as that of --use-postprocessor
(default: pre_process)
--replace-in-metadata [WHEN:]FIELDS REGEX REPLACE
Replace text in a metadata field using the
given regex. This option can be used
multiple times. Supported values of "WHEN"
are the same as that of --use-postprocessor
(default: pre_process)
--xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
(using dublin core and xdg standards)
--concat-playlist POLICY Concatenate videos in a playlist. One of
"never", "always", or "multi_video"
(default; only when the videos form a single
show). All the video files must have same
codecs and number of streams to be
concatable. The "pl_video:" prefix can be
used with "--paths" and "--output" to set
the output filename for the concatenated
files. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details
--fixup POLICY Automatically correct known faults of the
file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only
emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
default; fix file if we can, warn
otherwise), force (try fixing even if file
already exists)
--ffmpeg-location PATH Location of the ffmpeg binary; either the
path to the binary or its containing directory
--exec [WHEN:]CMD Execute a command, optionally prefixed with
when to execute it, separated by a ":".
Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as
that of --use-postprocessor (default:
after_move). Same syntax as the output
template can be used to pass any field as
arguments to the command. After download, an
additional field "filepath" that contains
the final path of the downloaded file is
also available, and if no fields are passed,
%(filepath,_filename|)q is appended to the
end of the command. This option can be used
multiple times
--no-exec Remove any previously defined --exec
--convert-subs FORMAT Convert the subtitles to another format
(currently supported: ass, lrc, srt, vtt)
(Alias: --convert-subtitles)
--convert-thumbnails FORMAT Convert the thumbnails to another format
(currently supported: jpg, png, webp). You
can specify multiple rules using similar
syntax as --remux-video
--split-chapters Split video into multiple files based on
internal chapters. The "chapter:" prefix can
be used with "--paths" and "--output" to set
the output filename for the split files. See
"OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details
--no-split-chapters Do not split video based on chapters (default)
--remove-chapters REGEX Remove chapters whose title matches the
given regular expression. The syntax is the
same as --download-sections. This option can
be used multiple times
--no-remove-chapters Do not remove any chapters from the file
(default)
--force-keyframes-at-cuts Force keyframes at cuts when
downloading/splitting/removing sections.
This is slow due to needing a re-encode, but
the resulting video may have fewer artifacts
around the cuts
--no-force-keyframes-at-cuts Do not force keyframes around the chapters
when cutting/splitting (default)
--use-postprocessor NAME[:ARGS]
The (case sensitive) name of plugin
postprocessors to be enabled, and
(optionally) arguments to be passed to it,
separated by a colon ":". ARGS are a
semicolon ";" delimited list of NAME=VALUE.
The "when" argument determines when the
postprocessor is invoked. It can be one of
"pre_process" (after video extraction),
"after_filter" (after video passes filter),
"video" (after --format; before
--print/--output), "before_dl" (before each
video download), "post_process" (after each
video download; default), "after_move"
(after moving video file to it's final
locations), "after_video" (after downloading
and processing all formats of a video), or
"playlist" (at end of playlist). This option
can be used multiple times to add different
postprocessors
SponsorBlock Options:
Make chapter entries for, or remove various segments (sponsor,
introductions, etc.) from downloaded YouTube videos using the
SponsorBlock API
--sponsorblock-mark CATS SponsorBlock categories to create chapters
for, separated by commas. Available
categories are sponsor, intro, outro,
selfpromo, preview, filler, interaction,
music_offtopic, poi_highlight, chapter, all
and default (=all). You can prefix the
category with a "-" to exclude it. See [1]
for description of the categories. E.g.
--sponsorblock-mark all,-preview
[1] https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Segment_Categories
--sponsorblock-remove CATS SponsorBlock categories to be removed from
the video file, separated by commas. If a
category is present in both mark and remove,
remove takes precedence. The syntax and
available categories are the same as for
--sponsorblock-mark except that "default"
refers to "all,-filler" and poi_highlight,
chapter are not available
--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, category_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-dynamic-mpd)
--ignore-dynamic-mpd Do not process dynamic DASH manifests
(Alias: --no-allow-dynamic-mpd)
--hls-split-discontinuity Split HLS playlists to different formats at
discontinuities such as ad breaks
--no-hls-split-discontinuity Do not split HLS playlists to different
formats at discontinuities such as ad breaks
(default)
--extractor-args IE_KEY:ARGS Pass ARGS arguments to the IE_KEY extractor.
See "EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS" for details. You
can use this option multiple times to give
arguments for different extractors
CONFIGURATION
You can configure yt-dlp by placing any supported command line option to
a configuration file. The configuration is loaded from the following
locations:
1. Main Configuration:
- The file given by --config-location
2. Portable Configuration: (Recommended for portable installations)
- If using a binary, yt-dlp.conf in the same directory as the
binary
- If running from source-code, yt-dlp.conf in the parent directory
of yt_dlp
3. Home Configuration:
- yt-dlp.conf in the home path given by -P
- If -P is not given, the current directory is searched
4. User Configuration:
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp.conf
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Linux/macOS)
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/config.txt
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp.conf
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Windows)
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/config.txt
- ~/yt-dlp.conf
- ~/yt-dlp.conf.txt
- ~/.yt-dlp/config
- ~/.yt-dlp/config.txt
See also: Notes about environment variables
5. System Configuration:
- /etc/yt-dlp.conf
- /etc/yt-dlp/config
- /etc/yt-dlp/config.txt
E.g. with the following configuration file yt-dlp will always extract
the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all videos under
YouTube directory in your home directory:
# Lines starting with # are comments
# Always extract audio
-x
# Do not copy the mtime
--no-mtime
# Use this proxy
--proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
# Save all videos under YouTube directory in your home directory
-o ~/YouTube/%(title)s.%(ext)s
Note: Options in configuration file are just the same options aka
switches used in regular command line calls; thus there must be no
whitespace after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.
They must also be quoted when necessary as-if it were a UNIX shell.
You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable all configuration
files for a particular yt-dlp run. If --ignore-config is found inside
any configuration file, no further configuration will be loaded. For
example, having the option in the portable configuration file prevents
loading of home, user, and system configurations. Additionally, (for
backward compatibility) if --ignore-config is found inside the system
configuration file, the user configuration is not loaded.
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 file
You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for
extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password
with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as
command line arguments on every yt-dlp execution and prevent tracking
plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve this
using a .netrc file 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).
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 allow using UNIX-style variables on Windows for
path-like options; e.g. --output, --config-location
- If unset, ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME} defaults to ~/.config and
${XDG_CACHE_HOME} to ~/.cache
- On Windows, ~ points to ${HOME} if present; or, ${USERPROFILE} or
${HOMEDRIVE}${HOMEPATH} otherwise
- On Windows, ${USERPROFILE} generally points to C:\Users\<user name>
and ${APPDATA} to ${USERPROFILE}\AppData\Roaming
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.
tl;dr: navigate me to examples.
The simplest usage of -o is not to set any template arguments when
downloading a single file, like in
yt-dlp -o funny_video.flv "https://some/video" (hard-coding file
extension like this is not recommended and could break some
post-processing).
It may however also contain special sequences that will be replaced when
downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according
to Python string formatting operations, e.g. %(NAME)s or %(NAME)05d. To
clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses,
followed by formatting operations.
The field names themselves (the part inside the parenthesis) can also
have some special formatting:
1. Object traversal: The dictionaries and lists available in metadata
can be traversed by using a dot . separator; e.g. %(tags.0)s,
%(subtitles.en.-1.ext)s. You can do Python slicing with colon :;
E.g. %(id.3:7:-1)s, %(formats.:.format_id)s. Curly braces {} can be
used to build dictionaries with only specific keys; e.g.
%(formats.:.{format_id,height})#j. An empty field name %()s refers
to the entire infodict; e.g. %(.{id,title})s. Note that all the
fields that become available using this method are not listed below.
Use -j to see such fields
2. Addition: Addition and subtraction of numeric fields can be done
using + and - respectively. E.g. %(playlist_index+10)03d,
%(n_entries+1-playlist_index)d
3. Date/time Formatting: Date/time fields can be formatted according to
strftime formatting by specifying it separated from the field name
using a >. E.g. %(duration>%H-%M-%S)s, %(upload_date>%Y-%m-%d)s,
%(epoch-3600>%H-%M-%S)s
4. Alternatives: Alternate fields can be specified separated with a ,.
E.g. %(release_date>%Y,upload_date>%Y|Unknown)s
5. Replacement: A replacement value can be specified using a &
separator. If the field is not empty, this replacement value will be
used instead of the actual field content. This is done after
alternate fields are considered; thus the replacement is used if any
of the alternative fields is not empty.
6. Default: A literal default value can be specified for when the field
is empty using a | separator. This overrides
--output-na-placeholder. E.g. %(uploader|Unknown)s
7. More Conversions: In addition to the normal format types
diouxXeEfFgGcrs, yt-dlp additionally supports converting to B =
Bytes, j = json (flag # for pretty-printing, + for Unicode), h =
HTML escaping, l = a comma separated list (flag # for \n
newline-separated), q = a string quoted for the terminal (flag # to
split a list into different arguments), D = add Decimal suffixes
(e.g. 10M) (flag # to use 1024 as factor), and S = Sanitize as
filename (flag # for restricted)
8. Unicode normalization: The format type U can be used for NFC Unicode
normalization. The alternate form flag (#) changes the normalization
to NFD and the conversion flag + can be used for NFKC/NFKD
compatibility equivalence normalization. E.g. %(title)+.100U is NFKC
To summarize, the general syntax for a field is:
%(name[.keys][addition][>strf][,alternate][&replacement][|default])[flags][width][.precision][length]type
Additionally, you can set different output templates for the various
metadata files separately from the general output template by specifying
the type of file followed by the template separated by a colon :. The
different file types supported are subtitle, thumbnail, description,
annotation (deprecated), infojson, link, pl_thumbnail, pl_description,
pl_infojson, chapter, pl_video. E.g.
-o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -o "thumbnail:%(title)s\%(title)s.%(ext)s" will
put the thumbnails in a folder with the same name as the video. If any
of the templates is empty, that type of file will not be written. E.g.
--write-thumbnail -o "thumbnail:" will write thumbnails only for
playlists and not for video.
Note: Due to post-processing (i.e. merging etc.), the actual output
filename might differ. Use --print after_move:filepath to get the name
after all post-processing is complete.
The available fields are:
- id (string): Video identifier
- title (string): Video title
- fulltitle (string): Video title ignoring live timestamp and generic
title
- ext (string): Video filename extension
- alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
- description (string): The description of the video
- display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
- uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
- license (string): License name the video is licensed under
- creator (string): The creator of the video
- timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became
available
- upload_date (string): Video upload date in UTC (YYYYMMDD)
- release_timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video
was released
- release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was
released in UTC
- modified_timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video
was last modified
- modified_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was last
modified in UTC
- uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
- channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on
- channel_id (string): Id of the channel
- channel_follower_count (numeric): Number of followers of the channel
- location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
- duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
- duration_string (string): Length of the video (HH:mm:ss)
- view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the
platform
- concurrent_view_count (numeric): How many users are currently
watching the video on the platform.
- like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
- dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
- repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
- average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale
used depends on the webpage
- comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video (For some
extractors, comments are only downloaded at the end, and so this
field cannot be used)
- age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
- live_status (string): One of "not_live", "is_live", "is_upcoming",
"was_live", "post_live" (was live, but VOD is not yet processed)
- is_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a
fixed-length video
- was_live (boolean): Whether this video was originally a live stream
- playable_in_embed (string): Whether this video is allowed to play in
embedded players on other sites
- availability (string): Whether the video is "private",
"premium_only", "subscriber_only", "needs_auth", "unlisted" or
"public"
- start_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
start, as specified in the URL
- end_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
end, as specified in the URL
- extractor (string): Name of the extractor
- extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
- epoch (numeric): Unix epoch of when the information extraction was
completed
- autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each
download, starting at --autonumber-start
- video_autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each
video
- n_entries (numeric): Total number of extracted items in the playlist
- playlist_id (string): Identifier of the playlist that contains the
video
- playlist_title (string): Name of the playlist that contains the
video
- playlist (string): playlist_id or playlist_title
- playlist_count (numeric): Total number of items in the playlist. May
not be known if entire playlist is not extracted
- playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded
with leading zeros according the final index
- playlist_autonumber (numeric): Position of the video in the playlist
download queue padded with leading zeros according to the total
length of the playlist
- playlist_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader
- playlist_uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist
uploader
- webpage_url (string): A URL to the video webpage which if given to
yt-dlp should allow to get the same result again
- webpage_url_basename (string): The basename of the webpage URL
- webpage_url_domain (string): The domain of the webpage URL
- original_url (string): The URL given by the user (or same as
webpage_url for playlist entries)
All the fields in Filtering Formats can also be used
Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
- chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
- chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
- chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
- series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode
belongs to
- season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
- season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode
belongs to
- season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
- episode (string): Title of the video episode
- episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a
season
- episode_id (string): Id of the video episode
Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
- track (string): Title of the track
- track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a
disc
- track_id (string): Id of the track
- artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
- genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
- album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
- album_type (string): Type of the album
- album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
- disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium
the track belongs to
- release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
Available only when using --download-sections and for chapter: prefix
when using --split-chapters for videos with internal chapters:
- section_title (string): Title of the chapter
- section_number (numeric): Number of the chapter within the file
- section_start (numeric): Start time of the chapter in seconds
- section_end (numeric): End time of the chapter in seconds
Available only when used in --print:
- urls (string): The URLs of all requested formats, one in each line
- filename (string): Name of the video file. Note that the actual
filename may differ
- formats_table (table): The video format table as printed by
--list-formats
- thumbnails_table (table): The thumbnail format table as printed by
--list-thumbnails
- subtitles_table (table): The subtitle format table as printed by
--list-subs
- automatic_captions_table (table): The automatic subtitle format
table as printed by --list-subs
Available only in --sponsorblock-chapter-title:
- start_time (numeric): Start time of the chapter in seconds
- end_time (numeric): End time of the chapter in seconds
- categories (list): The SponsorBlock categories the chapter belongs
to
- category (string): The smallest SponsorBlock category the chapter
belongs to
- category_names (list): Friendly names of the categories
- name (string): Friendly name of the smallest category
- type (string): The SponsorBlock action type of the chapter
Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will
be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. E.g.
for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title
yt-dlp test video and id BaW_jenozKc, this will result in a
yt-dlp test video-BaW_jenozKc.mp4 file created in the current directory.
Note: Some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they
depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such
sequences will be replaced with placeholder value provided with
--output-na-placeholder (NA by default).
Tip: Look at the -j output to identify which fields are available for
the particular URL
For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting; e.g.
%(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded with
zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.
Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g.
-o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" which will
result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this
path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for
you.
To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to
stdout use -o -.
The current default template is %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s.
In some cases, you don't want special characters such as 中, spaces, or
&, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system
or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the
--restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title.
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 ''_ä↭𝕐.webm # All kinds of weird characters
$ yt-dlp --print filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
youtube-dl_test_video_.webm # Restricted file name
# Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
$ yt-dlp -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
# Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directories according to their uploaded year
$ yt-dlp -o "%(upload_date>%Y)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
# Prefix playlist index with " - " separator, but only if it is available
$ yt-dlp -o '%(playlist_index|)s%(playlist_index& - |)s%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc "https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists"
# Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
$ yt-dlp -o "%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists"
# Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
$ yt-dlp -u user -p password -P "~/MyVideos" -o "%(playlist)s/%(chapter_number)s - %(chapter)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.udemy.com/java-tutorial"
# Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
$ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -o "%(series)s/%(season_number)s - %(season)s/%(episode_number)s - %(episode)s.%(ext)s" "https://videomore.ru/kino_v_detalayah/5_sezon/367617"
# Download video as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\title.ext", subtitles as "C:\MyVideos\subs\uploader\title.ext"
# and put all temporary files in "C:\MyVideos\tmp"
$ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -P "temp:tmp" -P "subtitle:subs" -o "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenoz --write-subs
# Download video as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\title.ext" and subtitles as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\subs\title.ext"
$ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -o "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" -o "subtitle:%(uploader)s/subs/%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --write-subs
# Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
$ yt-dlp -o - BaW_jenozKc
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
enabled (--audio-multistreams), the default format changes to
-f bestvideo+bestaudio/best. Similarly, if ffmpeg is unavailable, or if
you use yt-dlp to stream to stdout (-o -), the default becomes
-f best/bestvideo+bestaudio.
Deprecation warning: Latest versions of yt-dlp can stream multiple
formats to the stdout simultaneously using ffmpeg. So, in future
versions, the default for this will be set to -f bv*+ba/b similar to
normal downloads. If you want to preserve the -f b/bv+ba setting, it is
recommended to explicitly specify it in the configuration options.
The general syntax for format selection is -f FORMAT (or
--format FORMAT) where FORMAT is a selector expression, i.e. an
expression that describes format or formats you would like to download.
tl;dr: navigate me to examples.
The simplest case is requesting a specific format; e.g. with -f 22 you
can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can get the
list of available format codes for particular video using --list-formats
or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor specific.
You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3,
mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format
of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm
will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as
a single file.
You can use -f - to interactively provide the format selector for each
video
You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:
- all: Select all formats separately
- mergeall: Select and merge all formats (Must be used with
--audio-multistreams, --video-multistreams or both)
- b*, best*: Select the best quality format that contains either a
video or an audio or both (ie; vcodec!=none or acodec!=none)
- b, best: Select the best quality format that contains both video and
audio. Equivalent to best*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]
- bv, bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format. Equivalent
to best*[acodec=none]
- bv*, bestvideo*: Select the best quality format that contains video.
It may also contain audio. Equivalent to best*[vcodec!=none]
- ba, bestaudio: Select the best quality audio-only format. Equivalent
to best*[vcodec=none]
- ba*, bestaudio*: Select the best quality format that contains audio.
It may also contain video. Equivalent to best*[acodec!=none] (Do not
use!)
- w*, worst*: Select the worst quality format that contains either a
video or an audio
- w, worst: Select the worst quality format that contains both video
and audio. Equivalent to worst*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]
- wv, worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format.
Equivalent to worst*[acodec=none]
- wv*, worstvideo*: Select the worst quality format that contains
video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to worst*[vcodec!=none]
- wa, worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio-only format.
Equivalent to worst*[vcodec=none]
- wa*, worstaudio*: Select the worst quality format that contains
audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent to worst*[acodec!=none]
For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use
-f worstvideo. It is however recommended not to use worst and related
options. When your format selector is worst, the format which is worst
in all respects is selected. Most of the time, what you actually want is
the video with the smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better
to use -S +size or more rigorously, -S +size,+br,+res,+fps instead of
-f worst. See Sorting Formats for more details.
You can select the n'th best format of a type by using best<type>.<n>.
For example, best.2 will select the 2nd best combined format. Similarly,
bv*.3 will select the 3rd best format that contains a video stream.
If you want to download multiple videos, and they don't have the same
formats available, you can specify the order of preference using
slashes. Note that formats on the left hand side are preferred; e.g.
-f 22/17/18 will download format 22 if it's available, otherwise it will
download format 17 if it's available, otherwise it will download format
18 if it's available, otherwise it will complain that no suitable
formats are available for download.
If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as
a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of
course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined
with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
You can merge the video and audio of multiple formats into a single file
using -f <format1>+<format2>+... (requires ffmpeg installed); e.g.
-f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best video-only format, the
best audio-only format and mux them together with ffmpeg.
Deprecation warning: Since the below described behavior is complex and
counter-intuitive, this will be removed and multistreams will be enabled
by default in the future. A new operator will be instead added to limit
formats to single audio/video
Unless --video-multistreams is used, all formats with a video stream
except the first one are ignored. Similarly, unless --audio-multistreams
is used, all formats with an audio stream except the first one are
ignored. E.g.
-f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --video-multistreams --audio-multistreams
will download and merge all 3 given formats. The resulting file will
have 2 video streams and 2 audio streams. But
-f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --no-video-multistreams will download and
merge only bestvideo and bestaudio. best is ignored since another format
containing a video stream (bestvideo) has already been selected. The
order of the formats is therefore important.
-f best+bestaudio --no-audio-multistreams will download only best while
-f bestaudio+best --no-audio-multistreams will ignore best and download
only bestaudio.
Filtering Formats
You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in
brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >,
>=, = (equals), != (not equals):
- filesize: The number of bytes, if known in advance
- filesize_approx: An estimate for the number of bytes
- width: Width of the video, if known
- height: Height of the video, if known
- aspect_ratio: Aspect ratio of the video, if known
- tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
- abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
- vbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
- asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz
- fps: Frame rate
- audio_channels: The number of audio channels
- stretched_ratio: width:height of the video's pixels, if not square
Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $=
(ends with), *= (contains), ~= (matches regex) and following string meta
fields:
- url: Video URL
- ext: File extension
- acodec: Name of the audio codec in use
- vcodec: Name of the video codec in use
- container: Name of the container format
- protocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download,
lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m, ism,
http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native)
- language: Language code
- dynamic_range: The dynamic range of the video
- format_id: A short description of the format
- format: A human-readable description of the format
- format_note: Additional info about the format
- resolution: Textual description of width and height
Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation ! in order to
produce an opposite comparison, e.g. !*= (does not contain). The
comparand of a string comparison needs to be quoted with either double
or single quotes if it contains spaces or special characters other than
._-.
Note: None of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be
present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular
extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the website. Any other field
made available by the extractor can also be used for filtering.
Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a
question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so
-f "[height<=?720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos where
the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s. You can
also use the filters with all to download all formats that satisfy the
filter, e.g. -f "all[vcodec=none]" selects all audio-only formats.
Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses; e.g.
-f "(mp4,webm)[height<480]" will download the best pre-merged mp4 and
webm formats with a height lower than 480.
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
- quality: The quality of the format
- source: The preference of the source
- proto: Protocol used for download (https/ftps > http/ftp >
m3u8_native/m3u8 > http_dash_segments> websocket_frag > mms/rtsp >
f4f/f4m)
- vcodec: Video Codec (av01 > vp9.2 > vp9 > h265 > h264 > vp8 > h263 >
theora > other)
- acodec: Audio Codec (flac/alac > wav/aiff > opus > vorbis > aac >
mp4a > mp3 > ac4 > eac3 > ac3 > dts > other)
- codec: Equivalent to vcodec,acodec
- vext: Video Extension (mp4 > mov > webm > flv > other). If
--prefer-free-formats is used, webm is preferred.
- aext: Audio Extension (m4a > aac > mp3 > ogg > opus > webm > other).
If --prefer-free-formats is used, the order changes to ogg > opus >
webm > mp3 > m4a > aac
- ext: Equivalent to vext,aext
- filesize: Exact filesize, if known in advance
- fs_approx: Approximate filesize calculated from the manifests
- size: Exact filesize if available, otherwise approximate filesize
- height: Height of video
- width: Width of video
- res: Video resolution, calculated as the smallest dimension.
- fps: Framerate of video
- hdr: The dynamic range of the video (DV > HDR12 > HDR10+ > HDR10 >
HLG > SDR)
- channels: The number of audio channels
- tbr: Total average bitrate in KBit/s
- vbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
- abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
- br: Equivalent to using tbr,vbr,abr
- asr: Audio sample rate in Hz
Deprecation warning: Many of these fields have (currently undocumented)
aliases, that may be removed in a future version. It is recommended to
use only the documented field names.
All fields, unless specified otherwise, are sorted in descending order.
To reverse this, prefix the field with a +. E.g. +res prefers format
with the smallest resolution. Additionally, you can suffix a preferred
value for the fields, separated by a :. E.g. res:720 prefers larger
videos, but no larger than 720p and the smallest video if there are no
videos less than 720p. For codec and ext, you can provide two preferred
values, the first for video and the second for audio. E.g.
+codec:avc:m4a (equivalent to +vcodec:avc,+acodec:m4a) sets the video
codec preference to h264 > h265 > vp9 > vp9.2 > av01 > vp8 > h263 >
theora and audio codec preference to mp4a > aac > vorbis > opus > mp3 >
ac3 > dts. You can also make the sorting prefer the nearest values to
the provided by using ~ as the delimiter. E.g. filesize~1G prefers the
format with filesize closest to 1 GiB.
The fields hasvid and ie_pref are always given highest priority in
sorting, irrespective of the user-defined order. This behaviour can be
changed by using --format-sort-force. Apart from these, the default
order used is:
lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,vcodec:vp9.2,channels,acodec,size,br,asr,proto,ext,hasaud,source,id.
The extractors may override this default order, but they cannot override
the user-provided order.
Note that the default has vcodec:vp9.2; i.e. av1 is not preferred.
Similarly, the default for hdr is hdr:12; i.e. dolby vision is not
preferred. These choices are made since DV and AV1 formats are not yet
fully compatible with most devices. This may be changed in the future as
more devices become capable of smoothly playing back these formats.
If your format selector is worst, the last item is selected after
sorting. This means it will select the format that is worst in all
respects. Most of the time, what you actually want is the video with the
smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better to use
-f best -S +size,+br,+res,+fps.
Tip: You can use the -v -F to see how the formats have been sorted
(worst to best).
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 largest video (that also has audio) but no bigger than 50 MB,
# or the smallest video (that also has audio) if there is no video under 50 MB
$ yt-dlp -f "b" -S "filesize:50M"
# Download best video (that also has audio) that is closest in size to 50 MB
$ yt-dlp -f "b" -S "filesize~50M"
# Download best video available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol,
# or the best video available via any protocol if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -f "(bv*+ba/b)[protocol^=http][protocol!*=dash] / (bv*+ba/b)"
# Download best video available via the best protocol
# (https/ftps > http/ftp > m3u8_native > m3u8 > http_dash_segments ...)
$ yt-dlp -S "proto"
# Download the best video with either h264 or h265 codec,
# or the best video if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -f "(bv*[vcodec~='^((he|a)vc|h26[45])']+ba) / (bv*+ba/b)"
# Download the best video with best codec no better than h264,
# or the best video with worst codec if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -S "codec:h264"
# Download the best video with worst codec no worse than h264,
# or the best video with best codec if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -S "+codec:h264"
# More complex examples
# Download the best video no better than 720p preferring framerate greater than 30,
# or the worst video (still preferring framerate greater than 30) if there is no such video
$ yt-dlp -f "((bv*[fps>30]/bv*)[height<=720]/(wv*[fps>30]/wv*)) + ba / (b[fps>30]/b)[height<=720]/(w[fps>30]/w)"
# Download the video with the largest resolution no better than 720p,
# or the video with the smallest resolution available if there is no such video,
# preferring larger framerate for formats with the same resolution
$ yt-dlp -S "res:720,fps"
# Download the video with smallest resolution no worse than 480p,
# or the video with the largest resolution available if there is no such video,
# preferring better codec and then larger total bitrate for the same resolution
$ yt-dlp -S "+res:480,codec,br"
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. Backreferences can
be used in the replace string for advanced use.
The general syntax of --parse-metadata FROM:TO is to give the name of a
field or an output template to extract data from, and the format to
interpret it as, separated by a colon :. Either a python regular
expression with named capture groups, a single field name, or a similar
syntax to the output template (only %(field)s formatting is supported)
can be used for TO. The option can be used multiple times to parse and
modify various fields.
Note that these options preserve their relative order, allowing
replacements to be made in parsed fields and viceversa. Also, any field
thus created can be used in the output template and will also affect the
media file's metadata added when using --embed-metadata.
This option also has a few special uses:
- You can download an additional URL based on the metadata of the
currently downloaded video. To do this, set the field
additional_urls to the URL that you want to download. E.g.
--parse-metadata "description:(?P<additional_urls>https?://www\.vimeo\.com/\d+)
will download the first vimeo video found in the description
- You can use this to change the metadata that is embedded in the
media file. To do this, set the value of the corresponding field
with a meta_ prefix. For example, any value you set to
meta_description field will be added to the description field in the
file - you can use this to set a different "description" and
"synopsis". To modify the metadata of individual streams, use the
meta<n>_ prefix (e.g. meta1_language). Any value set to the meta_
field will overwrite all default values.
Note: Metadata modification happens before format selection,
post-extraction and other post-processing operations. Some fields may be
added or changed during these steps, overriding your changes.
For reference, these are the fields yt-dlp adds by default to the file
metadata:
Metadata fields From
------------------------- ------------------------------------------
title track or title
date upload_date
description, synopsis description
purl, comment webpage_url
track track_number
artist artist, creator, uploader or uploader_id
genre genre
album album
album_artist album_artist
disc disc_number
show series
season_number season_number
episode_id episode or episode_id
episode_sort episode_number
language of each stream the format's language
Note: The file format may not support some of these fields
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>.+)"
# Set title as "Series name S01E05"
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "%(series)s S%(season_number)02dE%(episode_number)02d:%(title)s"
# Prioritize uploader as the "artist" field in video metadata
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "%(uploader|)s:%(meta_artist)s" --embed-metadata
# Set "comment" field in video metadata using description instead of webpage_url,
# handling multiple lines correctly
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "description:(?s)(?P<meta_comment>.+)" --embed-metadata
# Do not set any "synopsis" in the video metadata
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata ":(?P<meta_synopsis>)"
# Remove "formats" field from the infojson by setting it to an empty string
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata ":(?P<formats>)" -j
# Replace all spaces and "_" in title and uploader with a `-`
$ yt-dlp --replace-in-metadata "title,uploader" "[ _]" "-"
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=android_embedded,web;include_live_dash" --extractor-args "funimation:version=uncut"
Note: In CLI, ARG can use - instead of _; e.g. youtube:player-client"
becomes youtube:player_client"
The following extractors use this feature:
youtube
- lang: Prefer translated metadata (title, description etc) of this
language code (case-sensitive). By default, the video primary
language metadata is preferred, with a fallback to en translated.
See youtube.py for list of supported content language codes
- skip: One or more of hls, dash or translated_subs to skip extraction
of the m3u8 manifests, dash manifests and auto-translated subtitles
respectively
- player_client: Clients to extract video data from. The main clients
are web, android and ios with variants _music, _embedded,
_embedscreen, _creator (e.g. web_embedded); and mweb and tv_embedded
(agegate bypass) with no variants. By default, android,web is used,
but tv_embedded and creator variants are added as required for
age-gated videos. Similarly, the music variants are added for
music.youtube.com urls. You can use all to use all the clients, and
default for the default clients.
- player_skip: Skip some network requests that are generally needed
for robust extraction. One or more of configs (skip client configs),
webpage (skip initial webpage), js (skip js player). While these
options can help reduce the number of requests needed or avoid some
rate-limiting, they could cause some issues. See #860 for more
details
- comment_sort: top or new (default) - choose comment sorting mode (on
YouTube's side)
- max_comments: Limit the amount of comments to gather.
Comma-separated list of integers representing
max-comments,max-parents,max-replies,max-replies-per-thread. Default
is all,all,all,all
- E.g. all,all,1000,10 will get a maximum of 1000 replies total,
with up to 10 replies per thread. 1000,all,100 will get a
maximum of 1000 comments, with a maximum of 100 replies total
- include_incomplete_formats: Extract formats that cannot be
downloaded completely (live dash and post-live m3u8)
- innertube_host: Innertube API host to use for all API requests; e.g.
studio.youtube.com, youtubei.googleapis.com. Note that cookies
exported from one subdomain will not work on others
- innertube_key: Innertube API key to use for all API requests
youtubetab (YouTube playlists, channels, feeds, etc.)
- skip: One or more of webpage (skip initial webpage download),
authcheck (allow the download of playlists requiring authentication
when no initial webpage is downloaded. This may cause unwanted
behavior, see #1122 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. Does not apply to ffmpeg
funimation
- language: Audio languages to extract, e.g.
funimation:language=english,japanese
- version: The video version to extract - uncut or simulcast
crunchyrollbeta (Crunchyroll)
- format: Which stream type(s) to extract (default: adaptive_hls).
Potentially useful values include adaptive_hls, adaptive_dash,
vo_adaptive_hls, vo_adaptive_dash, download_hls, download_dash,
multitrack_adaptive_hls_v2
- hardsub: Preference order for which hardsub versions to extract, or
all (default: None = no hardsubs), e.g.
crunchyrollbeta:hardsub=en-US,None
vikichannel
- video_types: Types of videos to download - one or more of episodes,
movies, clips, trailers
niconico
- segment_duration: Segment duration in milliseconds for HLS-DMC
formats. Use it at your own risk since this feature may result in
your account termination.
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
tiktok
- api_hostname: Hostname to use for mobile API requests, e.g.
api-h2.tiktokv.com
- app_version: App version to call mobile APIs with - should be set
along with manifest_app_version, e.g. 20.2.1
- manifest_app_version: Numeric app version to call mobile APIs with,
e.g. 221
rokfinchannel
- tab: Which tab to download - one of new, top, videos, podcasts,
streams, stacks
twitter
- force_graphql: Force usage of the GraphQL API. By default it will
only be used if login cookies are provided
Note: These options may be changed/removed in the future without concern
for backward compatibility
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
plugins do not need to be enabled from the CLI and are automatically
invoked when the input URL is suitable for it. - Extractor plugins take
priority over builtin extractors. - Postprocessor plugins can be invoked
using --use-postprocessor NAME.
Plugins are loaded from the namespace packages yt_dlp_plugins.extractor
and yt_dlp_plugins.postprocessor.
In other words, the file structure on the disk looks something like:
yt_dlp_plugins/
extractor/
myplugin.py
postprocessor/
myplugin.py
yt-dlp looks for these yt_dlp_plugins namespace folders in many
locations (see below) and loads in plugins from all of them.
See the wiki for some known plugins
Installing Plugins
Plugins can be installed using various methods and locations.
1. Configuration directories: Plugin packages (containing a
yt_dlp_plugins namespace folder) can be dropped into the following
standard configuration locations:
- User Plugins
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
(recommended on Linux/macOS)
- ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
(recommended on Windows)
- ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- ~/.yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- ~/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- System Plugins
- /etc/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- /etc/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
2. Executable location: Plugin packages can similarly be installed in a
yt-dlp-plugins directory under the executable location:
- Binary: where <root-dir>/yt-dlp.exe,
<root-dir>/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
- Source: where <root-dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py,
<root-dir>/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/
3. pip and other locations in PYTHONPATH
- Plugin packages can be installed and managed using pip. See
yt-dlp-sample-plugins for an example.
- Note: plugin files between plugin packages installed with
pip must have unique filenames.
- Any path in PYTHONPATH is searched in for the yt_dlp_plugins
namespace folder.
- Note: This does not apply for Pyinstaller/py2exe builds.
.zip, .egg and .whl archives containing a yt_dlp_plugins namespace
folder in their root are also supported as plugin packages. * e.g.
${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/mypluginpkg.zip where mypluginpkg.zip
contains yt_dlp_plugins/<type>/myplugin.py
Run yt-dlp with --verbose to check if the plugin has been loaded.
Developing Plugins
See the yt-dlp-sample-plugins repo for a template plugin package and the
Plugin Development section of the wiki for a plugin development guide.
All public classes with a name ending in IE/PP are imported from each
file for extractors and postprocessors repectively. This respects
underscore prefix (e.g. _MyBasePluginIE is private) and __all__. Modules
can similarly be excluded by prefixing the module name with an
underscore (e.g. _myplugin.py).
To replace an existing extractor with a subclass of one, set the
plugin_name class keyword argument (e.g.
class MyPluginIE(ABuiltInIE, plugin_name='myplugin') will replace
ABuiltInIE with MyPluginIE). Since the extractor replaces the parent,
you should exclude the subclass extractor from being imported separately
by making it private using one of the methods described above.
If you are a plugin author, add yt-dlp-plugins as a topic to your
repository for discoverability.
See the 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.
Tip: If you are porting your code from youtube-dl to yt-dlp, one
important point to look out for is that we do not guarantee the return
value of YoutubeDL.extract_info to be json serializable, or even be a
dictionary. It will be dictionary-like, but if you want to ensure it is
a serializable dictionary, pass it through YoutubeDL.sanitize_info as
shown in the example below
Embedding examples
Extracting information
import json
import yt_dlp
URL = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'
# ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.YoutubeDL) for a list of available options and public functions
ydl_opts = {}
with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
info = ydl.extract_info(URL, download=False)
# ℹ️ ydl.sanitize_info makes the info json-serializable
print(json.dumps(ydl.sanitize_info(info)))
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',
# ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.postprocessor) for a list of available Postprocessors and their arguments
'postprocessors': [{ # Extract audio using ffmpeg
'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
'preferredcodec': 'm4a',
}]
}
with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
error_code = ydl.download(URLS)
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)
# ℹ️ See "progress_hooks" in help(yt_dlp.YoutubeDL)
def my_hook(d):
if d['status'] == 'finished':
print('Done downloading, now post-processing ...')
ydl_opts = {
'logger': MyLogger(),
'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
}
with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
ydl.download(URLS)
Add a custom PostProcessor
import yt_dlp
URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']
# ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.postprocessor.PostProcessor)
class MyCustomPP(yt_dlp.postprocessor.PostProcessor):
def run(self, info):
self.to_screen('Doing stuff')
return [], info
with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL() as ydl:
# ℹ️ "when" can take any value in yt_dlp.utils.POSTPROCESS_WHEN
ydl.add_post_processor(MyCustomPP(), when='pre_process')
ydl.download(URLS)
Use a custom format selector
import yt_dlp
URL = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']
def format_selector(ctx):
""" Select the best video and the best audio that won't result in an mkv.
NOTE: This is just an example and does not handle all cases """
# formats are already sorted worst to best
formats = ctx.get('formats')[::-1]
# acodec='none' means there is no audio
best_video = next(f for f in formats
if f['vcodec'] != 'none' and f['acodec'] == 'none')
# find compatible audio extension
audio_ext = {'mp4': 'm4a', 'webm': 'webm'}[best_video['ext']]
# vcodec='none' means there is no video
best_audio = next(f for f in formats if (
f['acodec'] != 'none' and f['vcodec'] == 'none' and f['ext'] == audio_ext))
# These are the minimum required fields for a merged format
yield {
'format_id': f'{best_video["format_id"]}+{best_audio["format_id"]}',
'ext': best_video['ext'],
'requested_formats': [best_video, best_audio],
# Must be + separated list of protocols
'protocol': f'{best_video["protocol"]}+{best_audio["protocol"]}'
}
ydl_opts = {
'format': format_selector,
}
with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
ydl.download(URLS)
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-filter "title ~= (?i)REGEX"
--reject-title REGEX --match-filter "title !~= (?i)REGEX"
--min-views COUNT --match-filter "view_count >=? COUNT"
--max-views COUNT --match-filter "view_count <=? COUNT"
--break-on-reject Use --break-match-filter
--user-agent UA --add-header "User-Agent:UA"
--referer URL --add-header "Referer:URL"
--playlist-start NUMBER -I NUMBER:
--playlist-end NUMBER -I :NUMBER
--playlist-reverse -I ::-1
--no-playlist-reverse Default
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] (Alias: --no-list-formats-old)
--youtube-skip-dash-manifest --extractor-args "youtube:skip=dash" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-dash-manifest)
--youtube-skip-hls-manifest --extractor-args "youtube:skip=hls" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-hls-manifest)
--youtube-include-dash-manifest Default (Alias: --no-youtube-skip-dash-manifest)
--youtube-include-hls-manifest Default (Alias: --no-youtube-skip-hls-manifest)
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
--youtube-print-sig-code For testing youtube signatures
--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
--avconv-location --ffmpeg-location
--clean-infojson --clean-info-json
--cn-verification-proxy URL --geo-verification-proxy URL
--dump-headers --print-traffic
--dump-intermediate-pages --dump-pages
--force-write-download-archive --force-write-archive
--load-info --load-info-json
--no-clean-infojson --no-clean-info-json
--no-split-tracks --no-split-chapters
--no-write-srt --no-write-subs
--prefer-unsecure --prefer-insecure
--rate-limit RATE --limit-rate RATE
--split-tracks --split-chapters
--srt-lang LANGS --sub-langs LANGS
--trim-file-names LENGTH --trim-filenames LENGTH
--write-srt --write-subs
--yes-overwrites --force-overwrites
Sponskrub Options
Support for SponSkrub has been deprecated in favor of the --sponsorblock
options
--sponskrub --sponsorblock-mark all
--no-sponskrub --no-sponsorblock
--sponskrub-cut --sponsorblock-remove all
--no-sponskrub-cut --sponsorblock-remove -all
--sponskrub-force Not applicable
--no-sponskrub-force Not applicable
--sponskrub-location Not applicable
--sponskrub-args Not applicable
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
--compat-options seperate-video-versions No longer needed
Removed
These options were deprecated since 2014 and have now been entirely
removed
-A, --auto-number -o "%(autonumber)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"
-t, -l, --title, --literal -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"
CONTRIBUTING
See CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions on Opening an Issue and
Contributing code to the project
WIKI
See the Wiki for more information
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