140 KiB
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
- INSTALLATION
- 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
- OUTPUT TEMPLATE
- FORMAT SELECTION
- MODIFYING METADATA
- EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS
- PLUGINS
- EMBEDDING YT-DLP
- DEPRECATED OPTIONS
- CONTRIBUTING
- MORE
NEW FEATURES
-
Merged with youtube-dl v2021.12.17+ commit/d231b56 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 the 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) 255kbpsaudio is extracted (if available) from YouTube Music when premium cookies are given- Redirect channel's home URL automatically to
/videoto preserve the old behaviour
- Supports Clips, Stories (
-
Cookies from browser: Cookies can be automatically extracted from all major web browsers using
--cookies-from-browser BROWSER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE] -
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
aria2cas 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-metadataand--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-on-rejectetc -
Improvements: Regex and other operators in
--format/--match-filter, multiple--postprocessor-argsand--downloader-args, faster archive checking, more format selection options, merge multi-video/audio, multiple--config-locations,--execat 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
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:
- The options
--auto-number(-A),--title(-t) and--literal(-l), no longer work. See removed options for details avconvis not supported as an alternative toffmpeg- 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-sortoption to change this to any order you prefer, or use--compat-options format-sortto 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/bor--compat-options format-specto 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-multistreamsand--video-multistreams. You can also use--compat-options multistreamsto enable both --no-abort-on-erroris enabled by default. Use--abort-on-erroror--compat-options abort-on-errorto 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-metafilesor--compat-options no-playlist-metafilesto not write these files --add-metadataattaches theinfojsontomkvfiles in addition to writing the metadata when used with--write-info-json. Use--no-embed-info-jsonor--compat-options no-attach-info-jsonto revert this- Some metadata are embedded into different fields when using
--add-metadataas compared to youtube-dl. Most notably,commentfield contains thewebpage_urlandsynopsiscontains thedescription. You can use--parse-metadatato modify this to your liking or use--compat-options embed-metadatato revert this playlist_indexbehaves differently when used with options like--playlist-reverseand--playlist-items. See #302 for details. You can use--compat-options playlist-indexif you want to keep the earlier behavior- The output of
-Fis listed in a new format. Use--compat-options list-formatsto revert this - Live chats (if available) are considered as subtitles. Use
--sub-langs all,-live_chatto download all subtitles except live chat. You can also use--compat-options no-live-chatto prevent any live chat/danmaku from downloading - Youtube channel URLs are automatically redirected to
/video. Append a/featuredto the URL to download only the videos in the home page. If the channel does not have a videos tab, we try to download the equivalentUUplaylist instead. For all other tabs, if the channel does not show the requested tab, an error will be raised. Also,/liveURLs raise an error if there are no live videos instead of silently downloading the entire channel. You may use--compat-options no-youtube-channel-redirectto revert all these redirections - Unavailable videos are also listed for youtube playlists. Use
--compat-options no-youtube-unavailable-videosto remove this - If
ffmpegis used as the downloader, the downloading and merging of formats happen in a single step when possible. Use--compat-options no-direct-mergeto revert this - Thumbnail embedding in
mp4is done with mutagen if possible. Use--compat-options embed-thumbnail-atomicparsleyto force the use of AtomicParsley instead - Some private fields such as filenames are removed by default from the infojson. Use
--no-clean-infojsonor--compat-options no-clean-infojsonto revert this - When
--embed-subsand--write-subsare used together, the subtitles are written to disk and also embedded in the media file. You can use just--embed-substo embed the subs and automatically delete the separate file. See #630 (comment) for more info.--compat-options no-keep-subscan be used to revert this certifiwill be used for SSL root certificates, if installed. If you want to use system certificates (e.g. self-signed), use--compat-options no-certifi- youtube-dl tries to remove some superfluous punctuations from filenames. While this can sometimes be helpful, it is often undesirable. So yt-dlp tries to keep the fields in the filenames as close to their original values as possible. You can use
--compat-options filename-sanitizationto revert to youtube-dl's behavior
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
INSTALLATION
You can install yt-dlp using one of the following methods:
Using the release binary
You can simply download the correct binary file for your OS
Note: The manpages, shell completion files etc. are available in the source tarball
In UNIX-like OSes (MacOS, Linux, BSD), you can also install the same in one of the following ways:
sudo curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo wget https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -O /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo aria2c https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp --dir /usr/local/bin -o yt-dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
With PIP
You can install the PyPI package with:
python3 -m pip install -U yt-dlp
You can install without any of the optional dependencies using:
python3 -m pip install --no-deps -U yt-dlp
If you want to be on the cutting edge, you can also install the master branch with:
python3 -m pip install --force-reinstall https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/archive/master.tar.gz
On some systems, you may need to use py or python instead of python3
With Homebrew
macOS or Linux users that are using Homebrew can also install it by:
brew install yt-dlp/taps/yt-dlp
UPDATE
You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the provided release
If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program
If you installed using Homebrew, run brew upgrade yt-dlp/taps/yt-dlp
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_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. Also contains manpages, completions, etc |
| SHA2-512SUMS | GNU-style SHA512 sums |
| SHA2-256SUMS | GNU-style SHA256 sums |
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
Note: There are some regressions in newer ffmpeg versions that causes various issues when used alongside yt-dlp. Since ffmpeg is such an important dependency, we provide custom builds with patches for these issues at yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds. See the readme for details on the specific issues solved by these builds
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-thumbnailin certain formats. Licensed under GPLv2+ - AtomicParsley - For
--embed-thumbnailinmp4/m4afiles whenmutagen/ffmpegcannot. 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-browserto 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
rtmpstreams. ffmpeg can be used instead with--downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+ - mplayer or mpv - For downloading
rstp/mmsstreams. 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.
Note that pyinstaller does 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 (3.6+), 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 dependencies 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 [revision]- Update the version number based on current datedevscripts/set-variant.py variant [-M update_message]- Set the build variant of the executabledevscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py- Create lazy extractors. Running this before building the binaries (any variant) will improve their startup performance. Set the environment variableYTDLP_NO_LAZY_EXTRACTORS=1if you wish to forcefully disable lazy extractor loading.
You can also fork the project on github and run your fork's build workflow to automatically build a full release
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)
-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
--force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic extractor
--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
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 videos
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 videos
at index 1,2,3,7,11,13,15
--min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than
SIZE, e.g. 50k or 44.6M
--max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos 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
--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 generic video filter (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-on-reject Stop the download process when encountering
a file that has been filtered out
--break-per-input Make --break-on-existing, --break-on-reject
and --max-downloads act only on the current
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-fragment)
--abort-on-unavailable-fragment
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
"*10:15-15:00" --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]
The name of the browser and (optionally) the
name/path of the profile to load cookies
from, separated by a ":". Currently
supported browsers are: brave, chrome,
chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari,
vivaldi. By default, the most recently
accessed profile is used. The keyring used
for decrypting Chromium cookies on Linux can
be (optionally) specified after the browser
name separated by a "+". 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 youtube-dl
can store some downloaded information (such
as client ids and signatures) permanently.
By default $XDG_CACHE_HOME/yt-dlp or
~/.cache/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, and "video" (default).
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-header 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,
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 FROM:TO Parse additional metadata like title/artist
from other fields; see "MODIFYING METADATA"
for details
--replace-in-metadata FIELDS REGEX REPLACE
Replace text in a metadata field using the
given regex. This option can be used
multiple times
--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 (after_move if
unspecified), separated by a ":". Supported
values of "WHEN" are the same as that of
--use-postprocessor. 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)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),
"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, 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 is
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 KEY:ARGS Pass these arguments to the 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:
-
Main Configuration: The file given by
--config-location -
Portable Configuration:
yt-dlp.confin the same directory as the bundled binary. If you are running from source-code (<root dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py), the root directory is used instead. -
Home Configuration:
yt-dlp.confin the home path given by-P, or in the current directory if no such path is given -
User Configuration:
%XDG_CONFIG_HOME%/yt-dlp/config(recommended on Linux/macOS)%XDG_CONFIG_HOME%/yt-dlp.conf%APPDATA%/yt-dlp/config(recommended on Windows)%APPDATA%/yt-dlp/config.txt~/yt-dlp.conf~/yt-dlp.conf.txt
%XDG_CONFIG_HOME%defaults to~/.configif undefined. On windows,%APPDATA%generally points toC:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roamingand~points to%HOME%if present,%USERPROFILE%(generallyC:\Users\<user name>), or%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% -
System Configuration:
/etc/yt-dlp.conf
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 that 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.
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.
Config file encoding
The config 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 $HOME (~) in UNIX. On Windows, it is %HOME% if present, %USERPROFILE% (generally C:\Users\<user name>) or %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
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:
-
Object traversal: The dictionaries and lists available in metadata can be traversed by using a
.(dot) separator. You can also do python slicing using:. E.g.%(tags.0)s,%(subtitles.en.-1.ext)s,%(id.3:7:-1)s,%(formats.:.format_id)s.%()srefers to the entire infodict. Note that all the fields that become available using this method are not listed below. Use-jto see such fields -
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 -
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 -
Alternatives: Alternate fields can be specified separated with a
,. E.g.%(release_date>%Y,upload_date>%Y|Unknown)s -
Replacement: A replacement value can 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. -
Default: A literal default value can be specified for when the field is empty using a
|separator. This overrides--output-na-template. E.g.%(uploader|Unknown)s -
More Conversions: In addition to the normal format types
diouxXeEfFgGcrs, yt-dlp additionally supports converting toB= Bytes,j= json (flag#for pretty-printing),h= HTML escaping,l= a comma separated list (flag#for\nnewline-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), andS= Sanitize as filename (flag#for restricted) -
Unicode normalization: The format type
Ucan 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)+.100Uis 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.
The available fields are:
id(string): Video identifiertitle(string): Video titlefulltitle(string): Video title ignoring live timestamp and generic titleurl(string): Video URLext(string): Video filename extensionalt_title(string): A secondary title of the videodescription(string): The description of the videodisplay_id(string): An alternative identifier for the videouploader(string): Full name of the video uploaderlicense(string): License name the video is licensed undercreator(string): The creator of the videotimestamp(numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became availableupload_date(string): Video upload date in UTC (YYYYMMDD)release_timestamp(numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video was releasedrelease_date(string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was released in UTCmodified_timestamp(numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video was last modifiedmodified_date(string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was last modified in UTCuploader_id(string): Nickname or id of the video uploaderchannel(string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded onchannel_id(string): Id of the channelchannel_follower_count(numeric): Number of followers of the channellocation(string): Physical location where the video was filmedduration(numeric): Length of the video in secondsduration_string(string): Length of the video (HH:mm:ss)view_count(numeric): How many users have watched the video on the platformlike_count(numeric): Number of positive ratings of the videodislike_count(numeric): Number of negative ratings of the videorepost_count(numeric): Number of reposts of the videoaverage_rating(numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale used depends on the webpagecomment_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 videowas_live(boolean): Whether this video was originally a live streamplayable_in_embed(string): Whether this video is allowed to play in embedded players on other sitesavailability(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 URLend_time(numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should end, as specified in the URLformat(string): A human-readable description of the formatformat_id(string): Format code specified by--formatformat_note(string): Additional info about the formatwidth(numeric): Width of the videoheight(numeric): Height of the videoresolution(string): Textual description of width and heighttbr(numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/sabr(numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/sacodec(string): Name of the audio codec in useasr(numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertzvbr(numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/sfps(numeric): Frame ratedynamic_range(string): The dynamic range of the videoaudio_channels(numeric): The number of audio channelsstretched_ratio(float):width:heightof the video's pixels, if not squarevcodec(string): Name of the video codec in usecontainer(string): Name of the container formatfilesize(numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advancefilesize_approx(numeric): An estimate for the number of bytesprotocol(string): The protocol that will be used for the actual downloadextractor(string): Name of the extractorextractor_key(string): Key name of the extractorepoch(numeric): Unix epoch of when the information extraction was completedautonumber(numeric): Number that will be increased with each download, starting at--autonumber-startvideo_autonumber(numeric): Number that will be increased with each videon_entries(numeric): Total number of extracted items in the playlistplaylist_id(string): Identifier of the playlist that contains the videoplaylist_title(string): Name of the playlist that contains the videoplaylist(string):playlist_idorplaylist_titleplaylist_count(numeric): Total number of items in the playlist. May not be known if entire playlist is not extractedplaylist_index(numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded with leading zeros according the final indexplaylist_autonumber(numeric): Position of the video in the playlist download queue padded with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlistplaylist_uploader(string): Full name of the playlist uploaderplaylist_uploader_id(string): Nickname or id of the playlist uploaderwebpage_url(string): A URL to the video webpage which if given to yt-dlp should allow to get the same result againwebpage_url_basename(string): The basename of the webpage URLwebpage_url_domain(string): The domain of the webpage URLoriginal_url(string): The URL given by the user (or same aswebpage_urlfor playlist entries)
Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
chapter(string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs tochapter_number(numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs tochapter_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 toseason(string): Title of the season the video episode belongs toseason_number(numeric): Number of the season the video episode belongs toseason_id(string): Id of the season the video episode belongs toepisode(string): Title of the video episodeepisode_number(numeric): Number of the video episode within a seasonepisode_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 tracktrack_number(numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disctrack_id(string): Id of the trackartist(string): Artist(s) of the trackgenre(string): Genre(s) of the trackalbum(string): Title of the album the track belongs toalbum_type(string): Type of the albumalbum_artist(string): List of all artists appeared on the albumdisc_number(numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs torelease_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 chaptersection_number(numeric): Number of the chapter within the filesection_start(numeric): Start time of the chapter in secondssection_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 linefilename(string): Name of the video file. Note that the actual filename may be different due to post-processing. Use--exec echoto get the name after all postprocessing is completeformats_table(table): The video format table as printed by--list-formatsthumbnails_table(table): The thumbnail format table as printed by--list-thumbnailssubtitles_table(table): The subtitle format table as printed by--list-subsautomatic_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 secondsend_time(numeric): End time of the chapter in secondscategories(list): The SponsorBlock categories the chapter belongs tocategory(string): The smallest SponsorBlock category the chapter belongs tocategory_names(list): Friendly names of the categoriesname(string): Friendly name of the smallest category
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 that 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 and Windows batch files
If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become -o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion should stay intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
Output template examples
$ yt-dlp --get-filename -o "test video.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
test video.webm # Literal name with correct extension
$ yt-dlp --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.webm # All kinds of weird characters
$ yt-dlp --get-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 separatelymergeall: Select and merge all formats (Must be used with--audio-multistreams,--video-multistreamsor 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 tobest*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]bv,bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format. Equivalent tobest*[acodec=none]bv*,bestvideo*: Select the best quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent tobest*[vcodec!=none]ba,bestaudio: Select the best quality audio-only format. Equivalent tobest*[vcodec=none]ba*,bestaudio*: Select the best quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent tobest*[acodec!=none](Do not use!)w*,worst*: Select the worst quality format that contains either a video or an audiow,worst: Select the worst quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent toworst*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]wv,worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format. Equivalent toworst*[acodec=none]wv*,worstvideo*: Select the worst quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent toworst*[vcodec!=none]wa,worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio-only format. Equivalent toworst*[vcodec=none]wa*,worstaudio*: Select the worst quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent toworst*[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 and merge both formats 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 advancewidth: Width of the video, if knownheight: Height of the video, if knowntbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/sabr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/svbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/sasr: Audio sampling rate in Hertzfps: Frame rate
Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $= (ends with), *= (contains), ~= (matches regex) and following string meta fields:
ext: File extensionacodec: Name of the audio codec in usevcodec: Name of the video codec in usecontainer: Name of the container formatprotocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download, lower-case (http,https,rtsp,rtmp,rtmpe,mms,f4m,ism,http_dash_segments,m3u8, orm3u8_native)format_id: A short description of the formatlanguage: Language code
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 that 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 has a video streamhasaud: Gives priority to formats that has a audio streamie_pref: The format preferencelang: The language preferencequality: The quality of the formatsource: The preference of the sourceproto: 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>eac3>ac3>dts> other)codec: Equivalent tovcodec,acodecvext: Video Extension (mp4>webm>flv> other). If--prefer-free-formatsis used,webmis preferred.aext: Audio Extension (m4a>aac>mp3>ogg>opus>webm> other). If--prefer-free-formatsis used, the order changes toopus>ogg>webm>m4a>mp3>aac.ext: Equivalent tovext,aextfilesize: Exact filesize, if known in advancefs_approx: Approximate filesize calculated from the manifestssize: Exact filesize if available, otherwise approximate filesizeheight: Height of videowidth: Width of videores: Video resolution, calculated as the smallest dimension.fps: Framerate of videohdr: The dynamic range of the video (DV>HDR12>HDR10+>HDR10>HLG>SDR)channels: The number of audio channelstbr: Total average bitrate in KBit/svbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/sabr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/sbr: Equivalent to usingtbr,vbr,abrasr: 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 > 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 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 any field created by this can be used in the output template and will also affect the media file's metadata added when using --add-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_urlsto 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 tometa_descriptionfield will be added to thedescriptionfield in the file - you can use this to set a different "description" and "synopsis". To modify the metadata of individual streams, use themeta<n>_prefix (e.g.meta1_language). Any value set to themeta_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" --add-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>.+)" --add-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"
The following extractors use this feature:
youtube
skip: One or more ofhls,dashortranslated_substo skip extraction of the m3u8 manifests, dash manifests and auto-translated subtitles respectivelyplayer_client: Clients to extract video data from. The main clients areweb,androidandioswith variants_music,_embedded,_embedscreen,_creator(e.g.web_embedded); andmwebandtv_embedded(agegate bypass) with no variants. By default,android,webis used, buttv_embeddedandcreatorvariants are added as required for age-gated videos. Similarly the music variants are added formusic.youtube.comurls. You can useallto use all the clients, anddefaultfor the default clients.player_skip: Skip some network requests that are generally needed for robust extraction. One or more ofconfigs(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 detailsinclude_live_dash: Include live dash formats even without--live-from-start(These formats don't download properly)comment_sort:topornew(default) - choose comment sorting mode (on YouTube's side)max_comments: Limit the amount of comments to gather. Comma-separated list of integers representingmax-comments,max-parents,max-replies,max-replies-per-thread. Default isall,all,all,all- E.g.
all,all,1000,10will get a maximum of 1000 replies total, with up to 10 replies per thread.1000,all,100will get a maximum of 1000 comments, with a maximum of 100 replies total
- E.g.
innertube_host: Innertube API host to use for all API requests- E.g.
studio.youtube.com,youtubei.googleapis.com - Note: Cookies exported from
www.youtube.comwill not work with hosts other than*.youtube.com
- E.g.
innertube_key: Innertube API key to use for all API requests
youtubetab (YouTube playlists, channels, feeds, etc.)
skip: One or more ofwebpage(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 approximateupload_datein flat-playlist. This may cause date-based filters to be slightly off
funimation
language: Languages to extract, e.g.funimation:language=english,japaneseversion: The video version to extract -uncutorsimulcast
crunchyroll
language: Languages to extract, e.g.crunchyroll:language=jaJphardsub: Which hard-sub versions to extract, e.g.crunchyroll:hardsub=None,enUS
crunchyrollbeta
format: Which stream type(s) to extract (default:adaptive_hls). Potentially useful values includeadaptive_hls,adaptive_dash,vo_adaptive_hls,vo_adaptive_dash,download_hls,download_dash,multitrack_adaptive_hls_v2hardsub: Preference order for which hardsub versions to extract (default:None= no hardsubs), e.g.crunchyrollbeta:hardsub=en-US,None
vikichannel
video_types: Types of videos to download - one or more ofepisodes,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 ofthumbnails,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 ofsd,hd,fhdvcodec: vcodec to ignore - one or more ofh264,h265,dvh265dr: dynamic range to ignore - one or more ofsdr,hdr10,dv
tiktok
app_version: App version to call mobile APIs with - should be set along withmanifest_app_version, e.g.20.2.1manifest_app_version: Numeric app version to call mobile APIs with, e.g.221
rokfinchannel
tab: Which tab to download - one ofnew,top,videos,podcasts,streams,stacks
NOTE: These options may be changed/removed in the future without concern for backward compatibility
PLUGINS
Plugins are loaded from <root-dir>/ytdlp_plugins/<type>/__init__.py; where <root-dir> is the directory of the binary (<root-dir>/yt-dlp), or the root directory of the module if you are running directly from source-code (<root dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py). Plugins are currently not supported for the pip version
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. Postprocessor plugins can be invoked using --use-postprocessor NAME.
See ytdlp_plugins for example 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
If you are a plugin author, add ytdlp-plugins as a topic to your repository for discoverability
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"
--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
--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
MORE
For FAQ see the youtube-dl README