youtube-dl [options] url [url...]
youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.x (x being at least 6), and it is not platform specific. It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.
-h, --help print this help text and exit
--version print program version and exit
-U, --update update this program to latest version
-i, --ignore-errors continue on download errors
-r, --rate-limit LIMIT download rate limit (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
-R, --retries RETRIES number of retries (default is 10)
--dump-user-agent display the current browser identification
--list-extractors List all supported extractors and the URLs they
would handle
--playlist-start NUMBER playlist video to start at (default is 1)
--playlist-end NUMBER playlist video to end at (default is last)
--match-title REGEX download only matching titles (regex or caseless
sub-string)
--reject-title REGEX skip download for matching titles (regex or
caseless sub-string)
--max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
-t, --title use title in file name
-l, --literal use literal title in file name
-A, --auto-number number downloaded files starting from 00000
-o, --output TEMPLATE output filename template. Use %(stitle)s to get the
title, %(uploader)s for the uploader name,
%(autonumber)s to get an automatically incremented
number, %(ext)s for the filename extension,
%(upload_date)s for the upload date (YYYYMMDD), and
%% for a literal percent. Use - to output to
stdout.
-a, --batch-file FILE file containing URLs to download ('-' for stdin)
-w, --no-overwrites do not overwrite files
-c, --continue resume partially downloaded files
--no-continue do not resume partially downloaded files (restart
from beginning)
--cookies FILE file to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in
--no-part do not use .part files
--no-mtime do not use the Last-modified header to set the file
modification time
--write-description write video description to a .description file
--write-info-json write video metadata to a .info.json file
-q, --quiet activates quiet mode
-s, --simulate do not download the video and do not write anything
to disk
--skip-download do not download the video
-g, --get-url simulate, quiet but print URL
-e, --get-title simulate, quiet but print title
--get-thumbnail simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
--get-description simulate, quiet but print video description
--get-filename simulate, quiet but print output filename
--get-format simulate, quiet but print output format
--no-progress do not print progress bar
--console-title display progress in console titlebar
-v, --verbose print various debugging information
-f, --format FORMAT video format code
--all-formats download all available video formats
--prefer-free-formats prefer free video formats unless a specific one is
requested
--max-quality FORMAT highest quality format to download
-F, --list-formats list all available formats (currently youtube only)
--write-srt write video closed captions to a .srt file
(currently youtube only)
--srt-lang LANG language of the closed captions to download
(optional) use IETF language tags like 'en'
-u, --username USERNAME account username
-p, --password PASSWORD account password
-n, --netrc use .netrc authentication data
--extract-audio convert video files to audio-only files (requires
ffmpeg and ffprobe)
--audio-format FORMAT "best", "aac", "vorbis", "mp3", "m4a", or "wav";
best by default
--audio-quality QUALITY ffmpeg audio bitrate specification, 128k by default
-k, --keep-video keeps the video file on disk after the post-
processing; the video is erased by default
Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not report them to be available in a specific high quality format you''re interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and youtube-dl will try to download it.
Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download too much. We''re considering to provide a way to let you solve the CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a webbrowser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as vlc or mplayer.
The URLs youtube-dl outputs require the downloader to have the correct cookies. Use the --cookies
option to write the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used, use --dump-user-agent
to see the one in use by youtube-dl.
youtube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl with sudo youtube-dl --update
.
youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton (https://github.com/dbbolton) and is likewise released into the public domain.
Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues
Please include:
- Your exact command line, like
youtube-dl -t "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlDtZ6Oc3s&feature=channel_video_title"
. A common mistake is not to escape the&
. Putting URLs in quotes should solve this problem. - The output of
youtube-dl --version
- The output of
python --version
- The name and version of your Operating System ("Ubuntu 11.04 x64" or "Windows 7 x64" is usually enough).