yt-dlp(1)

NAME

yt-dlp - A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader

SYNOPSIS

yt-dlp [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]

DESCRIPTION

yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with support for thousands of sites. The project is a fork of youtube-dl (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl) based on the now inactive youtube-dlc (https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc).

OPTIONS

  General Options:

-h, --help
    Print this help text and exit

--version
    Print program version and exit

-U, --update
    Update this program to the latest version

--no-update
    Do not check for updates (default)

--update-to [CHANNEL]@[TAG]
    Upgrade/downgrade to a specific version. CHANNEL can be a repository as well. CHANNEL and TAG default to "stable" and "latest" respectively if omitted; See "UPDATE" for details. Supported channels: stable, nightly, master

-i, --ignore-errors
    Ignore download and postprocessing errors. The download will be considered successful even if the postprocessing fails

--no-abort-on-error
    Continue with next video on download errors; e.g. to skip unavailable videos in a playlist (default)

--abort-on-error
    Abort downloading of further videos if an error occurs (Alias: --no-ignore-errors)

--dump-user-agent
    Display the current user-agent and exit

--list-extractors
    List all supported extractors and exit

--extractor-descriptions
    Output descriptions of all supported extractors and exit

--use-extractors NAMES
    Extractor names to use separated by commas. You can also use regexes, "all", "default" and "end" (end URL matching); e.g. --ies "holodex.*,end,youtube". Prefix the name with a "-" to exclude it, e.g. --ies default,-generic. Use --list-extractors for a list of extractor names. (Alias: --ies)

--default-search PREFIX
    Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. E.g. "gvsearch2:python" downloads two videos from google videos for the search term "python". Use the value "auto" to let yt-dlp guess ("auto_warning" to emit a warning when guessing). "error" just throws an error. The default value "fixup_error" repairs broken URLs, but emits an error if this is not possible instead of searching

--ignore-config
    Don't load any more configuration files except those given to --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

--plugin-dirs PATH
    Path to an additional directory to search for plugins. This option can be used multiple times to add multiple directories. Use "default" to search the default plugin directories (default)

--no-plugin-dirs
    Clear plugin directories to search, including defaults and those provided by previous --plugin-dirs

--flat-playlist
    Do not extract a playlist's URL result entries; some entry metadata may be missing and downloading may be bypassed

--no-flat-playlist
    Fully extract the videos of a playlist (default)

--live-from-start
    Download livestreams from the start. Currently experimental and only supported for YouTube and Twitch

--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)

--color [STREAM:]POLICY
    Whether to emit color codes in output, optionally prefixed by the STREAM (stdout or stderr) to apply the setting to. Can be one of "always", "auto" (default), "never", or "no_color" (use non color terminal sequences). Use "auto-tty" or "no_color-tty" to decide based on terminal support only. Can be used multiple times

--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

-t, --preset-alias PRESET
    Applies a predefined set of options. e.g. --preset-alias mp3. The following presets are available: mp3, aac, mp4, mkv, sleep. See the "Preset Aliases" section at the end for more info. 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

--impersonate CLIENT[:OS]
    Client to impersonate for requests. E.g. chrome, chrome-110, chrome:windows-10. Pass --impersonate="" to impersonate any client. Note that forcing impersonation for all requests may have a detrimental impact on download speed and stability

--list-impersonate-targets
    List available clients to impersonate.

-4, --force-ipv4
    Make all connections via IPv4

-6, --force-ipv6
    Make all connections via IPv6

--enable-file-urls
    Enable file:// URLs. This is disabled by default for security reasons.

  Geo-restriction:

--geo-verification-proxy URL
    Use this proxy to verify the IP address for some geo-restricted sites. The default proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the option is not present) is used for the actual downloading

--xff VALUE
    How to fake X-Forwarded-For HTTP header to try bypassing geographic restriction. One of "default" (only when known to be useful), "never", an IP block in CIDR notation, or a two-letter ISO 3166-2 country code

  Video Selection:

-I, --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC
    Comma separated playlist_index of the items to download. You can specify a range using "[START]:[STOP][:STEP]". For backward compatibility, START-STOP is also supported. Use negative indices to count from the right and negative STEP to download in reverse order. E.g. "-I 1:3,7,-5::2" used on a playlist of size 15 will download the items at index 1,2,3,7,11,13,15

--min-filesize SIZE
    Abort download if filesize is smaller than SIZE, e.g. 50k or 44.6M

--max-filesize SIZE
    Abort download if filesize is larger than SIZE, e.g. 50k or 44.6M

--date DATE
    Download only videos uploaded on this date. The date can be "YYYYMMDD" or in the format [now|today|yesterday][-N[day|week|month|year]]. E.g. "--date today-2weeks" downloads only videos uploaded on the same day two weeks ago

--datebefore DATE
    Download only videos uploaded on or before this date. The date formats accepted are the same as --date

--dateafter DATE
    Download only videos uploaded on or after this date. The date formats accepted are 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 at least one of the conditions is met. E.g. --match-filters !is_live --match-filters "like_count>?100 & description~='(?i)& dogs" 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-filters -" to interactively ask whether to download each video

--no-match-filters
    Do not use any --match-filters (default)

--break-match-filters FILTER
    Same as "--match-filters" but stops the download process when a video is rejected

--no-break-match-filters
    Do not use any --break-match-filters (default)

--no-playlist
    Download only the video, if the URL refers to a video and a playlist

--yes-playlist
    Download the playlist, if the URL refers to a video and a playlist

--age-limit YEARS
    Download only videos suitable for the given age

--download-archive FILE
    Download only videos not listed in the archive file. Record the IDs of all downloaded videos in it

--no-download-archive
    Do not use archive file (default)

--max-downloads NUMBER
    Abort after downloading NUMBER files

--break-on-existing
    Stop the download process when encountering a file that is in the archive supplied with the --download-archive option

--no-break-on-existing
    Do not stop the download process when encountering a file that is in the archive (default)

--break-per-input
    Alters --max-downloads, --break-on-existing, --break-match-filters, and autonumber to reset per input URL

--no-break-per-input
    --break-on-existing and similar options terminates the entire download queue

--skip-playlist-after-errors N
    Number of allowed failures until the rest of the playlist is skipped

  Download Options:

-N, --concurrent-fragments N
    Number of fragments of a dash/hlsnative video that should be downloaded concurrently (default is 1)

-r, --limit-rate RATE
    Maximum download rate in bytes per second, e.g. 50K or 4.2M

--throttled-rate RATE
    Minimum download rate in bytes per second below which throttling is assumed and the video data is re-extracted, e.g. 100K

-R, --retries RETRIES
    Number of retries (default is 10), or "infinite"

--file-access-retries RETRIES
    Number of times to retry on file access error (default is 3), or "infinite"

--fragment-retries RETRIES
    Number of retries for a fragment (default is 10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and ISM)

--retry-sleep [TYPE:]EXPR
    Time to sleep between retries in seconds (optionally) prefixed by the type of retry (http (default), fragment, file_access, extractor) to apply the sleep to. EXPR can be a number, linear=START[:END[:STEP=1]] or exp=START[:END[:BASE=2]]. This option can be used multiple times to set the sleep for the different retry types, e.g. --retry-sleep linear=1::2 --retry-sleep fragment:exp=1:20

--skip-unavailable-fragments
    Skip unavailable fragments for DASH, hlsnative and ISM downloads (default) (Alias: --no-abort-on-unavailable-fragments)

--abort-on-unavailable-fragments
    Abort download if a fragment is unavailable (Alias: --no-skip-unavailable-fragments)

--keep-fragments
    Keep downloaded fragments on disk after downloading is finished

--no-keep-fragments
    Delete downloaded fragments after downloading is finished (default)

--buffer-size SIZE
    Size of download buffer, e.g. 1024 or 16K (default is 1024)

--resize-buffer
    The buffer size is automatically resized from an initial value of --buffer-size (default)

--no-resize-buffer
    Do not automatically adjust the buffer size

--http-chunk-size SIZE
    Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP downloading, e.g. 10485760 or 10M (default is disabled). May be useful for bypassing bandwidth throttling imposed by a webserver (experimental)

--playlist-random
    Download playlist videos in random order

--lazy-playlist
    Process entries in the playlist as they are received. This disables n_entries, --playlist-random and --playlist-reverse

--no-lazy-playlist
    Process videos in the playlist only after the entire playlist is parsed (default)

--xattr-set-filesize
    Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with expected file size

--hls-use-mpegts
    Use the mpegts container for HLS videos; allowing some players to play the video while downloading, and reducing the chance of file corruption if download is interrupted. This is enabled by default for live streams

--no-hls-use-mpegts
    Do not use the mpegts container for HLS videos. This is default when not downloading live streams

--download-sections REGEX
    Download only chapters that match the regular expression. A "*" prefix denotes time-range instead of chapter. Negative timestamps are calculated from the end. "*from-url" can be used to download between the "start_time" and "end_time" extracted from the URL. Needs ffmpeg. This option can be used multiple times to download multiple sections, e.g. --download-sections "*10:15-inf" --download-sections "intro"

--downloader [PROTO:]NAME
    Name or path of the external downloader to use (optionally) prefixed by the protocols (http, ftp, m3u8, dash, rstp, rtmp, mms) to use it for. Currently supports native, aria2c, avconv, axel, curl, ffmpeg, httpie, wget. You can use this option multiple times to set different downloaders for different protocols. E.g. --downloader aria2c --downloader "dash,m3u8:native" will use aria2c for http/ftp downloads, and the native downloader for dash/m3u8 downloads (Alias: --external-downloader)

--downloader-args NAME:ARGS
    Give these arguments to the external downloader. Specify the downloader name and the arguments separated by a colon ":". For ffmpeg, arguments can be passed to different positions using the same syntax as --postprocessor-args. You can use this option multiple times to give different arguments to different downloaders (Alias: --external-downloader-args)

  Filesystem Options:

-a, --batch-file FILE
    File containing URLs to download ("-" for stdin), one URL per line. Lines starting with "#", ";" or "]" are considered as comments and ignored

--no-batch-file
    Do not read URLs from batch file (default)

-P, --paths [TYPES:]PATH
    The paths where the files should be downloaded. Specify the type of file and the path separated by a colon ":". All the same TYPES as --output are supported. Additionally, you can also provide "home" (default) and "temp" paths. All intermediary files are first downloaded to the temp path and then the final files are moved over to the home path after download is finished. This option is ignored if --output is an absolute path

-o, --output [TYPES:]TEMPLATE
    Output filename template; see "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details

--output-na-placeholder TEXT
    Placeholder for unavailable fields in --output (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
    Sanitize filenames only minimally

--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

--no-mtime
    Do not use the Last-modified header to set the file modification time (default)

--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 internal metadata such as filenames from the infojson (default)

--no-clean-info-json
    Write all fields to the infojson

--write-comments
    Retrieve video comments to be placed in the infojson. The comments are fetched even without this option if the extraction is known to be quick (Alias: --get-comments)

--no-write-comments
    Do not retrieve video comments unless the extraction is known to be quick (Alias: --no-get-comments)

--load-info-json FILE
    JSON file containing the video information (created with the "--write-info-json" option)

--cookies FILE
    Netscape formatted file to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in

--no-cookies
    Do not read/dump cookies from/to file (default)

--cookies-from-browser BROWSER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE][::CONTAINER]
    The name of the browser to load cookies from. Currently supported browsers are: brave, chrome, chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari, vivaldi, whale. Optionally, the KEYRING used for decrypting Chromium cookies on Linux, the name/path of the PROFILE to load cookies from, and the CONTAINER name (if Firefox) ("none" for no container) can be given with their respective separators. By default, all containers of the most recently accessed profile are used. Currently supported keyrings are: basictext, gnomekeyring, kwallet, kwallet5, kwallet6

--no-cookies-from-browser
    Do not load cookies from browser (default)

--cache-dir DIR
    Location in the filesystem where yt-dlp can store some downloaded information (such as client ids and signatures) permanently. By default ${XDG_CACHE_HOME}/yt-dlp

--no-cache-dir
    Disable filesystem caching

--rm-cache-dir
    Delete all filesystem cache files

  Thumbnail Options:

--write-thumbnail
    Write thumbnail image to disk

--no-write-thumbnail
    Do not write thumbnail image to disk (default)

--write-all-thumbnails
    Write all thumbnail image formats to disk

--list-thumbnails
    List available thumbnails of each video. Simulate unless --no-simulate is used

  Internet Shortcut Options:

--write-link
    Write an internet shortcut file, depending on the current platform (.url, .webloc or .desktop). The URL may be cached by the OS

--write-url-link
    Write a .url Windows internet shortcut. The OS caches the URL based on the file path

--write-webloc-link
    Write a .webloc macOS internet shortcut

--write-desktop-link
    Write a .desktop Linux internet shortcut

  Verbosity and Simulation Options:

-q, --quiet
    Activate quiet mode. If used with --verbose, print the log to stderr

--no-quiet
    Deactivate quiet mode. (Default)

--no-warnings
    Ignore warnings

-s, --simulate
    Do not download the video and do not write anything to disk

--no-simulate
    Download the video even if printing/listing options are used

--ignore-no-formats-error
    Ignore "No video formats" error. Useful for extracting metadata even if the videos are not actually available for download (experimental)

--no-ignore-no-formats-error
    Throw error when no downloadable video formats are found (default)

--skip-download
    Do not download the video but write all related files (Alias: --no-download)

-O, --print [WHEN:]TEMPLATE
    Field name or output template to print to screen, optionally prefixed with when to print it, separated by a ":". Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default: video). Implies --quiet. Implies --simulate unless --no-simulate or later stages of WHEN are used. This option can be used multiple times

--print-to-file [WHEN:]TEMPLATE FILE
    Append given template to the file. The values of WHEN and TEMPLATE are the 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"

--progress-delta SECONDS
    Time between progress output (default: 0)

-v, --verbose
    Print various debugging information

--dump-pages
    Print downloaded pages encoded using base64 to debug problems (very verbose)

--write-pages
    Write downloaded intermediary pages to files in the current directory to debug problems

--print-traffic
    Display sent and read HTTP traffic

  Workarounds:

--encoding ENCODING
    Force the specified encoding (experimental)

--legacy-server-connect
    Explicitly allow HTTPS connection to servers that do not support RFC 5746 secure renegotiation

--no-check-certificates
    Suppress HTTPS certificate validation

--prefer-insecure
    Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve information about the video (Currently supported only for YouTube)

--add-headers FIELD:VALUE
    Specify a custom HTTP header and its value, separated by a colon ":". You can use this option multiple times

--bidi-workaround
    Work around terminals that lack bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv or fribidi executable in PATH

--sleep-requests SECONDS
    Number of seconds to sleep between requests during data extraction

--sleep-interval SECONDS
    Number of seconds to sleep before each download. This is the minimum time to sleep when used along with --max-sleep-interval (Alias: --min-sleep-interval)

--max-sleep-interval SECONDS
    Maximum number of seconds to sleep. Can only be used along with --min-sleep-interval

--sleep-subtitles SECONDS
    Number of seconds to sleep before each subtitle download

  Video Format Options:

-f, --format FORMAT
    Video format code, see "FORMAT SELECTION" for more details

-S, --format-sort SORTORDER
    Sort the formats by the fields given, see "Sorting Formats" for more details

--format-sort-force
    Force user specified sort order to have precedence over all fields, see "Sorting Formats" for more details (Alias: --S-force)

--no-format-sort-force
    Some fields have precedence over the user specified sort order (default)

--video-multistreams
    Allow multiple video streams to be merged into a single file

--no-video-multistreams
    Only one video stream is downloaded for each output file (default)

--audio-multistreams
    Allow multiple audio streams to be merged into a single file

--no-audio-multistreams
    Only one audio stream is downloaded for each output file (default)

--prefer-free-formats
    Prefer video formats with free containers over non-free ones of the 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 separated by "/", 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" (where "en.*" is a regex pattern that matches "en" followed by 0 or more of any character). 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

--netrc-cmd NETRC_CMD
    Command to execute to get the credentials for an extractor.

--video-password PASSWORD
    Video-specific password

--ap-mso MSO
    Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for a list of available MSOs

--ap-username USERNAME
    Multiple-system operator account login

--ap-password PASSWORD
    Multiple-system operator account password. If this option is left out, yt-dlp will ask interactively

--ap-list-mso
    List all supported multiple-system operators

--client-certificate CERTFILE
    Path to client certificate file in PEM format. May include the private key

--client-certificate-key KEYFILE
    Path to private key file for client certificate

--client-certificate-password PASSWORD
    Password for client certificate private key, if encrypted. If not provided, and the key is encrypted, yt-dlp will ask interactively

  Post-Processing Options:

-x, --extract-audio
    Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg and ffprobe)

--audio-format FORMAT
    Format to convert the audio to when -x is used. (currently supported: best (default), aac, alac, flac, m4a, mp3, opus, vorbis, wav). You can specify multiple rules using similar syntax as --remux-video

--audio-quality QUALITY
    Specify ffmpeg audio quality to use when converting the audio with -x. Insert a value between 0 (best) and 10 (worst) for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K (default 5)

--remux-video FORMAT
    Remux the video into another container if necessary (currently supported: avi, flv, gif, mkv, mov, mp4, webm, aac, aiff, alac, flac, m4a, mka, mp3, ogg, opus, vorbis, wav). If the target container does not support the video/audio codec, remuxing will fail. You can specify multiple rules; e.g. "aac>m4a/mov>mp4/mkv" will remux aac to m4a, mov to mp4 and anything else to mkv

--recode-video FORMAT
    Re-encode the video into another format if necessary. The syntax and supported formats are the same as --remux-video

--postprocessor-args NAME:ARGS
    Give these arguments to the postprocessors. Specify the postprocessor/executable name and the arguments separated by a colon ":" to give the argument to the specified postprocessor/executable. Supported PP are: Merger, ModifyChapters, SplitChapters, ExtractAudio, VideoRemuxer, VideoConvertor, Metadata, EmbedSubtitle, EmbedThumbnail, SubtitlesConvertor, ThumbnailsConvertor, FixupStretched, FixupM4a, FixupM3u8, FixupTimestamp and FixupDuration. The supported executables are: AtomicParsley, FFmpeg and FFprobe. You can also specify "PP+EXE:ARGS" to give the arguments to the specified executable only when being used by the specified postprocessor. Additionally, for ffmpeg/ffprobe, "_i"/"_o" can be appended to the prefix optionally followed by a number to pass the argument before the specified input/output file, e.g. --ppa "Merger+ffmpeg_i1:-v quiet". You can use this option multiple times to give different arguments to different postprocessors. (Alias: --ppa)

-k, --keep-video
    Keep the intermediate video file on disk after post-processing

--no-keep-video
    Delete the intermediate video file after post-processing (default)

--post-overwrites
    Overwrite post-processed files (default)

--no-post-overwrites
    Do not overwrite post-processed files

--embed-subs
    Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4, webm and mkv videos)

--no-embed-subs
    Do not embed subtitles (default)

--embed-thumbnail
    Embed thumbnail in the video as cover art

--no-embed-thumbnail
    Do not embed thumbnail (default)

--embed-metadata
    Embed metadata to the video file. Also embeds chapters/infojson if present unless --no-embed-chapters/--no-embed-info-json are used (Alias: --add-metadata)

--no-embed-metadata
    Do not add metadata to file (default) (Alias: --no-add-metadata)

--embed-chapters
    Add chapter markers to the video file (Alias: --add-chapters)

--no-embed-chapters
    Do not add chapter markers (default) (Alias: --no-add-chapters)

--embed-info-json
    Embed the infojson as an attachment to mkv/mka video files

--no-embed-info-json
    Do not embed the infojson as an attachment to the video file

--parse-metadata [WHEN:]FROM:TO
    Parse additional metadata like title/artist from other fields; see "MODIFYING METADATA" for details. Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default: pre_process)

--replace-in-metadata [WHEN:]FIELDS REGEX REPLACE
    Replace text in a metadata field using the given regex. This option can be used multiple times. Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default: pre_process)

--xattrs
    Write metadata to the video file's xattrs (using Dublin Core and XDG standards)

--concat-playlist POLICY
    Concatenate videos in a playlist. One of "never", "always", or "multi_video" (default; only when the videos form a single show). All the video files must have the same codecs and number of streams to be concatenable. 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 the file if we can, warn otherwise), force (try fixing even if the file already exists)

--ffmpeg-location PATH
    Location of the ffmpeg binary; either the path to the binary or its containing directory

--exec [WHEN:]CMD
    Execute a command, optionally prefixed with when to execute it, separated by a ":". Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default: after_move). The same syntax as the output template can be used to pass any field as arguments to the command. If no fields are passed, %(filepath,_filename|)q is appended to the end of the command. This option can be used multiple times

--no-exec
    Remove any previously defined --exec

--convert-subs FORMAT
    Convert the subtitles to another format (currently supported: ass, lrc, srt, vtt). Use "--convert-subs none" to disable conversion (default) (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". Use "--convert- thumbnails none" to disable conversion (default)

--split-chapters
    Split video into multiple files based on internal chapters. The "chapter:" prefix can be used with "--paths" and "--output" to set the output filename for the split files. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details

--no-split-chapters
    Do not split video based on chapters (default)

--remove-chapters REGEX
    Remove chapters whose title matches the given regular expression. The syntax is the same as --download-sections. This option can be used multiple times

--no-remove-chapters
    Do not remove any chapters from the file (default)

--force-keyframes-at-cuts
    Force keyframes at cuts when downloading/splitting/removing sections. This is slow due to needing a re-encode, but the resulting video may have fewer artifacts around the cuts

--no-force-keyframes-at-cuts
    Do not force keyframes around the chapters when cutting/splitting (default)

--use-postprocessor NAME[:ARGS]
    The (case-sensitive) name of plugin postprocessors to be enabled, and (optionally) arguments to be passed to it, separated by a colon ":". ARGS are a semicolon ";" delimited list of NAME=VALUE. The "when" argument determines when the postprocessor is invoked. It can be one of "pre_process" (after video extraction), "after_filter" (after video passes filter), "video" (after --format; before --print/--output), "before_dl" (before each video download), "post_process" (after each video download; default), "after_move" (after moving the video file to its final location), "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 (https://sponsor.ajay.app)

--sponsorblock-mark CATS
    SponsorBlock categories to create chapters for, separated by commas. Available categories are sponsor, intro, outro, selfpromo, preview, filler, interaction, music_offtopic, poi_highlight, chapter, all and default (=all). You can prefix the category with a "-" to exclude it. See [1] for descriptions of the categories. E.g. --sponsorblock-mark all,-preview [1] https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Segment_Categories

--sponsorblock-remove CATS
    SponsorBlock categories to be removed from the video file, separated by commas. If a category is present in both mark and remove, remove takes precedence. The syntax and available categories are the same as for --sponsorblock-mark except that "default" refers to "all,-filler" and poi_highlight, chapter are not available

--sponsorblock-chapter-title TEMPLATE
    An output template for the title of the SponsorBlock chapters created by --sponsorblock-mark. The only available fields are start_time, end_time, category, categories, name, category_names. Defaults to "[SponsorBlock]: %(category_names)l"

--no-sponsorblock
    Disable both --sponsorblock-mark and --sponsorblock-remove

--sponsorblock-api URL
    SponsorBlock API location, defaults to https://sponsor.ajay.app

  Extractor Options:

--extractor-retries RETRIES
    Number of retries for known extractor errors (default is 3), or "infinite"

--allow-dynamic-mpd
    Process dynamic DASH manifests (default) (Alias: --no-ignore-dynamic-mpd)

--ignore-dynamic-mpd
    Do not process dynamic DASH manifests (Alias: --no-allow-dynamic-mpd)

--hls-split-discontinuity
    Split HLS playlists to different formats at discontinuities such as ad breaks

--no-hls-split-discontinuity
    Do not split HLS playlists into different formats at discontinuities such as ad breaks (default)

--extractor-args IE_KEY:ARGS
    Pass ARGS arguments to the IE_KEY extractor. See "EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS" for details. You can use this option multiple times to give arguments for different extractors

  Preset Aliases:

Predefined aliases for convenience and ease of use. Note that future versions of yt-dlp may add or adjust presets, but the existing preset names will not be changed or removed

-t mp3
    -f 'ba[acodec^=mp3]/ba/b' -x --audio-format mp3

-t aac
    -f 'ba[acodec^=aac]/ba[acodec^=mp4a.40.]/ba/b' -x --audio-format aac

-t mp4
    --merge-output-format mp4 --remux-video mp4 -S vcodec:h264,lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,a codec:aac

-t mkv
    --merge-output-format mkv --remux-video mkv

-t sleep
    --sleep-subtitles 5 --sleep-requests 0.75 --sleep-interval 10 --max-sleep-interval 20

CONFIGURATION

You can configure yt-dlp by placing any supported command line option in a configuration file. The configuration is loaded from the following locations:

1.  Main Configuration:

    •   The file given to --config-location

2.  Portable Configuration: (Recommended for portable installations)

    •   If using a binary, yt-dlp.conf in the same directory as the binary

    •   If running from source-code, yt-dlp.conf in the parent directory of yt_dlp

3.  Home Configuration:

    •   yt-dlp.conf in the home path given to -P

    •   If -P is not given, the current directory is searched

4.  User Configuration:

    •   ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp.conf

    •   ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Linux/macOS)

    •   ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/config.txt

    •   ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp.conf

    •   ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Windows)

    •   ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/config.txt

    •   ~/yt-dlp.conf

    •   ~/yt-dlp.conf.txt

    •   ~/.yt-dlp/config

    •   ~/.yt-dlp/config.txt See also: Notes about environment variables

5.  System Configuration:

    •   /etc/yt-dlp.conf

    •   /etc/yt-dlp/config

    •   /etc/yt-dlp/config.txt

E.g. with the following configuration file, yt-dlp will always extract the audio, 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
    # Copy the mtime
    --mtime
    # Use this proxy
    --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
    # Save all videos under YouTube directory in your home directory
    -o ~/YouTube/%(title)s.%(ext)s

Note: Options in a configuration file are just the same options aka switches used in regular command line calls; thus there must be no whitespace after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy. They must also be quoted when necessary, as if it were a UNIX shell.

You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable all configuration files for a particular yt-dlp run. If --ignore-config is found inside any configuration file, no further configuration will be loaded. For example, having the option in the portable configuration file prevents loading of home, user, and system configurations. Additionally, (for backward compatibility) if --ignore-config is found inside the system configuration file, the user configuration is not loaded.

  Configuration file encoding

The configuration files are decoded according to the UTF BOM if present, and in the encoding from system locale otherwise.

If you want your file to be decoded differently, add # coding: ENCODING to the beginning of the file (e.g. # coding: shift-jis). There must be no characters before that, even spaces or BOM.

  Authentication with netrc

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 (https://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info) on a per-extractor basis. For that, you will need to create a .netrc file in --netrc-location and restrict permissions to read/write by only you:

    touch ${HOME}/.netrc
    chmod a-rwx,u+rw ${HOME}/.netrc

After that, you can add credentials for an extractor in the following format, where extractor is the name of the extractor in lowercase:

    machine <extractor> login <username> password <password>

E.g.

    machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
    machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password

To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc to yt-dlp or place it in the configuration file.

The default location of the .netrc file is ~ (see below).

As an alternative to using the .netrc file, which has the disadvantage of keeping your passwords in a plain text file, you can configure a custom shell command to provide the credentials for an extractor. This is done by providing the --netrc-cmd parameter, it shall output the credentials in the netrc format and return 0 on success, other values will be treated as an error. {} in the command will be replaced by the name of the extractor to make it possible to select the credentials for the right extractor.

E.g. To use an encrypted .netrc file stored as .authinfo.gpg

    yt-dlp --netrc-cmd 'gpg --decrypt ~/.authinfo.gpg' 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'

  Notes about environment variables

•   Environment variables are normally specified as ${VARIABLE}/$VARIABLE on UNIX and %VARIABLE% on Windows; but is always shown as ${VARIABLE} in this documentation

•   yt-dlp also allows using UNIX-style variables on Windows for path-like options; e.g. --output, --config-location

•   If unset, ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME} defaults to ~/.config and ${XDG_CACHE_HOME} to ~/.cache

•   On Windows, ~ points to ${HOME} if present; or, ${USERPROFILE} or ${HOMEDRIVE}${HOMEPATH} otherwise

•   On Windows, ${USERPROFILE} generally points to C:\Users\<user name> and ${APPDATA} to ${USERPROFILE}\AppData\Roaming

OUTPUT TEMPLATE

The -o option is used to indicate a template for the output file names while -P option is used to specify the path each type of file should be saved to.

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 (https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting), e.g. %(NAME)s or %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses, followed by formatting operations.

The field names themselves (the part inside the parenthesis) can also have some special formatting:

1.  Object traversal: The dictionaries and lists available in metadata can be traversed by using a dot . separator; e.g. %(tags.0)s, %(subtitles.en.-1.ext)s. You can do Python slicing with colon :; E.g. %(id.3:7)s, %(id.6:2:-1)s, %(formats.:.format_id)s. Curly braces {} can be used to build dictionaries with only specific keys; e.g. %(formats.:.{format_id,height})#j. An empty field name %()s refers to the entire infodict; e.g. %(.{id,title})s. Note that all the fields that become available using this method are not listed below. Use -j to see such fields

2.  Arithmetic: Simple arithmetic can be done on numeric fields using +, - and *. E.g. %(playlist_index+10)03d, %(n_entries+1-playlist_index)d

3.  Date/time Formatting: Date/time fields can be formatted according to strftime formatting (https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-format-codes) by specifying it separated from the field name using a >. E.g. %(duration>%H-%M-%S)s, %(upload_date>%Y-%m-%d)s, %(epoch-3600>%H-%M-%S)s

4.  Alternatives: Alternate fields can be specified separated with a ,. E.g. %(release_date>%Y,upload_date>%Y|Unknown)s

5.  Replacement: A replacement value can be specified using a & separator according to the str.format mini-language (https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#format-specification-mini-language). 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. E.g. %(chapters&has chapters|no chapters)s, %(title&TITLE={:>20}|NO TITLE)s

6.  Default: A literal default value can be specified for when the field is empty using a | separator. This overrides --output-na-placeholder. E.g. %(uploader|Unknown)s

7.  More Conversions: In addition to the normal format types diouxXeEfFgGcrs, yt-dlp additionally supports converting to B = Bytes, j = json (flag # for pretty-printing, + for Unicode), h = HTML escaping, l = a comma separated list (flag # for \n newline-separated), q = a string quoted for the terminal (flag # to split a list into different arguments), D = add Decimal suffixes (e.g. 10M) (flag # to use 1024 as factor), and S = Sanitize as filename (flag # for restricted)

8.  Unicode normalization: The format type U can be used for NFC Unicode normalization (https://docs.python.org/3/library/unicodedata.html#unicodedata.normalize). The alternate form flag (#) changes the normalization to NFD and the conversion flag + can be used for NFKC/NFKD compatibility equivalence normalization. E.g. %(title)+.100U is NFKC

To summarize, the general syntax for a field is:

    %(name[.keys][addition][>strf][,alternate][&replacement][|default])[flags][width][.precision][length]type

Additionally, you can set different output templates for the various metadata files separately from the general output template by specifying the type of file followed by the template separated by a colon :. The different file types supported are subtitle, thumbnail, description, annotation (deprecated), infojson, link, pl_thumbnail, pl_description, pl_infojson, chapter, pl_video. E.g. -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -o "thumbnail:%(title)s\%(title)s.%(ext)s" will put the thumbnails in a folder with the same name as the video. If any of the templates is empty, that type of file will not be written. E.g. --write-thumbnail -o "thumbnail:" will write thumbnails only for playlists and not for video.

Note: Due to post-processing (i.e. merging etc.), the actual output filename might differ. Use --print after_move:filepath to get the name after all post-processing is complete.

The available fields are:

•   id (string): Video identifier

•   title (string): Video title

•   fulltitle (string): Video title ignoring live timestamp and generic title

•   ext (string): Video filename extension

•   alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video

•   description (string): The description of the video

•   display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video

•   uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader

•   uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader

•   uploader_url (string): URL to the video uploader's profile

•   license (string): License name the video is licensed under

•   creators (list): The creators of the video

•   creator (string): The creators of the video; comma-separated

•   timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became available

•   upload_date (string): Video upload date in UTC (YYYYMMDD)

•   release_timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video was released

•   release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was released in UTC

•   release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the video or album was released

•   modified_timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video was last modified

•   modified_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was last modified in UTC

•   channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on

•   channel_id (string): Id of the channel

•   channel_url (string): URL of the channel

•   channel_follower_count (numeric): Number of followers of the channel

•   channel_is_verified (boolean): Whether the channel is verified on the platform

•   location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed

•   duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds

•   duration_string (string): Length of the video (HH:mm:ss)

•   view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the platform

•   concurrent_view_count (numeric): How many users are currently watching the video on the platform.

•   like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video

•   dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video

•   repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video

•   average_rating (numeric): Average rating given by users, the scale used depends on the webpage

•   comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video (For some extractors, comments are only downloaded at the end, and so this field cannot be used)

•   age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)

•   live_status (string): One of "not_live", "is_live", "is_upcoming", "was_live", "post_live" (was live, but VOD is not yet processed)

•   is_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a fixed-length video

•   was_live (boolean): Whether this video was originally a live stream

•   playable_in_embed (string): Whether this video is allowed to play in embedded players on other sites

•   availability (string): Whether the video is "private", "premium_only", "subscriber_only", "needs_auth", "unlisted" or "public"

•   media_type (string): The type of media as classified by the site, e.g. "episode", "clip", "trailer"

•   start_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should start, as specified in the URL

•   end_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should end, as specified in the URL

•   extractor (string): Name of the extractor

•   extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor

•   epoch (numeric): Unix epoch of when the information extraction was completed

•   autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each download, starting at --autonumber-start, padded with leading zeros to 5 digits

•   video_autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each video

•   n_entries (numeric): Total number of extracted items in the playlist

•   playlist_id (string): Identifier of the playlist that contains the video

•   playlist_title (string): Name of the playlist that contains the video

•   playlist (string): playlist_title if available or else playlist_id

•   playlist_count (numeric): Total number of items in the playlist. May not be known if entire playlist is not extracted

•   playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded with leading zeros according the final index

•   playlist_autonumber (numeric): Position of the video in the playlist download queue padded with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist

•   playlist_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader

•   playlist_uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist uploader

•   playlist_channel (string): Display name of the channel that uploaded the playlist

•   playlist_channel_id (string): Identifier of the channel that uploaded the playlist

•   playlist_webpage_url (string): URL of the playlist webpage

•   webpage_url (string): A URL to the video webpage which, if given to yt-dlp, should yield the same result again

•   webpage_url_basename (string): The basename of the webpage URL

•   webpage_url_domain (string): The domain of the webpage URL

•   original_url (string): The URL given by the user (or the same as webpage_url for playlist entries)

•   categories (list): List of categories the video belongs to

•   tags (list): List of tags assigned to the video

•   cast (list): List of cast members

All the fields in Filtering Formats can also be used

Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:

•   chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to

•   chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to

•   chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to

Available for the video that is an episode of some series or program:

•   series (string): Title of the series or program the video episode belongs to

•   series_id (string): Id of the series or program the video episode belongs to

•   season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to

•   season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode belongs to

•   season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to

•   episode (string): Title of the video episode

•   episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a season

•   episode_id (string): Id of the video episode

Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:

•   track (string): Title of the track

•   track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disc

•   track_id (string): Id of the track

•   artists (list): Artist(s) of the track

•   artist (string): Artist(s) of the track; comma-separated

•   genres (list): Genre(s) of the track

•   genre (string): Genre(s) of the track; comma-separated

•   composers (list): Composer(s) of the piece

•   composer (string): Composer(s) of the piece; comma-separated

•   album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to

•   album_type (string): Type of the album

•   album_artists (list): All artists appeared on the album

•   album_artist (string): All artists appeared on the album; comma-separated

•   disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs to

Available only when using --download-sections and for chapter: prefix when using --split-chapters for videos with internal chapters:

•   section_title (string): Title of the chapter

•   section_number (numeric): Number of the chapter within the file

•   section_start (numeric): Start time of the chapter in seconds

•   section_end (numeric): End time of the chapter in seconds

Available only when used in --print:

•   urls (string): The URLs of all requested formats, one in each line

•   filename (string): Name of the video file. Note that the actual filename may differ

•   formats_table (table): The video format table as printed by --list-formats

•   thumbnails_table (table): The thumbnail format table as printed by --list-thumbnails

•   subtitles_table (table): The subtitle format table as printed by --list-subs

•   automatic_captions_table (table): The automatic subtitle format table as printed by --list-subs

Available only after the video is downloaded (post_process/after_move):

•   filepath: Actual path of downloaded video file

Available only in --sponsorblock-chapter-title:

•   start_time (numeric): Start time of the chapter in seconds

•   end_time (numeric): End time of the chapter in seconds

•   categories (list): The SponsorBlock categories (https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Types#Category) the chapter belongs to

•   category (string): The smallest SponsorBlock category the chapter belongs to

•   category_names (list): Friendly names of the categories

•   name (string): Friendly name of the smallest category

•   type (string): The SponsorBlock action type (https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Types#Action_Type) of the chapter

Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. E.g. for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title yt-dlp test video and id BaW_jenozKc, this will result in a yt-dlp test video-BaW_jenozKc.mp4 file created in the current directory.

Note: Some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present, since they depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such sequences will be replaced with placeholder value provided with --output-na-placeholder (NA by default).

Tip: Look at the -j output to identify which fields are available for the particular URL

For numeric sequences, you can use numeric related formatting (https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting); e.g. %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.

Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g. -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" which will result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for you.

To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to stdout use -o -.

The current default template is %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s.

In some cases, you don't want special characters such as 中, spaces, or &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title.

  Output template examples

    $ yt-dlp --print filename -o "test video.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
    test video.webm    # Literal name with correct extension
    $ yt-dlp --print filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
    youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.webm    # All kinds of weird characters
    $ yt-dlp --print filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
    youtube-dl_test_video_.webm    # Restricted file name
    # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
    $ yt-dlp -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
    # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directories according to their uploaded year
    $ yt-dlp -o "%(upload_date>%Y)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
    # Prefix playlist index with " - " separator, but only if it is available
    $ yt-dlp -o "%(playlist_index&{} - |)s%(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_jenozKc --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.

The simplest case is requesting a specific format; e.g. with -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can get the list of available format codes for particular video using --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor specific.

You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as a single file.

You can use -f - to interactively provide the format selector for each video

You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:

•   all: Select all formats separately

•   mergeall: Select and merge all formats (Must be used with --audio-multistreams, --video-multistreams or both)

•   b*, best*: Select the best quality format that contains either a video or an audio or both (i.e.; vcodec!=none or acodec!=none)

•   b, best: Select the best quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent to best*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]

•   bv, bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format. Equivalent to best*[acodec=none]

•   bv*, bestvideo*: Select the best quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to best*[vcodec!=none]

•   ba, bestaudio: Select the best quality audio-only format. Equivalent to best*[vcodec=none]

•   ba*, bestaudio*: Select the best quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent to best*[acodec!=none] (Do not use! (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/979#issuecomment-919629354))

•   w*, worst*: Select the worst quality format that contains either a video or an audio

•   w, worst: Select the worst quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent to worst*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]

•   wv, worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format. Equivalent to worst*[acodec=none]

•   wv*, worstvideo*: Select the worst quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to worst*[vcodec!=none]

•   wa, worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio-only format. Equivalent to worst*[vcodec=none]

•   wa*, worstaudio*: Select the worst quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent to worst*[acodec!=none]

For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use -f worstvideo. It is, however, recommended not to use worst and related options. When your format selector is worst, the format which is worst in all respects is selected. Most of the time, what you actually want is the video with the smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better to use -S +size or more rigorously, -S +size,+br,+res,+fps instead of -f worst. See Sorting Formats for more details.

You can select the n'th best format of a type by using best<type>.<n>. For example, best.2 will select the 2nd best combined format. Similarly, bv*.3 will select the 3rd best format that contains a video stream.

If you want to download multiple videos, and they don't have the same formats available, you can specify the order of preference using slashes. Note that formats on the left hand side are preferred; e.g. -f 22/17/18 will download format 22 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available, otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for download.

If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.

You can merge the video and audio of multiple formats into a single file using -f <format1>+<format2>+... (requires ffmpeg installed); e.g. -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with ffmpeg.

Deprecation warning: Since the below described behavior is complex and counter-intuitive, this will be removed and multistreams will be enabled by default in the future. A new operator will be instead added to limit formats to single audio/video

Unless --video-multistreams is used, all formats with a video stream except the first one are ignored. Similarly, unless --audio-multistreams is used, all formats with an audio stream except the first one are ignored. E.g. -f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --video-multistreams --audio-multistreams will download and merge all 3 given formats. The resulting file will have 2 video streams and 2 audio streams. But -f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --no-video-multistreams will download and merge only bestvideo and bestaudio. best is ignored since another format containing a video stream (bestvideo) has already been selected. The order of the formats is therefore important. -f best+bestaudio --no-audio-multistreams will download only best while -f bestaudio+best --no-audio-multistreams will ignore best and download only bestaudio.

  Filtering Formats

You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]" since filters without a selector are interpreted as best).

The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >, >=, = (equals), != (not equals):

•   filesize: The number of bytes, if known in advance

•   filesize_approx: An estimate for the number of bytes

•   width: Width of the video, if known

•   height: Height of the video, if known

•   aspect_ratio: Aspect ratio of the video, if known

•   tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in kbps

•   abr: Average audio bitrate in kbps

•   vbr: Average video bitrate in kbps

•   asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz

•   fps: Frame rate

•   audio_channels: The number of audio channels

•   stretched_ratio: width:height of the video's pixels, if not square

Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $= (ends with), *= (contains), ~= (matches regex) and following string meta fields:

•   url: Video URL

•   ext: File extension

•   acodec: Name of the audio codec in use

•   vcodec: Name of the video codec in use

•   container: Name of the container format

•   protocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download, lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m, ism, http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native)

•   language: Language code

•   dynamic_range: The dynamic range of the video

•   format_id: A short description of the format

•   format: A human-readable description of the format

•   format_note: Additional info about the format

•   resolution: Textual description of width and height

Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation ! in order to produce an opposite comparison, e.g. !*= (does not contain). The comparand of a string comparison needs to be quoted with either double or single quotes if it contains spaces or special characters other than ._-.

Note: None of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by the 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 "bv[height<=?720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 kbps. You can also use the filters with all to download all formats that satisfy the filter, e.g. -f "all[vcodec=none]" selects all audio-only formats.

Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses; e.g. -f "(mp4,webm)[height<480]" will download the best pre-merged mp4 and webm formats with a height lower than 480.

  Sorting Formats

You can change the criteria for being considered the best by using -S (--format-sort). The general format for this is --format-sort field1,field2....

The available fields are:

•   hasvid: Gives priority to formats that have a video stream

•   hasaud: Gives priority to formats that have an audio stream

•   ie_pref: The format preference

•   lang: The language preference as determined by the extractor (e.g. original language preferred over audio description)

•   quality: The quality of the format

•   source: The preference of the source

•   proto: Protocol used for download (https/ftps > http/ftp > m3u8_native/m3u8 > http_dash_segments> websocket_frag > mms/rtsp > f4f/f4m)

•   vcodec: Video Codec (av01 > vp9.2 > vp9 > h265 > h264 > vp8 > h263 > theora > other)

•   acodec: Audio Codec (flac/alac > wav/aiff > opus > vorbis > aac > mp4a > mp3 > ac4 > eac3 > ac3 > dts > other)

•   codec: Equivalent to vcodec,acodec

•   vext: Video Extension (mp4 > mov > webm > flv > other). If --prefer-free-formats is used, webm is preferred.

•   aext: Audio Extension (m4a > aac > mp3 > ogg > opus > webm > other). If --prefer-free-formats is used, the order changes to ogg > opus > webm > mp3 > m4a > aac

•   ext: Equivalent to vext,aext

•   filesize: Exact filesize, if known in advance

•   fs_approx: Approximate filesize

•   size: Exact filesize if available, otherwise approximate filesize

•   height: Height of video

•   width: Width of video

•   res: Video resolution, calculated as the smallest dimension.

•   fps: Framerate of video

•   hdr: The dynamic range of the video (DV > HDR12 > HDR10+ > HDR10 > HLG > SDR)

•   channels: The number of audio channels

•   tbr: Total average bitrate in kbps

•   vbr: Average video bitrate in kbps

•   abr: Average audio bitrate in kbps

•   br: Average bitrate in kbps, tbr/vbr/abr

•   asr: Audio sample rate in Hz

Deprecation warning: Many of these fields have (currently undocumented) aliases, that may be removed in a future version. It is recommended to use only the documented field names.

All fields, unless specified otherwise, are sorted in descending order. To reverse this, prefix the field with a +. E.g. +res prefers format with the smallest resolution. Additionally, you can suffix a preferred value for the fields, separated by a :. E.g. res:720 prefers larger videos, but no larger than 720p and the smallest video if there are no videos less than 720p. For codec and ext, you can provide two preferred values, the first for video and the second for audio. E.g. +codec:avc:m4a (equivalent to +vcodec:avc,+acodec:m4a) sets the video codec preference to h264 > h265 > vp9 > vp9.2 > av01 > vp8 > h263 > theora and audio codec preference to mp4a > aac > vorbis > opus > mp3 > ac3 > dts. You can also make the sorting prefer the nearest values to the provided by using ~ as the delimiter. E.g. filesize~1G prefers the format with filesize closest to 1 GiB.

The fields hasvid and ie_pref are always given highest priority in sorting, irrespective of the user-defined order. This behavior can be changed by using --format-sort-force. Apart from these, the default order used is: lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,vcodec,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 for hdr is hdr:12; i.e. Dolby Vision is not preferred. This choice was made since DV formats are not yet fully compatible with most devices. This may be changed in the future.

If your format selector is worst, the last item is selected after sorting. This means it will select the format that is worst in all respects. Most of the time, what you actually want is the video with the smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better to use -f best -S +size,+br,+res,+fps.

Tip: You can use the -v -F to see how the formats have been sorted (worst to best).

  Format Selection examples

    # Download and merge the best video-only format and the best audio-only format,
    # or download the best combined format if video-only format is not available
    $ yt-dlp -f "bv+ba/b"
    # Download best format that contains video,
    # and if it doesn't already have an audio stream, merge it with best audio-only format
    $ yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba/b"
    # Same as above
    $ yt-dlp
    # Download the best video-only format and the best audio-only format without merging them
    # For this case, an output template should be used since
    # by default, bestvideo and bestaudio will have the same file name.
    $ yt-dlp -f "bv,ba" -o "%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s"
    # Download and merge the best format that has a video stream,
    # and all audio-only formats into one file
    $ yt-dlp -f "bv*+mergeall[vcodec=none]" --audio-multistreams
    # Download and merge the best format that has a video stream,
    # and the best 2 audio-only formats into one file
    $ yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba+ba.2" --audio-multistreams
    # The following examples show the old method (without -S) of format selection
    # and how to use -S to achieve a similar but (generally) better result
    # Download the worst video available (old method)
    $ yt-dlp -f "wv*+wa/w"
    # Download the best video available but with the smallest resolution
    $ yt-dlp -S "+res"
    # Download the smallest video available
    $ yt-dlp -S "+size,+br"
    # Download the best mp4 video available, or the best video if no mp4 available
    $ yt-dlp -f "bv*[ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[ext=mp4] / bv*+ba/b"
    # Download the best video with the best extension
    # (For video, mp4 > mov > webm > flv. For audio, m4a > aac > mp3 ...)
    $ yt-dlp -S "ext"
    # Download the best video available but no better than 480p,
    # or the worst video if there is no video under 480p
    $ yt-dlp -f "bv*[height<=480]+ba/b[height<=480] / wv*+ba/w"
    # Download the best video available with the largest height but no better than 480p,
    # or the best video with the smallest resolution if there is no video under 480p
    $ yt-dlp -S "height:480"
    # Download the best video available with the largest resolution but no better than 480p,
    # or the best video with the smallest resolution if there is no video under 480p
    # Resolution is determined by using the smallest dimension.
    # So this works correctly for vertical videos as well
    $ yt-dlp -S "res:480"
    # Download the best video (that also has audio) but no bigger than 50 MB,
    # or the worst video (that also has audio) if there is no video under 50 MB
    $ yt-dlp -f "b[filesize<50M] / w"
    # Download the 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 the 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 (https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#regular-expression-syntax). Backreferences (https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html?highlight=backreferences#re.sub) 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 (https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#regular-expression-syntax) with named capture groups, a single field name, or a similar syntax to the output template (only %(field)s formatting is supported) can be used for TO. The option can be used multiple times to parse and modify various fields.

Note that these options preserve their relative order, allowing replacements to be made in parsed fields and vice versa. Also, any field thus created can be used in the output template and will also affect the media file's metadata added when using --embed-metadata.

This option also has a few special uses:

•   You can download an additional URL based on the metadata of the currently downloaded video. To do this, set the field additional_urls to the URL that you want to download. E.g. --parse-metadata "description:(?P<additional_urls>https?://www\.vimeo\.com/\d+)" will download the first vimeo video found in the description

•   You can use this to change the metadata that is embedded in the media file. To do this, set the value of the corresponding field with a meta_ prefix. For example, any value you set to meta_description field will be added to the description field in the file - you can use this to set a different "description" and "synopsis". To modify the metadata of individual streams, use the meta<n>_ prefix (e.g. meta1_language). Any value set to the meta_ field will overwrite all default values.

Note: Metadata modification happens before format selection, post-extraction and other post-processing operations. Some fields may be added or changed during these steps, overriding your changes.

For reference, these are the fields yt-dlp adds by default to the file metadata:

Metadata fields | From
title | track or title
date | upload_date
description, synopsis | description
purl, comment | webpage_url
track | track_number
artist | artist, artists, creator, creators, uploader or uploader_id
composer | composer or composers
genre | genre or genres
album | album
album_artist | album_artist or album_artists
disc | disc_number
show | series
season_number | season_number
episode_id | episode or episode_id
episode_sort | episode_number
language of each stream | the format's language

Note: The file format may not support some of these fields

  Modifying metadata examples

    # Interpret the title as "Artist - Title"
    $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "title:%(artist)s - %(title)s"
    # Regex example
    $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "description:Artist - (?P<artist>.+)"
    # Set title as "Series name S01E05"
    $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "%(series)s S%(season_number)02dE%(episode_number)02d:%(title)s"
    # Prioritize uploader as the "artist" field in video metadata
    $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "%(uploader|)s:%(meta_artist)s" --embed-metadata
    # Set "comment" field in video metadata using description instead of webpage_url,
    # handling multiple lines correctly
    $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "description:(?s)(?P<meta_comment>.+)" --embed-metadata
    # Do not set any "synopsis" in the video metadata
    $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata ":(?P<meta_synopsis>)"
    # Remove "formats" field from the infojson by setting it to an empty string
    $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "video::(?P<formats>)" --write-info-json
    # 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=tv,mweb;formats=incomplete" --extractor-args "twitter:api=syndication"

Note: In CLI, ARG can use - instead of _; e.g. youtube:player-client" becomes youtube:player_client"

The following extractors use this feature:

  youtube

•   lang: Prefer translated metadata (title, description etc) of this language code (case-sensitive). By default, the video primary language metadata is preferred, with a fallback to en translated. See youtube/_base.py (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/415b4c9f955b1a0391204bd24a7132590e7b3bdb/yt_dlp/extractor/youtube/_base.py#L402-L409) for the list of supported content language codes

•   skip: One or more of hls, dash or translated_subs to skip extraction of the m3u8 manifests, dash manifests and auto-translated subtitles (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/4090#issuecomment-1158102032) respectively

•   player_client: Clients to extract video data from. The currently available clients are web, web_safari, web_embedded, web_music, web_creator, mweb, ios, android, android_vr, tv, tv_simply and tv_embedded. By default, tv,ios,web is used, or tv,web is used when authenticating with cookies. The web_music client is added for music.youtube.com URLs when logged-in cookies are used. The web_embedded client is added for age-restricted videos but only works if the video is embeddable. The tv_embedded and web_creator clients are added for age-restricted videos if account age-verification is required. Some clients, such as web and web_music, require a po_token for their formats to be downloadable. Some clients, such as web_creator, will only work with authentication. Not all clients support authentication via cookies. You can use default for the default clients, or you can use all for all clients (not recommended). You can prefix a client with - to exclude it, e.g. youtube:player_client=default,-ios

•   player_skip: Skip some network requests that are generally needed for robust extraction. One or more of configs (skip client configs), webpage (skip initial webpage), js (skip js player), initial_data (skip initial data/next ep request). While these options can help reduce the number of requests needed or avoid some rate-limiting, they could cause issues such as missing formats or metadata. See #860 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/860) and #12826 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/12826) for more details

•   webpage_skip: Skip extraction of embedded webpage data. One or both of player_response, initial_data. These options are for testing purposes and don't skip any network requests

•   player_params: YouTube player parameters to use for player requests. Will overwrite any default ones set by yt-dlp.

•   player_js_variant: The player javascript variant to use for signature and nsig deciphering. The known variants are: main, tce, tv, tv_es6, phone, tablet. Only main is recommended as a possible workaround; the others are for debugging purposes. The default is to use what is prescribed by the site, and can be selected with actual

•   comment_sort: top or new (default) - choose comment sorting mode (on YouTube's side)

•   max_comments: Limit the amount of comments to gather. Comma-separated list of integers representing max-comments,max-parents,max-replies,max-replies-per-thread. Default is all,all,all,all

    •   E.g. all,all,1000,10 will get a maximum of 1000 replies total, with up to 10 replies per thread. 1000,all,100 will get a maximum of 1000 comments, with a maximum of 100 replies total

•   formats: Change the types of formats to return. dashy (convert HTTP to DASH), duplicate (identical content but different URLs or protocol; includes dashy), incomplete (cannot be downloaded completely - live dash and post-live m3u8), missing_pot (include formats that require a PO Token but are missing one)

•   innertube_host: Innertube API host to use for all API requests; e.g. studio.youtube.com, youtubei.googleapis.com. Note that cookies exported from one subdomain will not work on others

•   innertube_key: Innertube API key to use for all API requests. By default, no API key is used

•   raise_incomplete_data: Incomplete Data Received raises an error instead of reporting a warning

•   data_sync_id: Overrides the account Data Sync ID used in Innertube API requests. This may be needed if you are using an account with youtube:player_skip=webpage,configs or youtubetab:skip=webpage

•   visitor_data: Overrides the Visitor Data used in Innertube API requests. This should be used with player_skip=webpage,configs and without cookies. Note: this may have adverse effects if used improperly. If a session from a browser is wanted, you should pass cookies instead (which contain the Visitor ID)

•   po_token: Proof of Origin (PO) Token(s) to use. Comma seperated list of PO Tokens in the format CLIENT.CONTEXT+PO_TOKEN, e.g. youtube:po_token=web.gvs+XXX,web.player=XXX,web_safari.gvs+YYY. Context can be any of gvs (Google Video Server URLs), player (Innertube player request) or subs (Subtitles)

•   pot_trace: Enable debug logging for PO Token fetching. Either true or false (default)

•   fetch_pot: Policy to use for fetching a PO Token from providers. One of always (always try fetch a PO Token regardless if the client requires one for the given context), never (never fetch a PO Token), or auto (default; only fetch a PO Token if the client requires one for the given context)

  youtubepot-webpo

•   bind_to_visitor_id: Whether to use the Visitor ID instead of Visitor Data for caching WebPO tokens. Either true (default) or false

  youtubetab (YouTube playlists, channels, feeds, etc.)

•   skip: One or more of webpage (skip initial webpage download), authcheck (allow the download of playlists requiring authentication when no initial webpage is downloaded. This may cause unwanted behavior, see #1122 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/1122) for more details)

•   approximate_date: Extract approximate upload_date and timestamp in flat-playlist. This may cause date-based filters to be slightly off

  generic

•   fragment_query: Passthrough any query in mpd/m3u8 manifest URLs to their fragments if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as fragment_query=VALUE. Note that if the stream has an HLS AES-128 key, then the query parameters will be passed to the key URI as well, unless the key_query extractor-arg is passed, or unless an external key URI is provided via the hls_key extractor-arg. Does not apply to ffmpeg

•   variant_query: Passthrough the master m3u8 URL query to its variant playlist URLs if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as variant_query=VALUE

•   key_query: Passthrough the master m3u8 URL query to its HLS AES-128 decryption key URI if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as key_query=VALUE. Note that this will have no effect if the key URI is provided via the hls_key extractor-arg. Does not apply to ffmpeg

•   hls_key: An HLS AES-128 key URI or key (as hex), and optionally the IV (as hex), in the form of (URI|KEY)[,IV]; e.g. generic:hls_key=ABCDEF1234567980,0xFEDCBA0987654321. Passing any of these values will force usage of the native HLS downloader and override the corresponding values found in the m3u8 playlist

•   is_live: Bypass live HLS detection and manually set live_status - a value of false will set not_live, any other value (or no value) will set is_live

•   impersonate: Target(s) to try and impersonate with the initial webpage request; e.g. generic:impersonate=safari,chrome-110. Use generic:impersonate to impersonate any available target, and use generic:impersonate=false to disable impersonation (default)

  vikichannel

•   video_types: Types of videos to download - one or more of episodes, movies, clips, trailers

  youtubewebarchive

•   check_all: Try to check more at the cost of more requests. One or more of thumbnails, captures

  gamejolt

•   comment_sort: hot (default), you (cookies needed), top, new - choose comment sorting mode (on GameJolt's side)

  hotstar

•   res: resolution to ignore - one or more of sd, hd, fhd

•   vcodec: vcodec to ignore - one or more of h264, h265, dvh265

•   dr: dynamic range to ignore - one or more of sdr, hdr10, dv

  instagram

•   app_id: The value of the X-IG-App-ID header used for API requests. Default is the web app ID, 936619743392459

  niconicochannelplus

•   max_comments: Maximum number of comments to extract - default is 120

  tiktok

•   api_hostname: Hostname to use for mobile API calls, e.g. api22-normal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com

•   app_name: Default app name to use with mobile API calls, e.g. trill

•   app_version: Default app version to use with mobile API calls - should be set along with manifest_app_version, e.g. 34.1.2

•   manifest_app_version: Default numeric app version to use with mobile API calls, e.g. 2023401020

•   aid: Default app ID to use with mobile API calls, e.g. 1180

•   app_info: Enable mobile API extraction with one or more app info strings in the format of <iid>/[app_name]/[app_version]/[manifest_app_version]/[aid], where iid is the unique app install ID. iid is the only required value; all other values and their / separators can be omitted, e.g. tiktok:app_info=1234567890123456789 or tiktok:app_info=123,456/trill///1180,789//34.0.1/340001

•   device_id: Enable mobile API extraction with a genuine device ID to be used with mobile API calls. Default is a random 19-digit string

  rokfinchannel

•   tab: Which tab to download - one of new, top, videos, podcasts, streams, stacks

  twitter

•   api: Select one of graphql (default), legacy or syndication as the API for tweet extraction. Has no effect if logged in

  stacommu, wrestleuniverse

•   device_id: UUID value assigned by the website and used to enforce device limits for paid livestream content. Can be found in browser local storage

  twitch

•   client_id: Client ID value to be sent with GraphQL requests, e.g. twitch:client_id=kimne78kx3ncx6brgo4mv6wki5h1ko

  nhkradirulive (NHK らじる★らじる LIVE)

•   area: Which regional variation to extract. Valid areas are: sapporo, sendai, tokyo, nagoya, osaka, hiroshima, matsuyama, fukuoka. Defaults to tokyo

  nflplusreplay

•   type: Type(s) of game replays to extract. Valid types are: full_game, full_game_spanish, condensed_game and all_22. You can use all to extract all available replay types, which is the default

  jiocinema

•   refresh_token: The refreshToken UUID from browser local storage can be passed to extend the life of your login session when logging in with token as username and the accessToken from browser local storage as password

  jiosaavn

•   bitrate: Audio bitrates to request. One or more of 16, 32, 64, 128, 320. Default is 128,320

  afreecatvlive

•   cdn: One or more CDN IDs to use with the API call for stream URLs, e.g. gcp_cdn, gs_cdn_pc_app, gs_cdn_mobile_web, gs_cdn_pc_web

  soundcloud

•   formats: Formats to request from the API. Requested values should be in the format of {protocol}_{codec}, e.g. hls_opus,http_aac. The * character functions as a wildcard, e.g. *_mp3, and can be passed by itself to request all formats. Known protocols include http, hls and hls-aes; known codecs include aac, opus and mp3. Original download formats are always extracted. Default is http_aac,hls_aac,http_opus,hls_opus,http_mp3,hls_mp3

  orfon (orf:on)

•   prefer_segments_playlist: Prefer a playlist of program segments instead of a single complete video when available. If individual segments are desired, use --concat-playlist never --extractor-args "orfon:prefer_segments_playlist"

  bilibili

•   prefer_multi_flv: Prefer extracting flv formats over mp4 for older videos that still provide legacy formats

  sonylivseries

•   sort_order: Episode sort order for series extraction - one of asc (ascending, oldest first) or desc (descending, newest first). Default is asc

  tver

•   backend: Backend API to use for extraction - one of streaks (default) or brightcove (deprecated)

  vimeo

•   client: Client to extract video data from. The currently available clients are android, ios, and web. Only one client can be used. The web client is used by default. The web client only works with account cookies or login credentials. The android and ios clients only work with previously cached OAuth tokens

•   original_format_policy: Policy for when to try extracting original formats. One of always, never, or auto. The default auto policy tries to avoid exceeding the web client's API rate-limit by only making an extra request when Vimeo publicizes the video's downloadability

Note: These options may be changed/removed in the future without concern for backward compatibility

INSTALLATION

You can install yt-dlp using the binaries, pip (https://pypi.org/project/yt-dlp) or one using a third-party package manager. See the wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation) for detailed instructions

Note: The manpages, shell completion (autocomplete) files etc. are available inside the source tarball (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp.tar.gz)

  UPDATE

You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the release binaries

If you installed with pip (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation#with-pip), simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program

For other third-party package managers, see the wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation#third-party-package-managers) or refer to their documentation

There are currently three release channels for binaries: stable, nightly and master.

•   stable is the default channel, and many of its changes have been tested by users of the nightly and master channels.

•   The nightly channel has releases scheduled to build every day around midnight UTC, for a snapshot of the project's new patches and changes. This is the recommended channel for regular users of yt-dlp. The nightly releases are available from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases) or as development releases of the yt-dlp PyPI package (which can be installed with pip's --pre flag).

•   The master channel features releases that are built after each push to the master branch, and these will have the very latest fixes and additions, but may also be more prone to regressions. They are available from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-master-builds (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-master-builds/releases).

When using --update/-U, a release binary will only update to its current channel. --update-to CHANNEL can be used to switch to a different channel when a newer version is available. --update-to [CHANNEL@]TAG can also be used to upgrade or downgrade to specific tags from a channel.

You may also use --update-to <repository> (<owner>/<repository>) to update to a channel on a completely different repository. Be careful with what repository you are updating to though, there is no verification done for binaries from different repositories.

Example usage:

•   yt-dlp --update-to master switch to the master channel and update to its latest release

•   yt-dlp --update-to stable@2023.07.06 upgrade/downgrade to release to stable channel tag 2023.07.06

•   yt-dlp --update-to 2023.10.07 upgrade/downgrade to tag 2023.10.07 if it exists on the current channel

•   yt-dlp --update-to example/yt-dlp@2023.09.24 upgrade/downgrade to the release from the example/yt-dlp repository, tag 2023.09.24

Important: Any user experiencing an issue with the stable release should install or update to the nightly release before submitting a bug report:

    # To update to nightly from stable executable/binary:
    yt-dlp --update-to nightly
    # To install nightly with pip:
    python3 -m pip install -U --pre "yt-dlp[default]"

When running a yt-dlp version that is older than 90 days, you will see a warning message suggesting to update to the latest version. You can suppress this warning by adding --no-update to your command or configuration file.

  DEPENDENCIES

Python versions 3.9+ (CPython) and 3.11+ (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 (https://www.ffmpeg.org) - Required for merging separate video and audio files, as well as for various post-processing tasks. License depends on the build (https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html)

    There are bugs in ffmpeg that cause various issues when used alongside yt-dlp. Since ffmpeg is such an important dependency, we provide custom builds (https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds#ffmpeg-static-auto-builds) with patches for some of these issues at yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds (https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds). See the readme (https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds#patches-applied) for details on the specific issues solved by these builds

    Important: What you need is ffmpeg binary, NOT the Python package of the same name (https://pypi.org/project/ffmpeg)

  Networking

•   certifi (https://github.com/certifi/python-certifi)* - Provides Mozilla's root certificate bundle. Licensed under MPLv2 (https://github.com/certifi/python-certifi/blob/master/LICENSE)

•   brotli (https://github.com/google/brotli)* or brotlicffi (https://github.com/python-hyper/brotlicffi) - Brotli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotli) content encoding support. Both licensed under MIT 1 (https://github.com/google/brotli/blob/master/LICENSE) 2 (https://github.com/python-hyper/brotlicffi/blob/master/LICENSE)

•   websockets (https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets)* - For downloading over websocket. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets/blob/main/LICENSE)

•   requests (https://github.com/psf/requests)* - HTTP library. For HTTPS proxy and persistent connections support. Licensed under Apache-2.0 (https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/main/LICENSE)

  Impersonation

The following provide support for impersonating browser requests. This may be required for some sites that employ TLS fingerprinting.

•   curl_cffi (https://github.com/lexiforest/curl_cffi) (recommended) - Python binding for curl-impersonate (https://github.com/lexiforest/curl-impersonate). Provides impersonation targets for Chrome, Edge and Safari. Licensed under MIT (https://github.com/lexiforest/curl_cffi/blob/main/LICENSE)

    •   Can be installed with the curl-cffi group, e.g. pip install "yt-dlp[default,curl-cffi]"

    •   Currently included in yt-dlp.exe, yt-dlp_linux and yt-dlp_macos builds

  Metadata

•   mutagen (https://github.com/quodlibet/mutagen)* - For --embed-thumbnail in certain formats. Licensed under GPLv2+ (https://github.com/quodlibet/mutagen/blob/master/COPYING)

•   AtomicParsley (https://github.com/wez/atomicparsley) - For --embed-thumbnail in mp4/m4a files when mutagen/ffmpeg cannot. Licensed under GPLv2+ (https://github.com/wez/atomicparsley/blob/master/COPYING)

•   xattr (https://github.com/xattr/xattr), pyxattr (https://github.com/iustin/pyxattr) or setfattr (http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/attr) - For writing xattr metadata (--xattrs) on Mac and BSD. Licensed under MIT (https://github.com/xattr/xattr/blob/master/LICENSE.txt), LGPL2.1 (https://github.com/iustin/pyxattr/blob/master/COPYING) and GPLv2+ (http://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/attr.git/tree/doc/COPYING) respectively

  Misc

•   pycryptodomex (https://github.com/Legrandin/pycryptodome)* - For decrypting AES-128 HLS streams and various other data. Licensed under BSD-2-Clause (https://github.com/Legrandin/pycryptodome/blob/master/LICENSE.rst)

•   phantomjs (https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs) - Used in extractors where javascript needs to be run. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/LICENSE.BSD)

•   secretstorage (https://github.com/mitya57/secretstorage)* - For --cookies-from-browser to access the Gnome keyring while decrypting cookies of Chromium-based browsers on Linux. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (https://github.com/mitya57/secretstorage/blob/master/LICENSE)

•   Any external downloader that you want to use with --downloader

  Deprecated

•   avconv and avprobe (https://www.libav.org) - Now deprecated alternative to ffmpeg. License depends on the build (https://libav.org/legal)

•   sponskrub (https://github.com/faissaloo/SponSkrub) - For using the now deprecated sponskrub options. Licensed under GPLv3+ (https://github.com/faissaloo/SponSkrub/blob/master/LICENCE.md)

•   rtmpdump (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu) - For downloading rtmp streams. ffmpeg can be used instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+ (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu)

•   mplayer (http://mplayerhq.hu/design7/info.html) or mpv (https://mpv.io) - For downloading rstp/mms streams. ffmpeg can be used instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+ (https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/Copyright)

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). The executable will be built for the same CPU architecture as the Python used.

You can run the following commands:

    python3 devscripts/install_deps.py --include pyinstaller
    python3 devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py
    python3 -m bundle.pyinstaller

On some systems, you may need to use py or python instead of python3.

python -m bundle.pyinstaller accepts any arguments that can be passed to pyinstaller, such as --onefile/-F or --onedir/-D, which is further documented here (https://pyinstaller.org/en/stable/usage.html#what-to-generate).

Note: Pyinstaller versions below 4.4 do not support (https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller#requirements-and-tested-platforms) Python installed from the Windows store without using a virtual environment.

Important: Running pyinstaller directly instead of using python -m bundle.pyinstaller is not officially supported. This may or may not work correctly.

  Platform-independent Binary (UNIX)

You will need the build tools python (3.9+), zip, make (GNU), pandoc* and pytest*.

After installing these, simply run make.

You can also run make yt-dlp instead to compile only the binary without updating any of the additional files. (The build tools marked with * are not needed for this)

  Related scripts

•   devscripts/install_deps.py - Install dependencies for yt-dlp.

•   devscripts/update-version.py - Update the version number based on the current date.

•   devscripts/set-variant.py - Set the build variant of the executable.

•   devscripts/make_changelog.py - Create a markdown changelog using short commit messages and update CONTRIBUTORS file.

•   devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py - Create lazy extractors. Running this before building the binaries (any variant) will improve their startup performance. Set the environment variable YTDLP_NO_LAZY_EXTRACTORS to something nonempty to forcefully disable lazy extractor loading.

Note: See their --help for more info.

  Forking the project

If you fork the project on GitHub, you can run your fork's build workflow to automatically build the selected version(s) as artifacts. Alternatively, you can run the release workflow or enable the nightly workflow to create full (pre-)releases.

PLUGINS

Note that all plugins are imported even if not invoked, and that there are no checks performed on plugin code. Use plugins at your own risk and only if you trust the code!

Plugins can be of <type>s extractor or postprocessor. - Extractor plugins do not need to be enabled from the CLI and are automatically invoked when the input URL is suitable for it. - Extractor plugins take priority over built-in extractors. - Postprocessor plugins can be invoked using --use-postprocessor NAME.

Plugins are loaded from the namespace packages yt_dlp_plugins.extractor and yt_dlp_plugins.postprocessor.

In other words, the file structure on the disk looks something like:

        yt_dlp_plugins/
            extractor/
                myplugin.py
            postprocessor/
                myplugin.py

yt-dlp looks for these yt_dlp_plugins namespace folders in many locations (see below) and loads in plugins from all of them. Set the environment variable YTDLP_NO_PLUGINS to something nonempty to disable loading plugins entirely.

See the wiki for some known plugins (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Plugins)

  Installing Plugins

Plugins can be installed using various methods and locations.

1.  Configuration directories: Plugin packages (containing a yt_dlp_plugins namespace folder) can be dropped into the following standard configuration locations:

    •   User Plugins

        •   ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/ (recommended on Linux/macOS)

        •   ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/

        •   ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/ (recommended on Windows)

        •   ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/

        •   ~/.yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/

        •   ~/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/

    •   System Plugins

        •   /etc/yt-dlp/plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/

        •   /etc/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/

2.  Executable location: Plugin packages can similarly be installed in a yt-dlp-plugins directory under the executable location (recommended for portable installations):

    •   Binary: where <root-dir>/yt-dlp.exe, <root-dir>/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/

    •   Source: where <root-dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py, <root-dir>/yt-dlp-plugins/<package name>/yt_dlp_plugins/

3.  pip and other locations in PYTHONPATH

    •   Plugin packages can be installed and managed using pip. See yt-dlp-sample-plugins (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-sample-plugins) for an example.

        •   Note: plugin files between plugin packages installed with pip must have unique filenames.

    •   Any path in PYTHONPATH is searched in for the yt_dlp_plugins namespace folder.

        •   Note: This does not apply for Pyinstaller builds.

.zip, .egg and .whl archives containing a yt_dlp_plugins namespace folder in their root are also supported as plugin packages.

•   e.g. ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/mypluginpkg.zip where mypluginpkg.zip contains yt_dlp_plugins/<type>/myplugin.py

Run yt-dlp with --verbose to check if the plugin has been loaded.

  Developing Plugins

See the yt-dlp-sample-plugins (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-sample-plugins) repo for a template plugin package and the Plugin Development (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Plugin-Development) section of the wiki for a plugin development guide.

All public classes with a name ending in IE/PP are imported from each file for extractors and postprocessors respectively. This respects underscore prefix (e.g. _MyBasePluginIE is private) and __all__. Modules can similarly be excluded by prefixing the module name with an underscore (e.g. _myplugin.py).

To replace an existing extractor with a subclass of one, set the plugin_name class keyword argument (e.g. class MyPluginIE(ABuiltInIE, plugin_name='myplugin') will replace ABuiltInIE with MyPluginIE). Since the extractor replaces the parent, you should exclude the subclass extractor from being imported separately by making it private using one of the methods described above.

If you are a plugin author, add yt-dlp-plugins (https://github.com/topics/yt-dlp-plugins) as a topic to your repository for discoverability.

See the Developer Instructions (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#developer-instructions) on how to write and test an extractor.

EMBEDDING YT-DLP

yt-dlp makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and thus should be callable from any programming language.

Your program should avoid parsing the normal stdout since they may change in future versions. Instead, they should use options such as -J, --print, --progress-template, --exec etc to create console output that you can reliably reproduce and parse.

From a Python program, you can embed yt-dlp in a more powerful fashion, like this:

    from yt_dlp import YoutubeDL
    URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']
    with YoutubeDL() as ydl:
        ydl.download(URLS)

Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options available, have a look at yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py or help(yt_dlp.YoutubeDL) in a Python shell. If you are already familiar with the CLI, you can use devscripts/cli_to_api.py (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/devscripts/cli_to_api.py) to translate any CLI switches to YoutubeDL params.

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
    URLS = ['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)

CHANGES FROM YOUTUBE-DL

  New features

•   Forked from yt-dlc@f9401f2 (https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc/commit/f9401f2a91987068139c5f757b12fc711d4c0cee) and merged with youtube-dl@a08f2b7 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/a08f2b7e4567cdc50c0614ee0a4ffdff49b8b6e6) (exceptions (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/21))

•   SponsorBlock Integration: You can mark/remove sponsor sections in YouTube videos by utilizing the SponsorBlock (https://sponsor.ajay.app) 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 (https://github.com/animelover1984/youtube-dl) including --write-comments, BiliBiliSearch, BilibiliChannel, Embedding thumbnail in mp4/ogg/opus, playlist infojson etc. See #31 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/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, and Feeds (:ytfav, :ytwatchlater, :ytsubs, :ythistory, :ytrec, :ytnotif)

    •   Fix for n-sig based throttling (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326) *

    •   Download livestreams from the start using --live-from-start (experimental)

    •   Channel URLs download all uploads of the channel, including shorts and live

    •   Support for logging in with OAuth (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#logging-in-with-oauth)

•   Cookies from browser: Cookies can be automatically extracted from all major web browsers using --cookies-from-browser BROWSER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE][::CONTAINER]

•   Download time range: Videos can be downloaded partially based on either timestamps or chapters using --download-sections

•   Split video by chapters: Videos can be split into multiple files based on chapters using --split-chapters

•   Multi-threaded fragment downloads: Download multiple fragments of m3u8/mpd videos in parallel. Use --concurrent-fragments (-N) option to set the number of threads used

•   Aria2c with HLS/DASH: You can use aria2c as the external downloader for DASH(mpd) and HLS(m3u8) formats

•   New and fixed extractors: Many new extractors have been added and a lot of existing ones have been fixed. See the changelog or the list of supported sites

•   New MSOs: Philo, Spectrum, SlingTV, Cablevision, RCN etc.

•   Subtitle extraction from manifests: Subtitles can be extracted from streaming media manifests. See commit/be6202f (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/be6202f12b97858b9d716e608394b51065d0419f) for details

•   Multiple paths and output templates: You can give different output templates and download paths for different types of files. You can also set a temporary path where intermediary files are downloaded to using --paths (-P)

•   Portable Configuration: Configuration files are automatically loaded from the home and root directories. See CONFIGURATION for details

•   Output template improvements: Output templates can now have date-time formatting, numeric offsets, object traversal etc. See output template for details. Even more advanced operations can also be done with the help of --parse-metadata and --replace-in-metadata

•   Other new options: Many new options have been added such as --alias, --print, --concat-playlist, --wait-for-video, --retry-sleep, --sleep-requests, --convert-thumbnails, --force-download-archive, --force-overwrites, --break-match-filters etc

•   Improvements: Regex and other operators in --format/--match-filters, multiple --postprocessor-args and --downloader-args, faster archive checking, more format selection options, merge multi-video/audio, multiple --config-locations, --exec at different stages, etc

•   Plugins: Extractors and PostProcessors can be loaded from an external file. See plugins for details

•   Self updater: The releases can be updated using yt-dlp -U, and downgraded using --update-to if required

•   Automated builds: Nightly/master builds can be used with --update-to nightly and --update-to master

See changelog or commits (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commits) for the full list of changes

Features marked with a * have been back-ported to youtube-dl

  Differences in default behavior

Some of yt-dlp's default options are different from that of youtube-dl and youtube-dlc:

•   yt-dlp supports only Python 3.9+, and will remove support for more versions as they become EOL (https://devguide.python.org/versions/#python-release-cycle); while youtube-dl still supports Python 2.6+ and 3.2+ (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/30568#issue-1118238743)

•   The options --auto-number (-A), --title (-t) and --literal (-l), no longer work. See removed options for details

•   avconv is not supported as an alternative to ffmpeg

•   yt-dlp stores config files in slightly different locations to youtube-dl. See CONFIGURATION for a list of correct locations

•   The default output template is %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s. There is no real reason for this change. This was changed before yt-dlp was ever made public and now there are no plans to change it back to %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s. Instead, you may use --compat-options filename

•   The default format sorting is different from youtube-dl and prefers higher resolution and better codecs rather than higher bitrates. You can use the --format-sort option to change this to any order you prefer, or use --compat-options format-sort to use youtube-dl's sorting order. Older versions of yt-dlp preferred VP9 due to its broader compatibility; you can use --compat-options prefer-vp9-sort to revert to that format sorting preference. These two compat options cannot be used together

•   The default format selector is bv*+ba/b. This means that if a combined video + audio format that is better than the best video-only format is found, the former will be preferred. Use -f bv+ba/b or --compat-options format-spec to revert this

•   Unlike youtube-dlc, yt-dlp does not allow merging multiple audio/video streams into one file by default (since this conflicts with the use of -f bv*+ba). If needed, this feature must be enabled using --audio-multistreams and --video-multistreams. You can also use --compat-options multistreams to enable both

•   --no-abort-on-error is enabled by default. Use --abort-on-error or --compat-options abort-on-error to abort on errors instead

•   When writing metadata files such as thumbnails, description or infojson, the same information (if available) is also written for playlists. Use --no-write-playlist-metafiles or --compat-options no-playlist-metafiles to not write these files

•   --add-metadata attaches the infojson to mkv files in addition to writing the metadata when used with --write-info-json. Use --no-embed-info-json or --compat-options no-attach-info-json to revert this

•   Some metadata are embedded into different fields when using --add-metadata as compared to youtube-dl. Most notably, comment field contains the webpage_url and synopsis contains the description. You can use --parse-metadata to modify this to your liking or use --compat-options embed-metadata to revert this

•   playlist_index behaves differently when used with options like --playlist-reverse and --playlist-items. See #302 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/302) for details. You can use --compat-options playlist-index if you want to keep the earlier behavior

•   The output of -F is listed in a new format. Use --compat-options list-formats to revert this

•   Live chats (if available) are considered as subtitles. Use --sub-langs all,-live_chat to download all subtitles except live chat. You can also use --compat-options no-live-chat to prevent any live chat/danmaku from downloading

•   YouTube channel URLs download all uploads of the channel. To download only the videos in a specific tab, pass the tab's URL. If the channel does not show the requested tab, an error will be raised. Also, /live URLs raise an error if there are no live videos instead of silently downloading the entire channel. You may use --compat-options no-youtube-channel-redirect to revert all these redirections

•   Unavailable videos are also listed for YouTube playlists. Use --compat-options no-youtube-unavailable-videos to remove this

•   The upload dates extracted from YouTube are in UTC.

•   If ffmpeg is used as the downloader, the downloading and merging of formats happen in a single step when possible. Use --compat-options no-direct-merge to revert this

•   Thumbnail embedding in mp4 is done with mutagen if possible. Use --compat-options embed-thumbnail-atomicparsley to force the use of AtomicParsley instead

•   Some internal metadata such as filenames are removed by default from the infojson. Use --no-clean-infojson or --compat-options no-clean-infojson to revert this

•   When --embed-subs and --write-subs are used together, the subtitles are written to disk and also embedded in the media file. You can use just --embed-subs to embed the subs and automatically delete the separate file. See #630 (comment) (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/630#issuecomment-893659460) for more info. --compat-options no-keep-subs can be used to revert this

•   certifi will be used for SSL root certificates, if installed. If you want to use system certificates (e.g. self-signed), use --compat-options no-certifi

•   yt-dlp's sanitization of invalid characters in filenames is different/smarter than in youtube-dl. You can use --compat-options filename-sanitization to revert to youtube-dl's behavior

•   [STRIKEOUT:yt-dlp tries to parse the external downloader outputs into the standard progress output if possible (Currently implemented: aria2c (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/5931)). You can use --compat-options no-external-downloader-progress to get the downloader output as-is]

•   yt-dlp versions between 2021.09.01 and 2023.01.02 applies --match-filters to nested playlists. This was an unintentional side-effect of 8f18ac (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/8f18aca8717bb0dd49054555af8d386e5eda3a88) and is fixed in d7b460 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/d7b460d0e5fc710950582baed2e3fc616ed98a80). Use --compat-options playlist-match-filter to revert this

•   yt-dlp versions between 2021.11.10 and 2023.06.21 estimated filesize_approx values for fragmented/manifest formats. This was added for convenience in f2fe69 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/f2fe69c7b0d208bdb1f6292b4ae92bc1e1a7444a), but was reverted in 0dff8e (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/0dff8e4d1e6e9fb938f4256ea9af7d81f42fd54f) due to the potentially extreme inaccuracy of the estimated values. Use --compat-options manifest-filesize-approx to keep extracting the estimated values

•   yt-dlp uses modern http client backends such as requests. Use --compat-options prefer-legacy-http-handler to prefer the legacy http handler (urllib) to be used for standard http requests.

•   The sub-modules swfinterp, casefold are removed.

•   Passing --simulate (or calling extract_info with download=False) no longer alters the default format selection. See #9843 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/9843) for details.

•   yt-dlp no longer applies the server modified time to downloaded files by default. Use --mtime or --compat-options mtime-by-default to revert this.

For ease of use, a few more compat options are available:

•   --compat-options all: Use all compat options (Do NOT use this!)

•   --compat-options youtube-dl: Same as --compat-options all,-multistreams,-playlist-match-filter,-manifest-filesize-approx,-allow-unsafe-ext,-prefer-vp9-sort

•   --compat-options youtube-dlc: Same as --compat-options all,-no-live-chat,-no-youtube-channel-redirect,-playlist-match-filter,-manifest-filesize-approx,-allow-unsafe-ext,-prefer-vp9-sort

•   --compat-options 2021: Same as --compat-options 2022,no-certifi,filename-sanitization

•   --compat-options 2022: Same as --compat-options 2023,playlist-match-filter,no-external-downloader-progress,prefer-legacy-http-handler,manifest-filesize-approx

•   --compat-options 2023: Same as --compat-options 2024,prefer-vp9-sort

•   --compat-options 2024: Same as --compat-options mtime-by-default. Use this to enable all future compat options

The following compat options restore vulnerable behavior from before security patches:

•   --compat-options allow-unsafe-ext: Allow files with any extension (including unsafe ones) to be downloaded (GHSA-79w7-vh3h-8g4j (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-79w7-vh3h-8g4j))

        :warning: Only use if a valid file download is rejected because its extension is detected as uncommon

        This option can enable remote code execution! Consider opening an issue (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/new/choose) instead!

  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-filters "title ~= (?i)REGEX"
    --reject-title REGEX             --match-filters "title !~= (?i)REGEX"
    --min-views COUNT                --match-filters "view_count >=? COUNT"
    --max-views COUNT                --match-filters "view_count <=? COUNT"
    --break-on-reject                Use --break-match-filters
    --user-agent UA                  --add-headers "User-Agent:UA"
    --referer URL                    --add-headers "Referer:URL"
    --playlist-start NUMBER          -I NUMBER:
    --playlist-end NUMBER            -I :NUMBER
    --playlist-reverse               -I ::-1
    --no-playlist-reverse            Default
    --no-colors                      --color no_color

  Not recommended

While these options still work, their use is not recommended since there are other alternatives to achieve the same

    --force-generic-extractor        --ies generic,default
    --exec-before-download CMD       --exec "before_dl:CMD"
    --no-exec-before-download        --no-exec
    --all-formats                    -f all
    --all-subs                       --sub-langs all --write-subs
    --print-json                     -j --no-simulate
    --autonumber-size NUMBER         Use string formatting, e.g. %(autonumber)03d
    --autonumber-start NUMBER        Use internal field formatting like %(autonumber+NUMBER)s
    --id                             -o "%(id)s.%(ext)s"
    --metadata-from-title FORMAT     --parse-metadata "%(title)s:FORMAT"
    --hls-prefer-native              --downloader "m3u8:native"
    --hls-prefer-ffmpeg              --downloader "m3u8:ffmpeg"
    --list-formats-old               --compat-options list-formats (Alias: --no-list-formats-as-table)
    --list-formats-as-table          --compat-options -list-formats [Default] (Alias: --no-list-formats-old)
    --youtube-skip-dash-manifest     --extractor-args "youtube:skip=dash" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-dash-manifest)
    --youtube-skip-hls-manifest      --extractor-args "youtube:skip=hls" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-hls-manifest)
    --youtube-include-dash-manifest  Default (Alias: --no-youtube-skip-dash-manifest)
    --youtube-include-hls-manifest   Default (Alias: --no-youtube-skip-hls-manifest)
    --geo-bypass                     --xff "default"
    --no-geo-bypass                  --xff "never"
    --geo-bypass-country CODE        --xff CODE
    --geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK   --xff IP_BLOCK

  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
    --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 (https://github.com/faissaloo/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
    --compat-options no-youtube-prefer-utc-upload-date  No longer supported

  Removed

These options were deprecated since 2014 and have now been entirely removed

    -A, --auto-number                -o "%(autonumber)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"
    -t, -l, --title, --literal       -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"

CONTRIBUTING

See CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions on Opening an Issue and Contributing code to the project

WIKI

See the Wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki) for more information