youtube-dl is a Python-based small command-line tool that allows downloading videos from YouTube.com, Dailymotion, Google Video, Photobucket, Facebook, Yahoo, Metacafe, Depositfiles and few more similar sites. It is written in pygtk and requires Python interpreter to run this program, it’s not platform restricted. It should run on any Unix, Windows or in Mac OS X based systems.
Recently, youtube-dl added video download support for 17 new websites: brightcove.com, auengine.com, RingTV, instagram.com, Jukebox, 3sat, CSpan, Statigr.am, traileraddict.com, hotnewhiphop.com, wat.tv, tu.tv, gamespot.com, tudou.com, Wimp.com, archive.org and break.com
youtube-dl also allows choosing specific available video quality format to download or let the program itself automatically download higher quality video from the site. It also has supports for user-specific playlist downloads, options to add custom or original title to the downloaded video file. proxy support and many more.
Install YouTube-DL in RHEL/CentOS and Fedora
The youtube-dl program can be installed by enabling epel repository under your systems. Once enabled, you can install using the ‘yum‘ package manager tool as shown.
# yum install youtube-dl
Update: If you don’t wish to add any third-party repository, you can still install it right away using curl or wget command as shown.
# curl https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl OR # wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
Note: Your system must have curl or wget packages installed to fetch the recent version youtube-dl file. If you don’t have them, you may yum to get it.
After fetching the file, you need to set executable permission on the script to execute properly.
chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
Install YouTube-DL in Ubuntu/Linux Mint and Debian
Ubuntu users can download and install the latest youtube-dl version from the webupd8 PPA as shown.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
Update: Similarly, instead of using any third-party PPA, you can use curl or wget command to install the latest version of youtube-dl script as shown.
$ sudo curl https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl OR sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
After downloading the script, set the executable permission.
$ sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
Update YouTube-DL
Youtube-dl itself can be updated to the latest version using the following command.
# youtube-dl -U
Sample Output Updating to version 2015.09.03 ... Updated youtube-dl. Restart youtube-dl to use the new version.
How to Use YouTube-DL to Download Videos
To download a video file, simply run the following command. Where “VIDEO_URL” is the url of the video that you want to download.
# youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA
Sample Output [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading webpage [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading video info webpage [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Extracting video information [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading js player new-en_US-vflCeB3p5 [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading DASH manifest [download] Destination: Amy Macdonald - This Is The Life-iRYvuS9OxdA.mp4 [download] 100% of 10.33MiB in 00:01
To list all available formats of video, use the option “–list-formats” with the youtube-dl command.
# youtube-dl --list-formats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA
Sample Output [youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading webpage [youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading video info webpage [youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Extracting video information [youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading DASH manifest [youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading DASH manifest [info] Available formats for vKtwZmhX0lw: format code extension resolution note 171 webm audio only DASH audio 113k , vorbis@128k (44100Hz), 1.86MiB 140 m4a audio only DASH audio 128k , m4a_dash container, aac @128k (44100Hz), 2.14MiB 141 m4a audio only DASH audio 255k , m4a_dash container, aac @256k (44100Hz), 4.30MiB 278 webm 180x144 DASH video 63k , webm container, vp9, 1fps, video only, 946.76KiB 160 mp4 180x144 DASH video 112k , avc1.4d400c, 15fps, video only, 1.86MiB 242 webm 300x240 DASH video 170k , vp9, 1fps, video only, 2.50MiB 133 mp4 300x240 DASH video 247k , avc1.4d400d, 25fps, video only, 4.11MiB 243 webm 400x320 DASH video 288k , vp9, 1fps, video only, 4.07MiB 13 3gp unknown small 17 3gp 176x144 small , mp4a.40.2, mp4v.20.3 36 3gp 320x240 small , mp4a.40.2, mp4v.20.3 5 flv 400x240 small 43 webm 640x360 medium , vorbis, vp8.0 18 mp4 640x360 medium , mp4a.40.2, avc1.42001E (best)
To download a preferred file format, use the option ‘-f’ (video format code). For example, I would like to download mp4 format, So I use format code as ‘18‘ as shown below.
# youtube-dl -f 18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA
Sample Output [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading webpage [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading video info webpage [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Extracting video information [youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading DASH manifest [download] Amy Macdonald - This Is The Life-iRYvuS9OxdA.mp4 has already been downloaded [download] 100% of 10.33MiB
To download a list of video files, create a file and place all the YouTube links that you wish to download.
# youtube-dl -a youtube_links.txt
Type the following command in a terminal to list all the available options.
# youtube-dl --help
