Installation

Installation

The package

The distribution is ytmp3-dl; the command it installs is ytmp3.

uv tool install ytmp3-dl     # isolated, on your PATH (recommended)
pipx install ytmp3-dl        # same, via pipx
pip install ytmp3-dl         # into the current environment
uvx ytmp3-dl "<url>"         # no install, one-off run

Upgrade with uv tool upgrade ytmp3-dl, pipx upgrade ytmp3-dl or pip install -U ytmp3-dl.

From a checkout:

uv sync                      # dev environment, run via `uv run ytmp3`
uv tool install --editable . # editable install on your PATH

ffmpeg

yt-dlp hands the audio to ffmpeg for the MP3 conversion, so it has to be on your PATH.

dnf install ffmpeg       # Fedora
apt install ffmpeg       # Debian/Ubuntu
brew install ffmpeg      # macOS
winget install ffmpeg    # Windows

Check with ffmpeg -version.

A JavaScript runtime

YouTube hides its audio formats behind a JavaScript "n challenge". Without a runtime to solve it yt-dlp is offered storyboard images only, and every download fails with "Requested format is not available".

Any one of deno, node, bun or quickjs works. yt-dlp on its own only looks for deno; ytmp3 enables whichever of the four it finds.

dnf install deno         # or nodejs, bun, quickjs
brew install deno

Check with deno --version (or node --version).

Python

Python 3.10 or newer. uv tool install and pipx bring their own interpreter environment, so nothing else is needed.