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 based on the now inactive youtube-dlc.

INSTALLATION
USAGE AND OPTIONS
CONFIGURATION
OUTPUT TEMPLATE
- Output template examples
FORMAT SELECTION
MODIFYING METADATA
- Modifying metadata examples
EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS
PLUGINS
- Installing Plugins
- Developing Plugins
EMBEDDING YT-DLP
- Embedding examples
CHANGES FROM YOUTUBE-DL
CONTRIBUTING
- Opening an Issue
- Developer Instructions
WIKI
- FAQ

INSTALLATION

You can install yt-dlp using the binaries, pip or one using a third-party package manager. See the wiki for detailed instructions

RELEASE FILES

Recommended

File	Description
yt-dlp	Platform-independent zipimport binary. Needs Python (recommended for Linux/BSD)
yt-dlp.exe	Windows (Win8+) standalone x64 binary (recommended for Windows)
yt-dlp_macos	Universal MacOS (10.15+) standalone executable (recommended for MacOS)

Alternatives

File	Description
yt-dlp_x86.exe	Windows (Win8+) standalone x86 (32-bit) binary
yt-dlp_linux	Linux standalone x64 binary
yt-dlp_linux_armv7l	Linux standalone armv7l (32-bit) binary
yt-dlp_linux_aarch64	Linux standalone aarch64 (64-bit) binary
yt-dlp_win.zip	Unpackaged Windows executable (no auto-update)
yt-dlp_macos.zip	Unpackaged MacOS (10.15+) executable (no auto-update)
yt-dlp_macos_legacy	MacOS (10.9+) standalone x64 executable

Misc

File	Description
yt-dlp.tar.gz	Source tarball
SHA2-512SUMS	GNU-style SHA512 sums
SHA2-512SUMS.sig	GPG signature file for SHA512 sums
SHA2-256SUMS	GNU-style SHA256 sums
SHA2-256SUMS.sig	GPG signature file for SHA256 sums

The public key that can be used to verify the GPG signatures is available here Example usage:

curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/raw/master/public.key | gpg --import
gpg --verify SHA2-256SUMS.sig SHA2-256SUMS
gpg --verify SHA2-512SUMS.sig SHA2-512SUMS

Note: The manpages, shell completion (autocomplete) files etc. are available inside the source tarball

UPDATE

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

If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program

For other third-party package managers, see the wiki 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 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.

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]"

DEPENDENCIES

Python versions 3.9+ (CPython) and 3.10+ (PyPy) are supported. Other versions and implementations may or may not work correctly.

While all the other dependencies are optional, ffmpeg and ffprobe are highly recommended

Strongly recommended

ffmpeg and ffprobe - Required for merging separate video and audio files, as well as for various post-processing tasks. License depends on the build

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 with patches for some of these issues at yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds. See the readme 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

Networking

certifi* - Provides Mozilla's root certificate bundle. Licensed under MPLv2
brotli* or brotlicffi - Brotli content encoding support. Both licensed under MIT ^{1 2}
websockets* - For downloading over websocket. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
requests* - HTTP library. For HTTPS proxy and persistent connections support. Licensed under Apache-2.0

Impersonation

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

curl_cffi (recommended) - Python binding for curl-impersonate. Provides impersonation targets for Chrome, Edge and Safari. Licensed under MIT
- 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* - For --embed-thumbnail in certain formats. Licensed under GPLv2+
AtomicParsley - For --embed-thumbnail in mp4/m4a files when mutagen/ffmpeg cannot. Licensed under GPLv2+
xattr, pyxattr or setfattr - For writing xattr metadata (--xattr) on Mac and BSD. Licensed under MIT, LGPL2.1 and GPLv2+ respectively

Misc

pycryptodomex* - For decrypting AES-128 HLS streams and various other data. Licensed under BSD-2-Clause
phantomjs - Used in extractors where javascript needs to be run. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
secretstorage* - For --cookies-from-browser to access the Gnome keyring while decrypting cookies of Chromium-based browsers on Linux. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
Any external downloader that you want to use with --downloader

Deprecated

avconv and avprobe - Now deprecated alternative to ffmpeg. License depends on the build
sponskrub - For using the now deprecated sponskrub options. Licensed under GPLv3+
rtmpdump - For downloading rtmp streams. ffmpeg can be used instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+
mplayer or mpv - For downloading rstp/mms streams. ffmpeg can be used instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+

To use or redistribute the dependencies, you must agree to their respective licensing terms.

The standalone release binaries are built with the Python interpreter and the packages marked with * included.

If you do not have the necessary dependencies for a task you are attempting, yt-dlp will warn you. All the currently available dependencies are visible at the top of the --verbose output

COMPILE

Standalone PyInstaller Builds

To build the standalone executable, you must have Python and pyinstaller (plus any of yt-dlp's optional dependencies if needed). 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.

Note: Pyinstaller versions below 4.4 do not support 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.

USAGE AND OPTIONS

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

Ctrl+F is your friend :D

General Options:

-h, --help                      Print this help text and exit
--version                       Print program version and exit
-U, --update                    Update this program to the latest version
--no-update                     Do not check for updates (default)
--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)\bcats \& dogs\b'" matches
                                only videos that are not live OR those that
                                have a like count more than 100 (or the like
                                field is not available) and also has a
                                description that contains the phrase "cats &
                                dogs" (caseless). Use "--match-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 (default)
--no-mtime                      Do not use the Last-modified header to set
                                the file modification time
--write-description             Write video description to a .description file
--no-write-description          Do not write video description (default)
--write-info-json               Write video metadata to a .info.json file
                                (this may contain personal information)
--no-write-info-json            Do not write video metadata (default)
--write-playlist-metafiles      Write playlist metadata in addition to the
                                video metadata when using --write-info-json,
                                --write-description etc. (default)
--no-write-playlist-metafiles   Do not write playlist metadata when using
                                --write-info-json, --write-description etc.
--clean-info-json               Remove some 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

--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:

Main Configuration:
- The file given to --config-location
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
Home Configuration:
- yt-dlp.conf in the home path given to -P
- If -P is not given, the current directory is searched
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
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, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all videos under YouTube directory in your home directory:

# Lines starting with # are comments

# Always extract audio
-x

# Do not copy the mtime
--no-mtime

# Use this proxy
--proxy 127.0.0.1:3128

# Save all videos under YouTube directory in your home directory
-o ~/YouTube/%(title)s.%(ext)s

Note: 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 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.

tl;dr: navigate me to examples.

The simplest usage of -o is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single file, like in yt-dlp -o funny_video.flv "https://some/video" (hard-coding file extension like this is not recommended and could break some post-processing).

It may however also contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according to Python string formatting operations, e.g. %(NAME)s or %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses, followed by formatting operations.

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

Object traversal: The dictionaries and lists available in metadata can be traversed by using a dot . separator; 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
Arithmetic: Simple arithmetic can be done on numeric fields using +, - and *. E.g. %(playlist_index+10)03d, %(n_entries+1-playlist_index)d
Date/time Formatting: Date/time fields can be formatted according to strftime formatting by specifying it separated from the field name using a >. E.g. %(duration>%H-%M-%S)s, %(upload_date>%Y-%m-%d)s, %(epoch-3600>%H-%M-%S)s
Alternatives: Alternate fields can be specified separated with a ,. E.g. %(release_date>%Y,upload_date>%Y|Unknown)s
Replacement: A replacement value can be specified using a & separator according to the str.format 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
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
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)
Unicode normalization: The format type U can be used for NFC Unicode normalization. The alternate form flag (#) changes the normalization to NFD and the conversion flag + can be used for NFKC/NFKD compatibility equivalence normalization. E.g. %(title)+.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 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 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; 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.

tl;dr: navigate me to examples.

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

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

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

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

all: Select all formats 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!)
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. Backreferences can be used in the replace string for advanced use.

The general syntax of --parse-metadata FROM:TO is to give the name of a field or an output template to extract data from, and the format to interpret it as, separated by a colon :. Either a Python regular expression with named capture groups, 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.py for 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 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 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 and #12826 for more details
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 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)

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

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

Installing Plugins

Plugins can be installed using various methods and locations.

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/
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/
pip and other locations in PYTHONPATH
- Plugin packages can be installed and managed using pip. See 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 repo for a template plugin package and the 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 as a topic to your repository for discoverability.

See the 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 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 and merged with youtube-dl@a08f2b7 (exceptions)
SponsorBlock Integration: You can mark/remove sponsor sections in YouTube videos by utilizing the SponsorBlock API
Format Sorting: The default format sorting options have been changed so that higher resolution and better codecs will be now preferred instead of simply using larger bitrate. Furthermore, you can now specify the sort order using -S. This allows for much easier format selection than what is possible by simply using --format (examples)
Merged with animelover1984/youtube-dl: You get most of the features and improvements from animelover1984/youtube-dl including --write-comments, BiliBiliSearch, BilibiliChannel, Embedding thumbnail in mp4/ogg/opus, playlist infojson etc. See #31 for details.
YouTube improvements:
- Supports Clips, Stories (ytstories:<channel UCID>), Search (including filters)*, YouTube Music Search, Channel-specific search, Search prefixes (ytsearch:, ytsearchdate:)*, Mixes, and Feeds (:ytfav, :ytwatchlater, :ytsubs, :ythistory, :ytrec, :ytnotif)
- Fix for n-sig based throttling *
- 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
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 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 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; while youtube-dl still supports Python 2.6+ and 3.2+
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 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) 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
yt-dlp tries to parse the external downloader outputs into the standard progress output if possible (Currently implemented: aria2c). 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 and is fixed in d7b460. 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, but was reverted in 0dff8e 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 for details.

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: Currently does nothing. 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)

⚠️ 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 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
--load-info                      --load-info-json
--no-clean-infojson              --no-clean-info-json
--no-split-tracks                --no-split-chapters
--no-write-srt                   --no-write-subs
--prefer-unsecure                --prefer-insecure
--rate-limit RATE                --limit-rate RATE
--split-tracks                   --split-chapters
--srt-lang LANGS                 --sub-langs LANGS
--trim-file-names LENGTH         --trim-filenames LENGTH
--write-srt                      --write-subs
--yes-overwrites                 --force-overwrites

Sponskrub Options

Support for SponSkrub has been deprecated in favor of the --sponsorblock options

--sponskrub                      --sponsorblock-mark all
--no-sponskrub                   --no-sponsorblock
--sponskrub-cut                  --sponsorblock-remove all
--no-sponskrub-cut               --sponsorblock-remove -all
--sponskrub-force                Not applicable
--no-sponskrub-force             Not applicable
--sponskrub-location             Not applicable
--sponskrub-args                 Not applicable

No longer supported

These options may no longer work as intended

--prefer-avconv                  avconv is not officially supported by yt-dlp (Alias: --no-prefer-ffmpeg)
--prefer-ffmpeg                  Default (Alias: --no-prefer-avconv)
-C, --call-home                  Not implemented
--no-call-home                   Default
--include-ads                    No longer supported
--no-include-ads                 Default
--write-annotations              No supported site has annotations now
--no-write-annotations           Default
--compat-options seperate-video-versions  No longer needed
--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 for more information

License

bashonly/yt-dlp

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