7 **youtube-dl** [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
10 **youtube-dl** is a small command-line program to download videos from
11 YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version
12 2.6, 2.7, or 3.3+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on
13 your Unix box, on Windows or on Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain,
14 which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.
17 -h, --help print this help text and exit
18 --version print program version and exit
19 -U, --update update this program to latest version
20 -i, --ignore-errors continue on download errors
21 -r, --rate-limit LIMIT download rate limit (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
22 -R, --retries RETRIES number of retries (default is 10)
23 --buffer-size SIZE size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16k) (default
25 --no-resize-buffer do not automatically adjust the buffer size. By
26 default, the buffer size is automatically resized
27 from an initial value of SIZE.
28 --dump-user-agent display the current browser identification
29 --user-agent UA specify a custom user agent
30 --list-extractors List all supported extractors and the URLs they
34 --playlist-start NUMBER playlist video to start at (default is 1)
35 --playlist-end NUMBER playlist video to end at (default is last)
36 --match-title REGEX download only matching titles (regex or caseless
38 --reject-title REGEX skip download for matching titles (regex or
40 --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
41 --min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
42 --max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
44 ## Filesystem Options:
45 -t, --title use title in file name
46 --id use video ID in file name
47 -l, --literal [deprecated] alias of --title
48 -A, --auto-number number downloaded files starting from 00000
49 -o, --output TEMPLATE output filename template. Use %(title)s to get the
50 title, %(uploader)s for the uploader name,
51 %(uploader_id)s for the uploader nickname if
52 different, %(autonumber)s to get an automatically
53 incremented number, %(ext)s for the filename
54 extension, %(upload_date)s for the upload date
55 (YYYYMMDD), %(extractor)s for the provider
56 (youtube, metacafe, etc), %(id)s for the video id
57 and %% for a literal percent. Use - to output to
58 stdout. Can also be used to download to a different
59 directory, for example with -o '/my/downloads/%(upl
60 oader)s/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s' .
61 --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters, and
62 avoid "&" and spaces in filenames
63 -a, --batch-file FILE file containing URLs to download ('-' for stdin)
64 -w, --no-overwrites do not overwrite files
65 -c, --continue resume partially downloaded files
66 --no-continue do not resume partially downloaded files (restart
68 --cookies FILE file to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in
69 --no-part do not use .part files
70 --no-mtime do not use the Last-modified header to set the file
72 --write-description write video description to a .description file
73 --write-info-json write video metadata to a .info.json file
75 ## Verbosity / Simulation Options:
76 -q, --quiet activates quiet mode
77 -s, --simulate do not download the video and do not write anything
79 --skip-download do not download the video
80 -g, --get-url simulate, quiet but print URL
81 -e, --get-title simulate, quiet but print title
82 --get-thumbnail simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
83 --get-description simulate, quiet but print video description
84 --get-filename simulate, quiet but print output filename
85 --get-format simulate, quiet but print output format
86 --no-progress do not print progress bar
87 --console-title display progress in console titlebar
88 -v, --verbose print various debugging information
90 ## Video Format Options:
91 -f, --format FORMAT video format code
92 --all-formats download all available video formats
93 --prefer-free-formats prefer free video formats unless a specific one is
95 --max-quality FORMAT highest quality format to download
96 -F, --list-formats list all available formats (currently youtube only)
97 --write-srt write video closed captions to a .srt file
98 (currently youtube only)
99 --srt-lang LANG language of the closed captions to download
100 (optional) use IETF language tags like 'en'
102 ## Authentication Options:
103 -u, --username USERNAME account username
104 -p, --password PASSWORD account password
105 -n, --netrc use .netrc authentication data
107 ## Post-processing Options:
108 -x, --extract-audio convert video files to audio-only files (requires
109 ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe)
110 --audio-format FORMAT "best", "aac", "vorbis", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", or
111 "wav"; best by default
112 --audio-quality QUALITY ffmpeg/avconv audio quality specification, insert a
113 value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse) for VBR or a
114 specific bitrate like 128K (default 5)
115 --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if necessary
116 (currently supported: mp4|flv|ogg|webm)
117 -k, --keep-video keeps the video file on disk after the post-
118 processing; the video is erased by default
119 --no-post-overwrites do not overwrite post-processed files; the post-
120 processed files are overwritten by default
124 You can configure youtube-dl by placing default arguments (such as `--extract-audio --no-mtime` to always extract the audio and not copy the mtime) into `/etc/youtube-dl.conf` and/or `~/.config/youtube-dl.conf`.
128 The `-o` option allows users to indicate a template for the output file names. The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single file, like in `youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "http://some/video"`. However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special sequences have the format `%(NAME)s`. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parenthesis, followed by a lowercase S. Allowed names are:
130 - `id`: The sequence will be replaced by the video identifier.
131 - `url`: The sequence will be replaced by the video URL.
132 - `uploader`: The sequence will be replaced by the nickname of the person who uploaded the video.
133 - `upload_date`: The sequence will be replaced by the upload date in YYYYMMDD format.
134 - `title`: The sequence will be replaced by the video title.
135 - `ext`: The sequence will be replaced by the appropriate extension (like flv or mp4).
136 - `epoch`: The sequence will be replaced by the Unix epoch when creating the file.
137 - `autonumber`: The sequence will be replaced by a five-digit number that will be increased with each download, starting at zero.
139 The current default template is `%(id)s.%(ext)s`, but that will be switchted to `%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s` (which can be requested with `-t` at the moment).
141 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:
143 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
144 youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
145 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
146 youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
150 ### Can you please put the -b option back?
152 Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not report them to be available in a specific high quality format you''re interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and youtube-dl will try to download it.
154 ### I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?
156 Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download too much. We''re [considering to provide a way to let you solve the CAPTCHA](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/154), but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a webbrowser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
158 ### I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
160 Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as [vlc](http://www.videolan.org) or [mplayer](http://www.mplayerhq.hu/).
162 ### The links provided by youtube-dl -g are not working anymore
164 The URLs youtube-dl outputs require the downloader to have the correct cookies. Use the `--cookies` option to write the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used, use `--dump-user-agent` to see the one in use by youtube-dl.
166 ### ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
168 youtube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl with `sudo youtube-dl --update`.
170 ### ERROR: unable to download video ###
172 youtube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl with `sudo youtube-dl --update`.
174 ### SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character ###
178 File "youtube-dl", line 2
179 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
181 means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to Python 2.6 or 2.7.
183 ### What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
185 Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unzip it (might need renaming to `youtube-dl.zip` first on some systems) or clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify the code, you can run it by executing the `__main__.py` file. To recompile the executable, run `make youtube-dl`.
187 ### The exe throws a *Runtime error from Visual C++*
189 To run the exe you need to install first the [Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29).
193 youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
195 This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton (<https://github.com/dbbolton>) and is likewise released into the public domain.
199 Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: <https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues>
203 * Your exact command line, like `youtube-dl -t "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlDtZ6Oc3s&feature=channel_video_title"`. A common mistake is not to escape the `&`. Putting URLs in quotes should solve this problem.
204 * If possible re-run the command with `--verbose`, and include the full output, it is really helpful to us.
205 * The output of `youtube-dl --version`
206 * The output of `python --version`
207 * The name and version of your Operating System ("Ubuntu 11.04 x64" or "Windows 7 x64" is usually enough).
209 For discussions, join us in the irc channel #youtube-dl on freenode.