-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/config`. On Windows, the configuration file locations are `%APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt` and `C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf`.
+You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line option to a configuration file. On Linux, system wide configuration file is located at `/etc/youtube-dl.conf` and user wide configuration file at `~/.config/youtube-dl/config`. On Windows, the user wide configuration file locations are `%APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt` or `C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf`. For example, with the following configration file youtube-dl will always extract the audio, not copy the mtime and use proxy:
+```
+--extract-audio
+--no-mtime
+--proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
+```
+
+You can use `--ignore-config` if you want to disable configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.
+
+### Authentication with `.netrc` file ###
+
+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 youtube-dl execution and prevent tracking plain text passwords in shell command history. You can achieve this using [`.netrc` file](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info) on per extractor basis. For that you will need to create `.netrc` file in your `$HOME` and restrict permissions to read/write by you only:
+```
+touch $HOME/.netrc
+chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
+```
+After that you can add credentials for extractor in the following format, where *extractor* is the name of extractor in lowercase:
+```
+machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
+```
+For example:
+```
+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 `.netrc` file you should pass `--netrc` to youtube-dl or to place it in [configuration file](#configuration).
+
+On Windows you may also need to setup `%HOME%` environment variable manually.