- [OPTIONS](#options)
- [CONFIGURATION](#configuration)
- [OUTPUT TEMPLATE](#output-template)
+- [FORMAT SELECTION](#format-selection)
- [VIDEO SELECTION](#video-selection)
- [FAQ](#faq)
- [DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS](#developer-instructions)
To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, OS X, etc.), type:
sudo curl https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
- sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
+ sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:
sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
- sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
+ sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
Windows users can [download a .exe file](https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl.exe) and place it in their home directory or any other location on their [PATH](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_%28variable%29).
-i, --ignore-errors Continue on download errors, for example to skip unavailable videos in a playlist
--abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos (in the playlist or the command line) if an error occurs
--dump-user-agent Display the current browser identification
- --list-extractors List all supported extractors and the URLs they would handle
+ --list-extractors List all supported extractors
--extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported extractors
+ --force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic extractor
--default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos from google videos for youtube-dl "large apple".
Use the value "auto" to let youtube-dl 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.
## Video Selection:
--playlist-start NUMBER Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
--playlist-end NUMBER Playlist video to end at (default is last)
- --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify indices of the videos in the playlist seperated by commas like: "--playlist-items 1,2,5,8"
+ --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify indices of the videos in the playlist separated by commas like: "--playlist-items 1,2,5,8"
if you want to download videos indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can specify range: "--playlist-items 1-3,7,10-13", it will
download the videos at index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
--match-title REGEX Download only matching titles (regex or caseless sub-string)
--playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
--xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with expected filesize (experimental)
--hls-prefer-native Use the native HLS downloader instead of ffmpeg (experimental)
- --external-downloader COMMAND Use the specified external downloader. Currently supports aria2c,curl,wget
+ --external-downloader COMMAND Use the specified external downloader. Currently supports aria2c,curl,httpie,wget
--external-downloader-args ARGS Give these arguments to the external downloader
## Filesystem Options:
--no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set the file modification time
--write-description Write video description to a .description file
--write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file
- --write-annotations Write video annotations to a .annotation file
+ --write-annotations Write video annotations to a .annotations.xml file
--load-info FILE JSON file containing the video information (created with the "--write-info-json" option)
--cookies FILE File to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in
--cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl can store some downloaded information permanently. By default $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl
--no-progress Do not print progress bar
--console-title Display progress in console titlebar
-v, --verbose Print various debugging information
- --dump-pages Print downloaded pages to debug problems (very verbose)
+ --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
-C, --call-home Contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
--sleep-interval SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each download.
## Video Format Options:
- -f, --format FORMAT Video format code, specify the order of preference using slashes, as in -f 22/17/18 . Instead of format codes, you can select by
- extension for the extensions aac, m4a, mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, webm. You can also use the special names "best", "bestvideo", "bestaudio",
- "worst". You can filter the video results by putting a condition in brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
- This works for filesize, height, width, tbr, abr, vbr, asr, and fps and the comparisons <, <=, >, >=, =, != and for ext, acodec,
- vcodec, container, and protocol and the comparisons =, != . 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 "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos
- (or videos where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s. By default, youtube-dl will pick the best quality.
- Use commas to download multiple audio formats, such as -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio. You can merge the video and audio
- of two formats into a single file using -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv), for example -f
- bestvideo+bestaudio.
+ -f, --format FORMAT Video format code, see the "FORMAT SELECTION" for all the info
--all-formats Download all available video formats
--prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific one is requested
- --max-quality FORMAT Highest quality format to download
-F, --list-formats List all available formats
- --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifest on YouTube videos
- --merge-output-format FORMAT If a merge is required (e.g. bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg, webm, flv.Ignored if no
+ --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifests and related data on YouTube videos
+ --merge-output-format FORMAT If a merge is required (e.g. bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg, webm, flv. Ignored if no
merge is required
## Subtitle Options:
--audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac", "vorbis", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", or "wav"; "best" by default
--audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse) for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K (default
5)
- --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if necessary (currently supported: mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv)
+ --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if necessary (currently supported: mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
+ --postprocessor-args ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessor
-k, --keep-video Keep the video file on disk after the post-processing; the video is erased by default
--no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files; the post-processed files are overwritten by default
- --embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4 videos)
+ --embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mkv and mp4 videos)
--embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
--add-metadata Write metadata to the video file
--metadata-from-title FORMAT Parse additional metadata like song title / artist from the video title. The format syntax is the same as --output, the parsed
- parameters replace existing values. Additional templates: %(album), %(artist). Example: --metadata-from-title "%(artist)s -
+ parameters replace existing values. Additional templates: %(album)s, %(artist)s. Example: --metadata-from-title "%(artist)s -
%(title)s" matches a title like "Coldplay - Paradise"
--xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs (using dublin core and xdg standards)
- --fixup POLICY Automatically correct known faults of the file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only emit a warning), detect_or_warn(the default;
+ --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 file if we can, warn otherwise)
--prefer-avconv Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the postprocessors (default)
--prefer-ffmpeg Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the postprocessors
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`.
+### 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.
+
# OUTPUT TEMPLATE
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:
youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
```
+# FORMAT SELECTION
+
+By default youtube-dl tries to download the best quality, but sometimes you may want to download other format.
+The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example `-f 22`. You can get the list of available formats using `--list-formats`, you can also use a file extension (currently it supports aac, m4a, mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, webm) or the special names `best`, `bestvideo`, `bestaudio` and `worst`.
+
+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, as in `-f 22/17/18`. You can also filter the video results by putting a condition in brackets, as in `-f "best[height=720]"` (or `-f "[filesize>10M]"`). This works for filesize, height, width, tbr, abr, vbr, asr, and fps and the comparisons <, <=, >, >=, =, != and for ext, acodec, vcodec, container, and protocol and the comparisons =, != . 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 "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]"` selects up to 720p videos (or videos where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s. Use commas to download multiple formats, such as `-f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio`. You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file using `-f <video-format>+<audio-format>` (requires ffmpeg or avconv), for example `-f bestvideo+bestaudio`. Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower than 480 you can use `-f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'`.
+
+Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26 youtube-dl uses `-f bestvideo+bestaudio/best` as default format selection (see #5447, #5456). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading `bestvideo` and `bestaudio` separately and muxing them together into a single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it falls back to `best` and results in downloading best available quality served as a single file. `best` is also needed for videos that don't come from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two different files. If you want to only download some dash formats (for example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution higher than 1080p), you can add `-f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best` to your configuration file. Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to `stdout` (and most likely to pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output template as `-o -`, youtube-dl still uses `-f best` format selection in order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to wait until `bestvideo` and `bestaudio` are downloaded and muxed.
+
+If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download best available quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify your choice with `-f best`. You may want to add it to the [configuration file](#configuration) in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
+
# VIDEO SELECTION
Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options `--date`, `--datebefore` or `--dateafter`, they accept dates in two formats:
If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to [report bugs](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/youtube-dl/+filebug) to the [Ubuntu packaging guys](mailto:ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com?subject=outdated%20version%20of%20youtube-dl) - all they have to do is update the package to a somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.
-### Do I always have to pass in `--max-quality FORMAT`, or `-citw`?
+### Do I always have to pass `-citw`?
-By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally, if you have a convincing case that these should be different, [please file an issue where you explain that](https://yt-dl.org/bug)). Therefore, it is unnecessary and sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In particular, `--max-quality` *limits* the video quality (so if you want the best quality, do NOT pass it in), and the only option out of `-citw` that is regularly useful is `-i`.
+By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally, if you have a convincing case that these should be different, [please file an issue where you explain that](https://yt-dl.org/bug)). Therefore, it is unnecessary and sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In particular, the only option out of `-citw` that is regularly useful is `-i`.
### Can you please put the -b option back?
YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See [above](#how-do-i-update-youtube-dl) for how to update youtube-dl.
+### Video URL contains an ampersand and I'm getting some strange output `[1] 2839` or `'v' is not recognized as an internal or external command` ###
+
+That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of the special shell characters it's interpreted by shell preventing you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell from interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you have to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a backslash (which approach will work depends on your shell).
+
+For example if your URL is https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with following command:
+
+```youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'```
+
+or
+
+```youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc```
+
+For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
+
+```youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"```
+
### ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See [above](#how-do-i-update-youtube-dl) for how to update youtube-dl.
### HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
-These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP address because of overuse. Contact the service and ask them to unblock your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address already - use the [`--proxy` or `--network-address` options](#network-options) to select another IP address.
+These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP address because of overuse. Contact the service and ask them to unblock your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address already - use the [`--proxy` or `--source-address` options](#network-options) to select another IP address.
### SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character ###
youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
+### How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
+
+Use the `--cookies` option, for example `--cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt`. Note that cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the first line of cookies file must be either `# HTTP Cookie File` or `# Netscape HTTP Cookie File`. Make sure you have correct [newline format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline) in cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond your OS, namely `CRLF` (`\r\n`) for Windows, `LF` (`\n`) for Linux and `CR` (`\r`) for Mac OS. `HTTP Error 400: Bad Request` when using `--cookies` is a good sign of invalid newline format.
+
+Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when particular extractor does not implement it explicitly.
+
### Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?
As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not include support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As a rule of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is quite obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by the creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
projects / youtube-dl / blobdiff