YOUTUBE-DL(1)YOUTUBE-DL(1)NAMEyoutube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
SYNOPSISyoutube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
DESCRIPTIONyoutube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from
YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter,
version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should
work on your Unix box, on Windows or on Mac OS X. It is released to
the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or
use it however you like.
OPTIONS-h, --help
Print this help text and exit
--version
Print program version and exit
-U, --update
Update this program to latest version. Make sure that you have
sufficient permissions (run with sudo if needed)
-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 com‐
mand line) if an error occurs
--dump-user-agent
Display the current browser identification
--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.
--ignore-config
Do not read configuration files. When given in the global con‐
figuration file /etc /youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the user con‐
figuration in ~/.config/youtube- dl/config (%APP‐
DATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt on Windows)
--flat-playlist
Do not extract the videos of a playlist, only list them.
--no-color
Do not emit color codes in output
Network Options:
--proxy URL
Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS proxy. 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 (experimental)
-4, --force-ipv4
Make all connections via IPv4 (experimental)
-6, --force-ipv6
Make all connections via IPv6 (experimental)
--cn-verification-proxy URL
Use this proxy to verify the IP address for some Chinese sites.
The default proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the options
is not present) is used for the actual downloading. (experimen‐
tal)
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 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)
--reject-title REGEX
Skip download for matching titles (regex or caseless sub-string)
--max-downloads NUMBER
Abort after downloading NUMBER files
--min-filesize SIZE
Do not download any videos smaller than SIZE (e.g. 50k or
44.6m)
--max-filesize SIZE
Do not download any videos larger than SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
--date DATE
Download only videos uploaded in this date
--datebefore DATE
Download only videos uploaded on or before this date (i.e.
inclusive)
--dateafter DATE
Download only videos uploaded on or after this date (i.e.
inclusive)
--min-views COUNT
Do not download any videos with less than COUNT views
--max-views COUNT
Do not download any videos with more than COUNT views
--match-filter FILTER
Generic video filter (experimental). Specify any key (see help
for -o for a list of available keys) to match if the key is
present, !key to check if the key is not present,key > NUMBER
(like "comment_count > 12", also works with >=, <, <=, !=, =) to
compare against a number, and & to require multiple matches.
Values which are not known are excluded unless you put a ques‐
tion mark (?) after the operator.For example, to only match
videos that have been liked more than 100 times and disliked
less than 50 times (or the dislike functionality is not avail‐
able at the given service), but who also have a description, use
--match-filter "like_count > 100 & dislike_count <? 50 &
description" .
--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.
--include-ads
Download advertisements as well (experimental)
Download Options:
-r, --rate-limit LIMIT
Maximum download rate in bytes per second (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
-R, --retries RETRIES
Number of retries (default is 10), or "infinite".
--buffer-size SIZE
Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K) (default is 1024)
--no-resize-buffer
Do not automatically adjust the buffer size. By default, the
buffer size is automatically resized from an initial value of
SIZE.
--playlist-reverse
Download playlist videos in reverse order
--xattr-set-filesize
Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with expected filesize (exper‐
imental)
--hls-prefer-native
Use the native HLS downloader instead of ffmpeg (experimental)
--external-downloader COMMAND
Use the specified external downloader. Currently supports
aria2c,axel,curl,httpie,wget
--external-downloader-args ARGS
Give these arguments to the external downloader
Filesystem Options:
-a, --batch-file FILE
File containing URLs to download ('-' for stdin)
--id Use only video ID in file name
-o, --output TEMPLATE
Output filename template. Use %(title)s to get the title,
%(uploader)s for the uploader name, %(uploader_id)s for the
uploader nickname if different, %(autonumber)s to get an auto‐
matically incremented number, %(ext)s for the filename exten‐
sion, %(format)s for the format description (like "22 -
1280x720" or "HD"), %(format_id)s for the unique id of the for‐
mat (like YouTube's itags: "137"), %(upload_date)s for the
upload date (YYYYMMDD), %(extractor)s for the provider (youtube,
metacafe, etc), %(id)s for the video id, %(playlist_title)s,
%(playlist_id)s, or %(playlist)s (=title if present, ID other‐
wise) for the playlist the video is in, %(playlist_index)s for
the position in the playlist. %(height)s and %(width)s for the
width and height of the video format. %(resolution)s for a tex‐
tual description of the resolution of the video format. %% for
a literal percent. Use - to output to stdout. Can also be used
to download to a different directory, for example with -o
'/my/downloads/%(uploader)s /%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s' .
--autonumber-size NUMBER
Specify the number of digits in %(autonumber)s when it is
present in output filename template or --auto-number option is
given
--restrict-filenames
Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters, and avoid "&" and
spaces in filenames
-A, --auto-number
[deprecated; use -o "%(autonumber)s-%(title)s.%(ext)s" ] Number
downloaded files starting from 00000
-t, --title
[deprecated] Use title in file name (default)
-l, --literal
[deprecated] Alias of --title
-w, --no-overwrites
Do not overwrite files
-c, --continue
Force resume of partially downloaded files. By default,
youtube-dl will resume downloads if possible.
--no-continue
Do not resume partially downloaded files (restart from begin‐
ning)
--no-part
Do not use .part files - write directly into output file
--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 .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 down‐
loaded information permanently. By default $XDG_CACHE_HOME
/youtube-dl or ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the moment, only
YouTube player files (for videos with obfuscated signatures) are
cached, but that may change.
--no-cache-dir
Disable filesystem caching
--rm-cache-dir
Delete all filesystem cache files
Thumbnail images:
--write-thumbnail
Write thumbnail image to disk
--write-all-thumbnails
Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
--list-thumbnails
Simulate and list all available thumbnail formats
Verbosity / Simulation Options:
-q, --quiet
Activate quiet mode
--no-warnings
Ignore warnings
-s, --simulate
Do not download the video and do not write anything to disk
--skip-download
Do not download the video
-g, --get-url
Simulate, quiet but print URL
-e, --get-title
Simulate, quiet but print title
--get-id
Simulate, quiet but print id
--get-thumbnail
Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
--get-description
Simulate, quiet but print video description
--get-duration
Simulate, quiet but print video length
--get-filename
Simulate, quiet but print output filename
--get-format
Simulate, quiet but print output format
-j, --dump-json
Simulate, quiet but print JSON information. See --output for a
description of available keys.
-J, --dump-single-json
Simulate, quiet but print JSON information for each command-line
argument. If the URL refers to a playlist, dump the whole
playlist information in a single line.
--print-json
Be quiet and print the video information as JSON (video is still
being downloaded).
--newline
Output progress bar as new lines
--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 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
--no-call-home
Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
Workarounds:
--encoding ENCODING
Force the specified encoding (experimental)
--no-check-certificate
Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
--prefer-insecure
Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve information about the
video. (Currently supported only for YouTube)
--user-agent UA
Specify a custom user agent
--referer URL
Specify a custom referer, use if the video access is restricted
to one domain
--add-header 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-interval SECONDS
Number of seconds to sleep before each download.
Video Format Options:
-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
-F, --list-formats
List all available formats of requested videos
--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:
--write-sub
Write subtitle file
--write-auto-sub
Write automatically generated subtitle file (YouTube only)
--all-subs
Download all the available subtitles of the video
--list-subs
List all available subtitles for the video
--sub-format FORMAT
Subtitle format, accepts formats preference, for example: "srt"
or "ass/srt/best"
--sub-lang LANGS
Languages of the subtitles to download (optional) separated by
commas, use IETF language tags like 'en,pt'
Authentication Options:
-u, --username USERNAME
Login with this account ID
-p, --password PASSWORD
Account password. If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
ask interactively.
-2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR
Two-factor auth code
-n, --netrc
Use .netrc authentication data
--video-password PASSWORD
Video password (vimeo, smotri, youku)
Post-processing Options:
-x, --extract-audio
Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or
avconv and ffprobe or avprobe)
--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 sup‐
ported: 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 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 tem‐
plates: %(album)s, %(artist)s. Example: --metadata-from-title
"%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a title like "Coldplay - Par‐
adise"
--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; 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
--ffmpeg-location PATH
Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary; either the path to the
binary or its containing directory.
--exec CMD
Execute a command on the file after downloading, similar to
find's -exec syntax. Example: --exec 'adb push {}
/sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
--convert-subs FORMAT
Convert the subtitles to other format (currently supported:
srt|ass|vtt)
CONFIGURATION
You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line
option to a configuration file. On Linux, the system wide configura‐
tion file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide configu‐
ration 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
configuration file youtube-dl will always extract the audio, not copy
the mtime and use a proxy:
--extract-audio
--no-mtime
--proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the 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 track‐
ing plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve
this using a .netrc file (http://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info) on
per extractor basis. For that you will need to create a.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 for‐
mat, 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 the .netrc file you should pass --netrc
to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file (#configuration).
On Windows you may also need to setup the %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 down‐
loading 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 parentheses, followed by
a lowercase S. Allowed names are:
· id: The sequence will be replaced by the video identifier.
· url: The sequence will be replaced by the video URL.
· uploader: The sequence will be replaced by the nickname of the person
who uploaded the video.
· upload_date: The sequence will be replaced by the upload date in
YYYYMMDD format.
· title: The sequence will be replaced by the video title.
· ext: The sequence will be replaced by the appropriate extension (like
flv or mp4).
· epoch: The sequence will be replaced by the Unix epoch when creating
the file.
· autonumber: The sequence will be replaced by a five-digit number that
will be increased with each download, starting at zero.
· playlist: The sequence will be replaced by the name or the id of the
playlist that contains the video.
· playlist_index: The sequence will be replaced by the index of the
video in the playlist padded with leading zeros according to the
total length of the playlist.
· format_id: The sequence will be replaced by the format code specified
by --format.
· duration: The sequence will be replaced by the length of the video in
seconds.
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 sys‐
tem or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases,
add the --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:
$ youtube-dl--get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
$ youtube-dl--get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
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 in a different 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 fil‐
ters, 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-for‐
mat>+<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 sin‐
gle file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it falls
back to best and results in downloading the 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]+bestau‐
dio/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 bestau‐
dio 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 the 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:
· Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
· Relative dates: Dates in the format
(now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?
Examples:
# Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
$ youtube-dl--dateafter now-6months
# Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
$ youtube-dl--date 19700101
$ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
$ youtube-dl--dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
FAQ
How do I update youtube-dl?
If you've followed our manual installation instructions
(http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html), you can simply run
youtube-dl-U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -Uyoutube-dl is suffi‐
cient to update.
If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like apt-get
or yum, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that
distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb,
youtube-dl releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even
daily. Simply go to http://yt-dl.org/ to find out the current version.
Unfortunately, there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your
distribution serves a really outdated version. You can (and should)
complain to your distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your
package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For
that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
sudo apt-get remove -yyoutube-dl
Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions
(http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html):
sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
hash -r
Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl-U.
I'm getting an error
Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so
you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube
videos.
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=out‐
dated%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 -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)). There‐
fore, 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?
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.
I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's
this?
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.
Do I need any other programs?
youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want
to convert video/audio, you'll need avconv (https://libav.org/) or ffm‐
peg (https://www.ffmpeg.org/). On some sites - most notably YouTube -
videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format without sound.
youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present and automati‐
cally pick the best option.
Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be down‐
loaded when rtmpdump (https://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/) is installed.
Downloading MMS and RTSP videos requires either mplayer (http://mplay‐
erhq.hu/) or mpv (https://mpv.io/) to be installed.
I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as vlc
(http://www.videolan.org) or mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/).
I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on
another machine / in my webbrowser.
It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video
(to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the
same 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.
It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are
only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of
videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or
user-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are not supported by
browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own
downloader must support these as well.
If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running
youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs
youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to std‐
out, or simply allow the player to download the files written by
youtube-dl in turn.
ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above (#how-do-i-
update-youtube-dl) for how to update youtube-dl.
ERROR: unable to download video
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 exter‐
nal command
That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of
the special shell characters it's interpreted by the 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 back‐
slash (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 --source-address options (#net‐
work-options) to select another IP address.
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
The error
File "youtube-dl", line 2
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to
Python 2.6 or 2.7.
What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
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 recom‐
pile the executable, run make youtube-dl.
The exe throws a Runtime error from Visual C++
To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008
Redistributable Package (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down‐
load/details.aspx?id=29).
On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should
I put the exe files?
If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're run‐
ning the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for
youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or
C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there,
and then set your PATH environment variable
(https://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.xml) to include that direc‐
tory.
From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access
both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg)
by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're
in.
How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
Use the -o to specify an output template (#output-template), for exam‐
ple -o "/home/user/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this
for all of your downloads, put the option into your configuration file
(#configuration).
How do I download a video starting with a -?
Either prepend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from
the options with --:
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/cook‐
ies/file.txt. Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape
format and the first line of the 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 the
cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond with 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 a
particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use
case is working around CAPTCHA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA)
some websites require you to solve in particular cases in order to get
access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
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.
A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but
just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should not be
included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the
whole front page of the service is filled with videos they are not
allowed to distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if
the service shows copyright-protected videos in full without authoriza‐
tion.
Support requests for services that do purchase the rights to distribute
their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply
include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
How can I speed up work on my issue?
(Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The
youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to
solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a
while. To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker
(https://yt-dl.org/bugs). That allows us to coordinate all efforts by
users and developers, and serves as a unified point. Unfortunately,
the youtube-dl project has grown too large to use personal email as an
effective communication channel.
Please read the bug reporting instructions (#bugs) below. A lot of
bugs lack all the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN,
or shell access to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test
the issue from multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude
local censorship or misconfiguration issues.
If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take
matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay
somebody else to do so).
Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small com‐
ment ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but
fixed from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do
not declare your issue as important or urgent.
How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
For one, have a look at the list of supported sites (docs/supported‐
sites.md). Note that it can sometimes happen that the site changes its
URL scheme (say, from http://example.com/video/1234567 to http://exam‐
ple.com/v/1234567 ) and youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that
list as unsupported. In that case, simply report a bug.
It is not possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's
because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches all URLs.
You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extrac‐
tor, but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos
from lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may
also be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself.
Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or
removing the generic extractor.
If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call
youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is
either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which
by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or
catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python pro‐
gram.
DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds
(http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html) or get them from their
distribution.
To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything
either. Simply execute
python -m youtube_dl
To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a
test file directly; any of the following work:
python -m unittest discover
python test/test_download.py
nosetests
If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
· python
· make
· pandoc
· zip
· nosetests
Adding support for a new site
If you want to add support for a new site, you can follow this quick
list (assuming your service is called yourextractor):
1. Fork this repository (https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/fork)
2. Check out the source code with
git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
3. Start a new git branch with cd youtube-dl; git checkout -b yourex‐
tractor
4. Start with this simple template and save it to youtube_dl/extrac‐
tor/yourextractor.py:
# coding: utf-8
from __future__ import unicode_literals
from .common import InfoExtractor
class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
_VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
_TEST = {
'url': 'http://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
'info_dict': {
'id': '42',
'ext': 'mp4',
'title': 'Video title goes here',
'thumbnail': 're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
# TODO more properties, either as:
# * A value
# * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
# * A regular expression; start the string with re:
# * Any Python type (for example int or float)
}
}
def _real_extract(self, url):
video_id = self._match_id(url)
webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
# TODO more code goes here, for example ...
title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
return {
'id': video_id,
'title': title,
'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
# TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
}
5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/__init__.py
(https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extrac‐
tor/__init__.py).
6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor.
This should fail at first, but you can continually re-run it until
you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename
_TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests
will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor, TestDown‐
load.test_YourExtractor_1, TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc.
7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py
(https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extrac‐
tor/common.py) for possible helper methods and a detailed descrip‐
tion of what your extractor should and may return
(https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extrac‐
tor/common.py#L62-L200). Add tests and code for as many as you
want.
8. If you can, check the code with flake8
(https://pypi.python.org/pypi/flake8).
9. When the tests pass, add (http://git-scm.com/docs/git-add) the new
files and commit (http://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit) them and push
(http://git-scm.com/docs/git-push) the result, like this:
$ git add youtube_dl/extractor/__init__.py
$ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
$ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
$ git push origin yourextractor
10. Finally, create a pull request (https://help.github.com/arti‐
cles/creating-a-pull-request). We'll then review and merge it.
In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and
thus should be callable from any programming language. If you
encounter any problems parsing its output, feel free to create a report
(https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/new).
From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful
fashion, like this:
from __future__ import unicode_literals
import youtube_dl
ydl_opts = {}
with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
ydl.download(['http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of what
can be done, have a look at youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
(https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/mas‐
ter/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py#L121-L269). For a start, if you want to
intercept youtube-dl's output, set a logger object.
Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors
(and a short message after the download is finished), and down‐
loads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
from __future__ import unicode_literals
import youtube_dl
class MyLogger(object):
def debug(self, msg):
pass
def warning(self, msg):
pass
def error(self, msg):
print(msg)
def my_hook(d):
if d['status'] == 'finished':
print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
ydl_opts = {
'format': 'bestaudio/best',
'postprocessors': [{
'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
'preferredquality': '192',
}],
'logger': MyLogger(),
'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
}
with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
ydl.download(['http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
BUGS
Bugs and suggestions should be reported at:
<https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues>. Unless you were prompted
so or there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept
the bug report), please do not send bug reports via personal email.
For discussions, join us in the IRC channel #youtube-dl
(irc://chat.freenode.net/#youtube-dl) on freenode (webchat
(http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=youtube-dl)).
Please include the full output of youtube-dl when run with -v, i.e.
add -v flag to your command line, copy the whole output and post it in
the issue body wrapped in ``` for better formatting. It should look
similar to this:
$ youtube-dl-v http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
[debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
[debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
[debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
...
Do not post screenshots of verbose log only plain text is acceptable.
The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging
information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible
and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common mis‐
takes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in
most cases we eventually get the required information after asking back
multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many
contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may
misread some parts.
So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you
want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
· What the problem is
· How it could be fixed
· How your proposed solution would look like
If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly miss‐
ing some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're
often too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info
makes misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get
frustrated by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move
forward on them is to ask for clarification over and over.
For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the com‐
plete output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag. The error
message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe
how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding
--call-home may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error
is ERROR: Unable to extract ... and you cannot reproduce it from multi‐
ple countries, add --dump-pages (warning: this will yield a rather
large output, redirect it to the file log.txt by adding >log.txt 2>&1
to your command-line) or upload the .dump files you get when you add
--write-pages somewhere (https://gist.github.com/).
Site support requests must contain an example URL. An example URL is a
URL you might want to download, like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc. There should be an obvious
video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main page
of a video service (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/) is not an example
URL.
Are you using the latest version?
Before reporting any issue, type youtube-dl-U. This should report
that you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are
already fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for
feature requests as well.
Is the issue already documented?
Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying
to open. Search at the top of the window or browse the GitHub Issues
(https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/search?type=Issues) of this reposi‐
tory. If there is an issue, feel free to write something along the
lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01. Here is
some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may be
old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
Why are existing options not enough?
Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at the list
of supported options (https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/mas‐
ter/README.md#synopsis). Many feature requests are for features that
actually exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in
the issue report and detail how the existing similar options do not
solve your problem.
Is there enough context in your bug report?
People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by
breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already
downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look
whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However,
what often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps:
One simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original
problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded
video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the
greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature
request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should
contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing
feature would be useful.
Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or
should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open.
While it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one
ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot
mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads
to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth,
until someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to
services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using
the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user
videos, Whitehouse podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue.
Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature
requests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include out‐
puts of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at
hand. Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for
a new video service.
Is anyone going to need the feature?
Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can person‐
ally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like a
good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by some‐
one who requires them.
Is your question about youtube-dl?
It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely
unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different or even the
reporter's own application. Please make sure that you are actually
using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug
to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the
other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is
related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
COPYRIGHTyoutube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton
(https://github.com/dbbolton) and is likewise released into the public
domain.
YOUTUBE-DL(1)
