· How To  · 3 min read

How to install youtube-dl (the easy way)

youtube-dl is an amazing and useful command line utility to download videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and more. This articles is about how to install youtube-dl on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. youtube-dl...

This post was originally published on jcutrer.com (WordPress) and has been migrated to the archive.

youtube-dl is an amazing and useful command line utility to download videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and more. This articles is about how to install youtube-dl on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX.  youtube-dl is written in Python

so it’s also referred to as youtube-dl.py  or youtube-dl.exe  when compiled on Windows.

youtube-dl depends on ffmpeg or avconv for video transcoding and audio/video merging. We will install ffmpeg in this tutorial since it can be installed via choco on Windows.

Steps to Install youtube-dl on Windows

  • (/howto/windows/install-chocolatey-choco-windows10)
  • From a privileged command prompt run
C:\> choco install -y youtube-dl ffmpeg
  • Verify that youtube-dl is installed and check the version.
C:\> youtube-dl --version

!(/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/install-youtube-dl-windows.gif) Click to Zoom

 

Steps to Install youtube-dl on Ubuntu Linux

!(/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/youtube-dl-package-ubuntu-linux-300x169.jpg) youtube-dl can be installed on most Linux distributions using the built-in package manager (apt, yum, etc).

# apt based distros Ubuntu, Debian, etc
sudo apt install youtube-dl
# yum based distros Redhat, Centos, Fedora
sudo yum install youtube-dl

Steps to Install youtube-dl on Mac OSX

# OS X users can install youtube-dl with Homebrew:
brew install youtube-dl
# Or with MacPorts:
sudo port install youtube-dl

Steps to Install youtube-dl using python/pip

This method assumes you already have python and pip installed

# python 2.7
sudo pip install youtube-dl
# python 3.x
sudo pip3 install youtube-dl

Download a YouTube video using youtube-dl

!(/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/youtube-dl-windows-300x135.png)

Lets give it a try by downloading a youtube video from the command line.

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOlTN2xdwg
# output
 RpOlTN2xdwg: Downloading webpage
 RpOlTN2xdwg: Downloading video info webpage
 RpOlTN2xdwg: Extracting video information
 Destination: Wind turbine spinning in HD 1080p - short clip-RpOlTN2xdwg.f137.mp4
 100% of 8.04MiB in 00:01
 Destination: Wind turbine spinning in HD 1080p - short clip-RpOlTN2xdwg.f140.m4a
 100% of 503.80KiB in 00:00
 Merging formats into "Wind turbine spinning in HD 1080p - short clip-RpOlTN2xdwg.mp4"
Deleting original file Wind turbine spinning in HD 1080p - short clip-RpOlTN2xdwg.f137.mp4 (pass -k to keep)
Deleting original file Wind turbine spinning in HD 1080p - short clip-RpOlTN2xdwg.f140.m4a (pass -k to keep)

Here are the video file’s properties and the downloaded video

!(/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/downloaded-youtube-video-file-properties.png)

!(/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/download-videos-with-youtube-dl.png)

What sites can youtube-dl download videos from?

Although the name implies that youtube-dl only works for downloading videos from youtube, I was shocked to discover  it supports over 1,000 other websites. Some popular ones include…

How to use youtube-dl

  • Export/Backup your YouTube Channel using youtube-dl

  • Download a YouTube Playlist using youtube-dl

  • Download YouTube Video Thumbnails using youtube-dl

  • Download YouTube Video transcriptions and subtitles

  • Download all Resolutions of a YouTube video

  • Download YouTube video as an mp3 audio file

  • Download and combine multiple YouTube videos using youtube-dl

  • Download and split large YouTube videos

  • Extract Thumbnails from a video using ffmpeg

  • Extract Thumbnails from a video using avconv

References

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