--- name: "yt-dlp" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "yt-dlp" version: "2026.10.26-1" release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/yt-dlp" --- # yt-dlp(1) A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader ## NAME yt-dlp - A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader ## SYNOPSIS **yt-dlp** \[OPTIONS\] URL \[URL...\] ## DESCRIPTION yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with support for thousands of sites. The project is a fork of youtube-dl (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl) based on the now inactive youtube-dlc (https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc). ## OPTIONS ### General Options: - \-h, --help Print this help text and exit - \--version Print program version and exit - \-U, --update Update this program to the latest version - \--no-update Do not check for updates (default) - \--update-to *\[CHANNEL\]@\[TAG\]* Upgrade/downgrade to a specific version. CHANNEL can be a repository as well. CHANNEL and TAG default to "stable" and "latest" respectively if omitted; See "UPDATE" for details. Supported channels: stable, nightly, master - \-i, --ignore-errors Ignore download and postprocessing errors. The download will be considered successful even if the postprocessing fails - \--no-abort-on-error Continue with next video on download errors; e.g. to skip unavailable videos in a playlist (default) - \--abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos if an error occurs (Alias: --no-ignore-errors) - \--list-extractors List all supported extractors and exit - \--extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported extractors and exit - \--use-extractors *NAMES* Extractor names to use separated by commas. You can also use regexes, "all", "default" and "end" (end URL matching); e.g. --ies "holodex.\*,end,youtube". Prefix the name with a "-" to exclude it, e.g. --ies default,-generic. Use --list-extractors for a list of extractor names. (Alias: --ies) - \--default-search *PREFIX* Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. E.g. "gvsearch2:python" downloads two videos from google videos for the search term "python". Use the value "auto" to let yt-dlp 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 Don't load any more configuration files except those given to --config-locations. For backward compatibility, if this option is found inside the system configuration file, the user configuration is not loaded. (Alias: --no-config) - \--no-config-locations Do not load any custom configuration files (default). When given inside a configuration file, ignore all previous --config-locations defined in the current file - \--config-locations *PATH* Location of the main configuration file; either the path to the config or its containing directory ("-" for stdin). Can be used multiple times and inside other configuration files - \--plugin-dirs *DIR* Path to an additional directory to search for plugins. This option can be used multiple times to add multiple directories. Use "default" to search the default plugin directories (default) - \--no-plugin-dirs Clear plugin directories to search, including defaults and those provided by previous --plugin-dirs - \--js-runtimes *RUNTIME\[:PATH\]* Additional JavaScript runtime to enable, with an optional location for the runtime (either the path to the binary or its containing directory). This option can be used multiple times to enable multiple runtimes. Supported runtimes are (in order of priority, from highest to lowest): deno, node, quickjs, bun. Only "deno" is enabled by default. The highest priority runtime that is both enabled and available will be used. In order to use a lower priority runtime when "deno" is available, --no-js- runtimes needs to be passed before enabling other runtimes - \--no-js-runtimes Clear JavaScript runtimes to enable, including defaults and those provided by previous --js-runtimes - \--remote-components *COMPONENT* Remote components to allow yt-dlp to fetch when required. This option is currently not needed if you are using an official executable or have the requisite version of the yt-dlp-ejs package installed. You can use this option multiple times to allow multiple components. Supported values: ejs:npm (external JavaScript components from npm), ejs:github (external JavaScript components from yt-dlp-ejs GitHub). By default, no remote components are allowed - \--no-remote-components Disallow fetching of all remote components, including any previously allowed by --remote-components or defaults. - \--flat-playlist Do not extract a playlist's URL result entries; some entry metadata may be missing and downloading may be bypassed - \--no-flat-playlist Fully extract the videos of a playlist (default) - \--live-from-start Download livestreams from the start. Currently experimental and only supported for YouTube, Twitch, TVer, and mellow-fan - \--no-live-from-start Download livestreams from the current time (default) - \--wait-for-video *MIN\[-MAX\]* Wait for scheduled streams to become available. Pass the minimum number of seconds (or range) to wait between retries - \--no-wait-for-video Do not wait for scheduled streams (default) - \--mark-watched Mark videos watched (even with --simulate) - \--no-mark-watched Do not mark videos watched (default) - \--color *\[STREAM:\]POLICY* Whether to emit color codes in output, optionally prefixed by the STREAM (stdout or stderr) to apply the setting to. Can be one of "always", "auto" (default), "never", or "no\_color" (use non color terminal sequences). Use "auto-tty" or "no\_color-tty" to decide based on terminal support only. Can be used multiple times - \--compat-options *OPTS* Options that can help keep compatibility with youtube-dl or youtube-dlc configurations by reverting some of the changes made in yt-dlp. See "Differences in default behavior" for details - \--alias *ALIASES OPTIONS* Create aliases for an option string. Unless an alias starts with a dash "-", it is prefixed with "--". Arguments are parsed according to the Python string formatting mini-language. E.g. --alias get-audio,-X "-S aext:{0},abr -x --audio-format {0}" creates options "--get-audio" and "-X" that takes an argument (ARG0) and expands to "-S aext:ARG0,abr -x --audio-format ARG0". All defined aliases are listed in the --help output. Alias options can trigger more aliases; so be careful to avoid defining recursive options. As a safety measure, each alias may be triggered a maximum of 100 times. This option can be used multiple times - \-t, --preset-alias *PRESET* Applies a predefined set of options. e.g. --preset-alias mp3. The following presets are available: mp3, aac, mp4, mkv, sleep. See the "Preset Aliases" section at the end for more info. This option can be used multiple times ### Network Options: - \--proxy *URL* Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy. To enable SOCKS proxy, specify a proper scheme, e.g. socks5://user:pass@127.0.0.1:1080/. 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 - \--impersonate *CLIENT\[:OS\]* Client to impersonate for requests. E.g. chrome, chrome-110, chrome:windows-10. Pass --impersonate="" to impersonate any client. Note that forcing impersonation for all requests may have a detrimental impact on download speed and stability - \--list-impersonate-targets List available clients to impersonate. - \-4, --force-ipv4 Make all connections via IPv4 - \-6, --force-ipv6 Make all connections via IPv6 - \--enable-file-urls Enable file:// URLs. This is disabled by default for security reasons. ### Geo-restriction: - \--geo-verification-proxy *URL* Use this proxy to verify the IP address for some geo-restricted sites. The default proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the option is not present) is used for the actual downloading - \--xff *VALUE* How to fake X-Forwarded-For HTTP header to try bypassing geographic restriction. One of "default" (only when known to be useful), "never", an IP block in CIDR notation, or a two-letter ISO 3166-2 country code ### Video Selection: - \-I, --playlist-items *ITEM\_SPEC* Comma-separated playlist\_index of the items to download. You can specify a range using "\[START\]:\[STOP\]\[:STEP\]". For backward compatibility, START-STOP is also supported. Use negative indices to count from the right and negative STEP to download in reverse order. E.g. "-I 1:3,7,-5::2" used on a playlist of size 15 will download the items at index 1,2,3,7,11,13,15 - \--min-filesize *SIZE* Abort download if filesize is smaller than SIZE, e.g. 50k or 44.6M - \--max-filesize *SIZE* Abort download if filesize is larger than SIZE, e.g. 50k or 44.6M - \--date *DATE* Download only videos uploaded on this date. The date can be "YYYYMMDD" or in the format \[now\|today\|yesterday\]\[-N\[day\|week\|month\|year\]\]. E.g. "--date today-2weeks" downloads only videos uploaded on the same day two weeks ago - \--datebefore *DATE* Download only videos uploaded on or before this date. The date formats accepted are the same as --date - \--dateafter *DATE* Download only videos uploaded on or after this date. The date formats accepted are the same as --date - \--match-filters *FILTER* Generic video filter. Any "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" field can be compared with a number or a string using the operators defined in "Filtering Formats". You can also simply specify a field to match if the field is present, use "!field" to check if the field is not present, and "&" to check multiple conditions. Use a "" to escape "&" or quotes if needed. If used multiple times, the filter matches if at least one of the conditions is met. E.g. --match-filters !is\_live --match-filters "like\_count\>?100 & description~='(?i)& dogs" matches only videos that are not live OR those that have a like count more than 100 (or the like field is not available) and also has a description that contains the phrase "cats & dogs" (caseless). Use "--match-filters -" to interactively ask whether to download each video - \--no-match-filters Do not use any --match-filters (default) - \--break-match-filters *FILTER* Same as "--match-filters" but stops the download process when a video is rejected - \--no-break-match-filters Do not use any --break-match-filters (default) - \--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 - \--no-download-archive Do not use archive file (default) - \--max-downloads *NUMBER* Abort after downloading NUMBER files - \--break-on-existing Stop the download process when encountering a file that is in the archive supplied with the --download-archive option - \--no-break-on-existing Do not stop the download process when encountering a file that is in the archive (default) - \--break-per-input Alters --max-downloads, --break-on-existing, --break-match-filters, and autonumber to reset per input URL - \--no-break-per-input \--break-on-existing and similar options terminates the entire download queue - \--skip-playlist-after-errors *N* Number of allowed failures until the rest of the playlist is skipped ### Download Options: - \-N, --concurrent-fragments *N* Number of fragments of a dash/hlsnative video that should be downloaded concurrently (default is 1) - \-r, --limit-rate *RATE* Maximum download rate in bytes per second, e.g. 50K or 4.2M - \--throttled-rate *RATE* Minimum download rate in bytes per second below which throttling is assumed and the video data is re-extracted, e.g. 100K - \-R, --retries *RETRIES* Number of retries (default is 10), or "infinite" - \--file-access-retries *RETRIES* Number of times to retry on file access error (default is 3), or "infinite" - \--fragment-retries *RETRIES* Number of retries for a fragment (default is 10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and ISM) - \--retry-sleep *\[TYPE:\]EXPR* Time to sleep between retries in seconds (optionally) prefixed by the type of retry (http (default), fragment, file\_access, extractor) to apply the sleep to. EXPR can be a number, linear=START\[:END\[:STEP=1\]\] or exp=START\[:END\[:BASE=2\]\]. This option can be used multiple times to set the sleep for the different retry types, e.g. --retry-sleep linear=1::2 --retry-sleep fragment:exp=1:20 - \--skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments for DASH, hlsnative and ISM downloads (default) (Alias: --no-abort-on-unavailable-fragments) - \--abort-on-unavailable-fragments Abort download if a fragment is unavailable (Alias: --no-skip-unavailable-fragments) - \--keep-fragments Keep downloaded fragments on disk after downloading is finished - \--no-keep-fragments Delete downloaded fragments after downloading is finished (default) - \--buffer-size *SIZE* Size of download buffer, e.g. 1024 or 16K (default is 1024) - \--resize-buffer The buffer size is automatically resized from an initial value of --buffer-size (default) - \--no-resize-buffer Do not automatically adjust the buffer size - \--http-chunk-size *SIZE* Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP downloading, e.g. 10485760 or 10M (default is disabled). May be useful for bypassing bandwidth throttling imposed by a webserver (experimental) - \--playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order - \--lazy-playlist Process entries in the playlist as they are received. This disables n\_entries, --playlist-random and --playlist-reverse - \--no-lazy-playlist Process videos in the playlist only after the entire playlist is parsed (default) - \--hls-use-mpegts Use the mpegts container for HLS videos; allowing some players to play the video while downloading, and reducing the chance of file corruption if download is interrupted. This is enabled by default for live streams - \--no-hls-use-mpegts Do not use the mpegts container for HLS videos. This is default when not downloading live streams - \--download-sections *REGEX* Download only chapters that match the regular expression. A "\*" prefix denotes time-range instead of chapter. Negative timestamps are calculated from the end. "\*from-url" can be used to download between the "start\_time" and "end\_time" extracted from the URL. Needs ffmpeg. This option can be used multiple times to download multiple sections, e.g. --download-sections "\*10:15-inf" --download-sections "intro" - \--downloader *\[PROTO:\]NAME* Name or path of the external downloader to use (optionally) prefixed by the protocols (http, ftp, m3u8, dash, rtmp) to use it for. Currently supports native, aria2c, axel, curl, ffmpeg, httpie, wget. You can use this option multiple times to set different downloaders for different protocols. E.g. --downloader aria2c --downloader "dash,m3u8:native" will use aria2c for http/ftp downloads, and the native downloader for dash/m3u8 downloads (Alias: --external-downloader) - \--downloader-args *NAME:ARGS* Give these arguments to the external downloader. Specify the downloader name and the arguments separated by a colon ":". For ffmpeg, arguments can be passed to different positions using the same syntax as --postprocessor-args. You can use this option multiple times to give different arguments to different downloaders (Alias: --external-downloader-args) ### Filesystem Options: - \-a, --batch-file *FILE* File containing URLs to download ("-" for stdin), one URL per line. Lines starting with "#", ";" or "\]" are considered as comments and ignored - \--no-batch-file Do not read URLs from batch file (default) - \-P, --paths *\[TYPES:\]PATH* The paths where the files should be downloaded. Specify the type of file and the path separated by a colon ":". All the same TYPES as --output are supported. Additionally, you can also provide "home" (default) and "temp" paths. All intermediary files are first downloaded to the temp path and then the final files are moved over to the home path after download is finished. This option is ignored if --output is an absolute path - \-o, --output *\[TYPES:\]TEMPLATE* Output filename template; see "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details - \--output-na-placeholder *TEXT* Placeholder for unavailable fields in --output (default: "NA") - \--restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in filenames - \--no-restrict-filenames Allow Unicode characters, "&" and spaces in filenames (default) - \--windows-filenames Force filenames to be Windows-compatible - \--no-windows-filenames Sanitize filenames only minimally - \--trim-filenames *LENGTH* Limit the filename length (excluding extension) to the specified number of characters - \-w, --no-overwrites Do not overwrite any files - \--force-overwrites Overwrite all video and metadata files. This option includes --no-continue - \--no-force-overwrites Do not overwrite the video, but overwrite related files (default) - \-c, --continue Resume partially downloaded files/fragments (default) - \--no-continue Do not resume partially downloaded fragments. If the file is not fragmented, restart download of the entire file - \--part Use .part files instead of writing directly into output file (default) - \--no-part Do not use .part files - write directly into output file - \--mtime Use the Last-modified header to set the file modification time - \--no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set the file modification time (default) - \--write-description Write video description to a .description file - \--no-write-description Do not write video description (default) - \--write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file (this may contain personal information) - \--no-write-info-json Do not write video metadata (default) - \--write-playlist-metafiles Write playlist metadata in addition to the video metadata when using --write-info-json, --write-description etc. (default) - \--no-write-playlist-metafiles Do not write playlist metadata when using --write-info-json, --write-description etc. - \--clean-info-json Remove some internal metadata such as filenames from the infojson (default) - \--no-clean-info-json Write all fields to the infojson - \--write-comments Retrieve video comments to be placed in the infojson. The comments are fetched even without this option if the extraction is known to be quick (Alias: --get-comments) - \--no-write-comments Do not retrieve video comments unless the extraction is known to be quick (Alias: --no-get-comments) - \--load-info-json *FILE* JSON file containing the video information (created with the "--write-info-json" option) - \--cookies *FILE* Netscape formatted file to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in - \--no-cookies Do not read/dump cookies from/to file (default) - \--cookies-from-browser *BROWSER\[+KEYRING\]\[:PROFILE\]\[::CONTAINER\]* The name of the browser to load cookies from. Currently supported browsers are: brave, chrome, chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari, vivaldi, whale. Optionally, the KEYRING used for decrypting Chromium cookies on Linux, the name/path of the PROFILE to load cookies from, and the CONTAINER name (if Firefox) ("none" for no container) can be given with their respective separators. By default, all containers of the most recently accessed profile are used. Currently supported keyrings are: basictext, gnomekeyring, kwallet, kwallet5, kwallet6 - \--no-cookies-from-browser Do not load cookies from browser (default) - \--cache-dir *DIR* Location in the filesystem where yt-dlp can store some downloaded information (such as client ids and signatures) permanently. By default ${XDG\_CACHE\_HOME}/yt-dlp - \--no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching - \--rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files ### Thumbnail Options: - \--write-thumbnail Write thumbnail image to disk - \--no-write-thumbnail Do not write thumbnail image to disk (default) - \--write-all-thumbnails Write all thumbnail image formats to disk - \--list-thumbnails List available thumbnails of each video. Simulate unless --no-simulate is used ### Internet Shortcut Options: - \--write-link Write an internet shortcut file, depending on the current platform (.url, .webloc or .desktop). The URL may be cached by the OS - \--write-url-link Write a .url Windows internet shortcut. The OS caches the URL based on the file path - \--write-webloc-link Write a .webloc macOS internet shortcut - \--write-desktop-link Write a .desktop Linux internet shortcut ### Verbosity and Simulation Options: - \-q, --quiet Activate quiet mode. If used with --verbose, print the log to stderr - \--no-quiet Deactivate quiet mode. (Default) - \--no-warnings Ignore warnings - \-s, --simulate Do not download the video and do not write anything to disk - \--no-simulate Download the video even if printing/listing options are used - \--ignore-no-formats-error Ignore "No video formats" error. Useful for extracting metadata even if the videos are not actually available for download (experimental) - \--no-ignore-no-formats-error Throw error when no downloadable video formats are found (default) - \--skip-download Do not download the video but write all related files (Alias: --no-download) - \-O, --print *\[WHEN:\]TEMPLATE* Field name or output template to print to screen, optionally prefixed with when to print it, separated by a ":". Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default: video). Implies --quiet. Implies --simulate unless --no-simulate or later stages of WHEN are used. This option can be used multiple times - \--print-to-file *\[WHEN:\]TEMPLATE FILE* Append given template to the file. The values of WHEN and TEMPLATE are the same as that of --print. FILE uses the same syntax as the output template. This option can be used multiple times - \-j, --dump-json Quiet, but print JSON information for each video. Simulate unless --no-simulate is used. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a description of available keys - \-J, --dump-single-json Quiet, but print JSON information for each URL or infojson passed. Simulate unless --no-simulate is used. If the URL refers to a playlist, the whole playlist information is dumped in a single line - \--force-write-archive Force download archive entries to be written as far as no errors occur, even if -s or another simulation option is used (Alias: --force-download-archive) - \--newline Output progress bar as new lines - \--no-progress Do not print progress bar - \--progress Show progress bar, even if in quiet mode - \--console-title Display progress in console titlebar - \--progress-template *\[TYPES:\]TEMPLATE* Template for progress outputs, optionally prefixed with one of "download:" (default), "download-title:" (the console title), "postprocess:", or "postprocess-title:". The video's fields are accessible under the "info" key and the progress attributes are accessible under "progress" key. E.g. --console-title --progress-template "download-title:%(info.id)s-%(progress.eta)s" - \--progress-delta *SECONDS* Time between progress output (default: 0) - \-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 ### Workarounds: - \--encoding *ENCODING* Force the specified encoding (experimental) - \--legacy-server-connect Explicitly allow HTTPS connection to servers that do not support RFC 5746 secure renegotiation - \--no-check-certificates Suppress HTTPS certificate validation - \--prefer-insecure Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve information about the video - \--add-headers *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-requests *SECONDS* Number of seconds to sleep between requests during data extraction - \--sleep-interval *SECONDS* Number of seconds to sleep before each download. This is the minimum time to sleep when used along with --max-sleep-interval (Alias: --min-sleep-interval) - \--max-sleep-interval *SECONDS* Maximum number of seconds to sleep. Can only be used along with --min-sleep-interval - \--sleep-subtitles *SECONDS* Number of seconds to sleep before each subtitle download ### Video Format Options: - \-f, --format *FORMAT* Video format code, see "FORMAT SELECTION" for more details - \-S, --format-sort *SORTORDER* Sort the formats by the fields given, see "Sorting Formats" for more details - \--format-sort-reset Disregard previous user specified sort order and reset to the default - \--format-sort-force Force user specified sort order to have precedence over all fields, see "Sorting Formats" for more details (Alias: --S-force) - \--no-format-sort-force Some fields have precedence over the user specified sort order (default) - \--video-multistreams Allow multiple video streams to be merged into a single file - \--no-video-multistreams Only one video stream is downloaded for each output file (default) - \--audio-multistreams Allow multiple audio streams to be merged into a single file - \--no-audio-multistreams Only one audio stream is downloaded for each output file (default) - \--prefer-free-formats Prefer video formats with free containers over non-free ones of the same quality. Use with "-S ext" to strictly prefer free containers irrespective of quality - \--no-prefer-free-formats Don't give any special preference to free containers (default) - \--check-formats Make sure formats are selected only from those that are actually downloadable - \--check-all-formats Check all formats for whether they are actually downloadable - \--no-check-formats Do not check that the formats are actually downloadable - \-F, --list-formats List available formats of each video. Simulate unless --no-simulate is used - \--merge-output-format *FORMAT* Containers that may be used when merging formats, separated by "/", e.g. "mp4/mkv". Ignored if no merge is required. (currently supported: avi, flv, mkv, mov, mp4, webm) ### Subtitle Options: - \--write-subs Write subtitle file - \--no-write-subs Do not write subtitle file (default) - \--write-auto-subs Write automatically generated subtitle file (Alias: --write-automatic-subs) - \--no-write-auto-subs Do not write auto-generated subtitles (default) (Alias: --no-write-automatic-subs) - \--list-subs List available subtitles of each video. Simulate unless --no-simulate is used - \--sub-format *FORMAT* Subtitle format; accepts formats preference separated by "/", e.g. "srt" or "ass/srt/best" - \--sub-langs *LANGS* Languages of the subtitles to download (can be regex) or "all" separated by commas, e.g. --sub-langs "en.\*,ja" (where "en.\*" is a regex pattern that matches "en" followed by 0 or more of any character). You can prefix the language code with a "-" to exclude it from the requested languages, e.g. --sub- langs all,-live\_chat. Use --list-subs for a list of available language tags ### Authentication Options: - \-u, --username *USERNAME* Login with this account ID - \-p, --password *PASSWORD* Account password. If this option is left out, yt-dlp will ask interactively - \-2, --twofactor *TWOFACTOR* Two-factor authentication code - \-n, --netrc Use .netrc authentication data - \--netrc-location *PATH* Location of .netrc authentication data; either the path or its containing directory. Defaults to ~/.netrc - \--netrc-cmd *NETRC\_CMD* Command to execute to get the credentials for an extractor. - \--video-password *PASSWORD* Video-specific password - \--ap-mso *MSO* Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for a list of available MSOs - \--ap-username *USERNAME* Multiple-system operator account login - \--ap-password *PASSWORD* Multiple-system operator account password. If this option is left out, yt-dlp will ask interactively - \--ap-list-mso List all supported multiple-system operators - \--client-certificate *CERTFILE* Path to client certificate file in PEM format. May include the private key - \--client-certificate-key *KEYFILE* Path to private key file for client certificate - \--client-certificate-password *PASSWORD* Password for client certificate private key, if encrypted. If not provided, and the key is encrypted, yt-dlp will ask interactively ### Post-Processing Options: - \-x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg and ffprobe) - \--audio-format *FORMAT* Format to convert the audio to when -x is used. (currently supported: best (default), aac, alac, flac, m4a, mp3, opus, vorbis, wav). You can specify multiple rules using similar syntax as --remux-video - \--audio-quality *QUALITY* Specify ffmpeg audio quality to use when converting the audio with -x. Insert a value between 0 (best) and 10 (worst) for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K (default 5) - \--remux-video *FORMAT* Remux the video into another container if necessary (currently supported: avi, flv, gif, mkv, mov, mp4, webm, aac, aiff, alac, flac, m4a, mka, mp3, ogg, opus, vorbis, wav). If the target container does not support the video/audio codec, remuxing will fail. You can specify multiple rules; e.g. "aac\>m4a/mov\>mp4/mkv" will remux aac to m4a, mov to mp4 and anything else to mkv - \--recode-video *FORMAT* Re-encode the video into another format if necessary. The syntax and supported formats are the same as --remux-video - \--postprocessor-args *NAME:ARGS* Give these arguments to the postprocessors. Specify the postprocessor/executable name and the arguments separated by a colon ":" to give the argument to the specified postprocessor/executable. Supported PP are: Merger, ModifyChapters, SplitChapters, ExtractAudio, VideoRemuxer, VideoConvertor, Metadata, EmbedSubtitle, EmbedThumbnail, SubtitlesConvertor, ThumbnailsConvertor, FixupStretched, FixupM4a, FixupM3u8, FixupTimestamp and FixupDuration. The supported executables are: AtomicParsley, FFmpeg and FFprobe. You can also specify "PP+EXE:ARGS" to give the arguments to the specified executable only when being used by the specified postprocessor. Additionally, for ffmpeg/ffprobe, "\_i"/"\_o" can be appended to the prefix optionally followed by a number to pass the argument before the specified input/output file, e.g. --ppa "Merger+ffmpeg\_i1:-v quiet". You can use this option multiple times to give different arguments to different postprocessors. (Alias: --ppa) - \-k, --keep-video Keep the intermediate video file on disk after post-processing - \--no-keep-video Delete the intermediate video file after post-processing (default) - \--post-overwrites Overwrite post-processed files (default) - \--no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files - \--embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4, webm and mkv videos) - \--no-embed-subs Do not embed subtitles (default) - \--embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the video as cover art - \--no-embed-thumbnail Do not embed thumbnail (default) - \--embed-metadata Embed metadata to the video file. Also embeds chapters/infojson if present unless --no-embed-chapters/--no-embed-info-json are used (Alias: --add-metadata) - \--no-embed-metadata Do not add metadata to file (default) (Alias: --no-add-metadata) - \--embed-chapters Add chapter markers to the video file (Alias: --add-chapters) - \--no-embed-chapters Do not add chapter markers (default) (Alias: --no-add-chapters) - \--embed-info-json Embed the infojson as an attachment to mkv/mka video files - \--no-embed-info-json Do not embed the infojson as an attachment to the video file - \--parse-metadata *\[WHEN:\]FROM:TO* Parse additional metadata like title/artist from other fields; see "MODIFYING METADATA" for details. Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default: pre\_process) - \--replace-in-metadata *\[WHEN:\]FIELDS REGEX REPLACE* Replace text in a metadata field using the given regex. This option can be used multiple times. Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default: pre\_process) - \--xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs (using Dublin Core and XDG standards) - \--concat-playlist *POLICY* Concatenate videos in a playlist. One of "never", "always", or "multi\_video" (default; only when the videos form a single show). All the video files must have the same codecs and number of streams to be concatenable. The "pl\_video:" prefix can be used with "--paths" and "--output" to set the output filename for the concatenated files. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details - \--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 the file if we can, warn otherwise), force (try fixing even if the file already exists) - \--ffmpeg-location *PATH* Location of the ffmpeg binary; either the path to the binary or its containing directory - \--exec *\[WHEN:\]CMD* Execute a command, optionally prefixed with when to execute it, separated by a ":". Supported values of "WHEN" are the same as that of --use-postprocessor (default: after\_move). The same syntax as the output template can be used to pass any field as arguments to the command; however, for security reasons the only allowed conversions are: "i"/"d" (signed integer decimal), "f" (floating-point decimal) and "q" (shell-quoted). If no fields are passed, %(filepath,\_filename\|)q is appended to the end of the command. This option can be used multiple times - \--no-exec Remove any previously defined --exec - \--convert-subs *FORMAT* Convert the subtitles to another format (currently supported: ass, lrc, srt, vtt). Use "--convert-subs none" to disable conversion (default) (Alias: --convert- subtitles) - \--convert-thumbnails *FORMAT* Convert the thumbnails to another format (currently supported: jpg, png, webp). You can specify multiple rules using similar syntax as "--remux-video". Use "--convert- thumbnails none" to disable conversion (default) - \--split-chapters Split video into multiple files based on internal chapters. The "chapter:" prefix can be used with "--paths" and "--output" to set the output filename for the split files. See "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for details - \--no-split-chapters Do not split video based on chapters (default) - \--remove-chapters *REGEX* Remove chapters whose title matches the given regular expression. The syntax is the same as --download-sections. This option can be used multiple times - \--no-remove-chapters Do not remove any chapters from the file (default) - \--force-keyframes-at-cuts Force keyframes at cuts when downloading/splitting/removing sections. This is slow due to needing a re-encode, but the resulting video may have fewer artifacts around the cuts - \--no-force-keyframes-at-cuts Do not force keyframes around the chapters when cutting/splitting (default) - \--use-postprocessor *NAME\[:ARGS\]* The (case-sensitive) name of plugin postprocessors to be enabled, and (optionally) arguments to be passed to it, separated by a colon ":". ARGS are a semicolon ";" delimited list of NAME=VALUE. The "when" argument determines when the postprocessor is invoked. It can be one of "pre\_process" (after video extraction), "after\_filter" (after video passes filter), "video" (after --format; before --print/--output), "before\_dl" (before each video download), "post\_process" (after each video download; default), "after\_move" (after moving the video file to its final location), "after\_video" (after downloading and processing all formats of a video), or "playlist" (at end of playlist). This option can be used multiple times to add different postprocessors ### SponsorBlock Options: Make chapter entries for, or remove various segments (sponsor, introductions, etc.) from downloaded YouTube videos using the SponsorBlock API (https://sponsor.ajay.app) - \--sponsorblock-mark *CATS* SponsorBlock categories to create chapters for, separated by commas. Available categories are sponsor, intro, outro, selfpromo, preview, filler, interaction, music\_offtopic, hook, poi\_highlight, chapter, all and default (=all). You can prefix the category with a "-" to exclude it. See \[1\] for descriptions of the categories. E.g. --sponsorblock-mark all,-preview \[1\] https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Segment\_Categories - \--sponsorblock-remove *CATS* SponsorBlock categories to be removed from the video file, separated by commas. If a category is present in both mark and remove, remove takes precedence. The syntax and available categories are the same as for --sponsorblock-mark except that "default" refers to "all,-filler" and poi\_highlight, chapter are not available - \--sponsorblock-chapter-title *TEMPLATE* An output template for the title of the SponsorBlock chapters created by --sponsorblock-mark. The only available fields are start\_time, end\_time, category, categories, name, category\_names. Defaults to "\[SponsorBlock\]: %(category\_names)l" - \--no-sponsorblock Disable both --sponsorblock-mark and --sponsorblock-remove - \--sponsorblock-api *URL* SponsorBlock API location, defaults to https://sponsor.ajay.app ### Extractor Options: - \--extractor-retries *RETRIES* Number of retries for known extractor errors (default is 3), or "infinite" - \--allow-dynamic-mpd Process dynamic DASH manifests (default) (Alias: --no-ignore-dynamic-mpd) - \--ignore-dynamic-mpd Do not process dynamic DASH manifests (Alias: --no-allow-dynamic-mpd) - \--hls-split-discontinuity Split HLS playlists to different formats at discontinuities such as ad breaks - \--no-hls-split-discontinuity Do not split HLS playlists into different formats at discontinuities such as ad breaks (default) - \--extractor-args *IE\_KEY:ARGS* Pass ARGS arguments to the IE\_KEY extractor. See "EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS" for details. You can use this option multiple times to give arguments for different extractors ### Preset Aliases: Predefined aliases for convenience and ease of use. Note that future versions of yt-dlp may add or adjust presets, but the existing preset names will not be changed or removed - \-t *mp3* \-f 'ba\[acodec^=mp3\]/ba/b' -x --audio-format mp3 - \-t *aac* \-f 'ba\[acodec^=aac\]/ba\[acodec^=mp4a.40.\]/ba/b' -x --audio-format aac - \-t *mp4* \--merge-output-format mp4 --remux-video mp4 -S vcodec:h264,lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,a codec:aac - \-t *mkv* \--merge-output-format mkv --remux-video mkv - \-t *sleep* \--sleep-subtitles 5 --sleep-requests 0.75 --sleep-interval 10 --max-sleep-interval 20 ## CONFIGURATION You can configure yt-dlp by placing any supported command line option in a configuration file. The configuration is loaded from the following locations: - 1\. **Main Configuration**: - • The file given to --config-locations - 2\. **Portable Configuration**: (Recommended for portable installations) - • If using a binary, yt-dlp.conf in the same directory as the binary - • If running from source-code, yt-dlp.conf in the parent directory of yt\_dlp - 3\. **Home Configuration**: - • yt-dlp.conf in the home path given to -P - • If -P is not given, the current directory is searched - 4\. **User Configuration**: - • ${XDG\_CONFIG\_HOME}/yt-dlp.conf - • ${XDG\_CONFIG\_HOME}/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Linux/macOS) - • ${XDG\_CONFIG\_HOME}/yt-dlp/config.txt - • ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp.conf - • ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Windows) - • ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/config.txt - • \~/yt-dlp.conf - • \~/yt-dlp.conf.txt - • \~/.yt-dlp/config - • \~/.yt-dlp/config.txt See also: Notes about environment variables - 5\. **System Configuration**: - • /etc/yt-dlp.conf - • /etc/yt-dlp/config - • /etc/yt-dlp/config.txt E.g. with the following configuration file, yt-dlp will always extract the audio, copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all videos under YouTube directory in your home directory: - ``` # Lines starting with # are comments # Always extract audio -x # Copy the mtime --mtime # Use this proxy --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128 # Save all videos under YouTube directory in your home directory -o ~/YouTube/%(title)s.%(ext)s ``` **Note**: Options in a configuration file are just the same options aka switches used in regular command line calls; thus there **must be no whitespace** after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy. They must also be quoted when necessary, as if it were a UNIX shell. You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable all configuration files for a particular yt-dlp run. If --ignore-config is found inside any configuration file, no further configuration will be loaded. For example, having the option in the portable configuration file prevents loading of home, user, and system configurations. Additionally, (for backward compatibility) if --ignore-config is found inside the system configuration file, the user configuration is not loaded. ### Configuration file encoding The configuration files are decoded according to the UTF BOM if present, and in the encoding from system locale otherwise. If you want your file to be decoded differently, add # coding: ENCODING to the beginning of the file (e.g. # coding: shift-jis). There must be no characters before that, even spaces or BOM. ### Authentication with netrc 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 yt-dlp execution and prevent tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve this using a .netrc file (https://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info) on a per-extractor basis. For that, you will need to create a .netrc file in --netrc-location and restrict permissions to read/write by only you: - ``` touch ${HOME}/.netrc chmod a-rwx,u+rw ${HOME}/.netrc ``` After that, you can add credentials for an extractor in the following format, where *extractor* is the name of the extractor in lowercase: - ``` machine login password ``` E.g. - ``` 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 yt-dlp or place it in the configuration file. The default location of the .netrc file is ~ (see below). As an alternative to using the .netrc file, which has the disadvantage of keeping your passwords in a plain text file, you can configure a custom shell command to provide the credentials for an extractor. This is done by providing the --netrc-cmd parameter, it shall output the credentials in the netrc format and return 0 on success, other values will be treated as an error. {} in the command will be replaced by the name of the extractor to make it possible to select the credentials for the right extractor. E.g. To use an encrypted .netrc file stored as .authinfo.gpg - ``` yt-dlp --netrc-cmd 'gpg --decrypt ~/.authinfo.gpg' 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4' ``` ### Notes about environment variables - • Environment variables are normally specified as ${VARIABLE}/$VARIABLE on UNIX and %VARIABLE% on Windows; but is always shown as ${VARIABLE} in this documentation - • yt-dlp also allows using UNIX-style variables on Windows for path-like options; e.g. --output, --config-locations - • If unset, ${XDG\_CONFIG\_HOME} defaults to ~/.config and ${XDG\_CACHE\_HOME} to ~/.cache - • On Windows, ~ points to ${HOME} if present; or, ${USERPROFILE} or ${HOMEDRIVE}${HOMEPATH} otherwise - • On Windows, ${USERPROFILE} generally points to C:\\Users\\\ and ${APPDATA} to ${USERPROFILE}\\AppData\\Roaming ## OUTPUT TEMPLATE The -o option is used to indicate a template for the output file names while -P option is used to specify the path each type of file should be saved to. The simplest usage of -o is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single file, like in yt-dlp -o funny\_video.flv "https://some/video" (hard-coding file extension like this is *not* recommended and could break some post-processing). It may however also contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according to Python string formatting operations (https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting), e.g. %(NAME)s or %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses, followed by formatting operations. The field names themselves (the part inside the parenthesis) can also have some special formatting: - 1\. **Object traversal**: The dictionaries and lists available in metadata can be traversed by using a dot . separator; e.g. %(tags.0)s, %(subtitles.en.-1.ext)s. You can do Python slicing with colon :; E.g. %(id.3:7)s, %(id.6:2:-1)s, %(formats.:.format\_id)s. Curly braces {} can be used to build dictionaries with only specific keys; e.g. %(formats.:.{format\_id,height})#j. An empty field name %()s refers to the entire infodict; e.g. %(.{id,title})s. Note that all the fields that become available using this method are not listed below. Use -j to see such fields - 2\. **Arithmetic**: Simple arithmetic can be done on numeric fields using +, - and \*. E.g. %(playlist\_index+10)03d, %(n\_entries+1-playlist\_index)d - 3\. **Date/time Formatting**: Date/time fields can be formatted according to strftime formatting (https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-format-codes) by specifying it separated from the field name using a \>. E.g. %(duration\>%H-%M-%S)s, %(upload\_date\>%Y-%m-%d)s, %(epoch-3600\>%H-%M-%S)s - 4\. **Alternatives**: Alternate fields can be specified separated with a ,. E.g. %(release\_date\>%Y,upload\_date\>%Y\|Unknown)s - 5\. **Replacement**: A replacement value can be specified using a & separator according to the str.format mini-language (https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#format-specification-mini-language). If the field is *not* empty, this replacement value will be used instead of the actual field content. This is done after alternate fields are considered; thus the replacement is used if *any* of the alternative fields is *not* empty. E.g. %(chapters&has chapters\|no chapters)s, %(title&TITLE={:\>20}\|NO TITLE)s - 6\. **Default**: A literal default value can be specified for when the field is empty using a \| separator. This overrides --output-na-placeholder. E.g. %(uploader\|Unknown)s - 7\. **More Conversions**: In addition to the normal format types diouxXeEfFgGcrs, yt-dlp additionally supports converting to B = **B**ytes, j = **j**son (flag # for pretty-printing, + for Unicode), h = HTML escaping, l = a comma-separated **l**ist (flag # for \\n newline-separated), q = a string **q**uoted for the terminal (flag # to split a list into different arguments), D = add **D**ecimal suffixes (e.g. 10M) (flag # to use 1024 as factor), and S = **S**anitize as filename (flag # for restricted) - 8\. **Unicode normalization**: The format type U can be used for NFC Unicode normalization (https://docs.python.org/3/library/unicodedata.html#unicodedata.normalize). The alternate form flag (#) changes the normalization to NFD and the conversion flag + can be used for NFKC/NFKD compatibility equivalence normalization. E.g. %(title)+.100U is NFKC To summarize, the general syntax for a field is: - ``` %(name[.keys][addition][>strf][,alternate][&replacement][|default])[flags][width][.precision][length]type ``` Additionally, you can set different output templates for the various metadata files separately from the general output template by specifying the type of file followed by the template separated by a colon :. The different file types supported are subtitle, thumbnail, description, annotation (deprecated), infojson, link, pl\_thumbnail, pl\_description, pl\_infojson, chapter, pl\_video. E.g. -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -o "thumbnail:%(title)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" will put the thumbnails in a folder with the same name as the video. If any of the templates is empty, that type of file will not be written. E.g. --write-thumbnail -o "thumbnail:" will write thumbnails only for playlists and not for video. **Note**: Due to post-processing (i.e. merging etc.), the actual output filename might differ. Use --print after\_move:filepath to get the name after all post-processing is complete. The available fields are: - • id (string): Video identifier - • title (string): Video title - • fulltitle (string): Video title ignoring live timestamp and generic title - • ext (string): Video filename extension - • alt\_title (string): A secondary title of the video - • description (string): The description of the video - • display\_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video - • uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader - • uploader\_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader - • uploader\_url (string): URL to the video uploader's profile - • license (string): License name the video is licensed under - • creators (list): The creators of the video - • creator (string): The creators of the video; comma-separated - • timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became available - • upload\_date (string): Video upload date in UTC (YYYYMMDD) - • release\_timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video was released - • release\_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was released in UTC - • release\_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the video or album was released - • modified\_timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video was last modified - • modified\_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was last modified in UTC - • channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on - • channel\_id (string): Id of the channel - • channel\_url (string): URL of the channel - • channel\_follower\_count (numeric): Number of followers of the channel - • channel\_is\_verified (boolean): Whether the channel is verified on the platform - • location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed - • duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds - • duration\_string (string): Length of the video (HH:mm:ss) - • view\_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the platform - • concurrent\_view\_count (numeric): How many users are currently watching the video on the platform. - • like\_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video - • dislike\_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video - • repost\_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video - • average\_rating (numeric): Average rating given by users, the scale used depends on the webpage - • comment\_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video (For some extractors, comments are only downloaded at the end, and so this field cannot be used) - • save\_count (numeric): Number of times the video has been saved or bookmarked - • age\_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years) - • live\_status (string): One of "not\_live", "is\_live", "is\_upcoming", "was\_live", "post\_live" (was live, but VOD is not yet processed) - • is\_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a fixed-length video - • was\_live (boolean): Whether this video was originally a live stream - • playable\_in\_embed (string): Whether this video is allowed to play in embedded players on other sites - • availability (string): Whether the video is "private", "premium\_only", "subscriber\_only", "needs\_auth", "unlisted" or "public" - • media\_type (string): The type of media as classified by the site, e.g. "episode", "clip", "trailer" - • start\_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should start, as specified in the URL - • end\_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should end, as specified in the URL - • extractor (string): Name of the extractor - • extractor\_key (string): Key name of the extractor - • epoch (numeric): Unix epoch of when the information extraction was completed - • autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each download, starting at --autonumber-start, padded with leading zeros to 5 digits - • video\_autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each video - • n\_entries (numeric): Total number of extracted items in the playlist - • playlist\_id (string): Identifier of the playlist that contains the video - • playlist\_title (string): Name of the playlist that contains the video - • playlist (string): playlist\_title if available or else playlist\_id - • playlist\_count (numeric): Total number of items in the playlist. May not be known if entire playlist is not extracted - • playlist\_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded with leading zeros according the final index - • playlist\_autonumber (numeric): Position of the video in the playlist download queue padded with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist - • playlist\_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader - • playlist\_uploader\_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist uploader - • playlist\_channel (string): Display name of the channel that uploaded the playlist - • playlist\_channel\_id (string): Identifier of the channel that uploaded the playlist - • playlist\_webpage\_url (string): URL of the playlist webpage - • webpage\_url (string): A URL to the video webpage which, if given to yt-dlp, should yield the same result again - • webpage\_url\_basename (string): The basename of the webpage URL - • webpage\_url\_domain (string): The domain of the webpage URL - • original\_url (string): The URL given by the user (or the same as webpage\_url for playlist entries) - • categories (list): List of categories the video belongs to - • tags (list): List of tags assigned to the video - • cast (list): List of cast members All the fields in Filtering Formats can also be used Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section: - • chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to - • chapter\_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to - • chapter\_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to Available for the video that is an episode of some series or program: - • series (string): Title of the series or program the video episode belongs to - • series\_id (string): Id of the series or program the video episode belongs to - • season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to - • season\_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode belongs to - • season\_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to - • episode (string): Title of the video episode - • episode\_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a season - • episode\_id (string): Id of the video episode Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album: - • track (string): Title of the track - • track\_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disc - • track\_id (string): Id of the track - • artists (list): Artist(s) of the track - • artist (string): Artist(s) of the track; comma-separated - • genres (list): Genre(s) of the track - • genre (string): Genre(s) of the track; comma-separated - • composers (list): Composer(s) of the piece - • composer (string): Composer(s) of the piece; comma-separated - • album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to - • album\_type (string): Type of the album - • album\_artists (list): All artists appeared on the album - • album\_artist (string): All artists appeared on the album; comma-separated - • disc\_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs to Available only when using --download-sections and for chapter: prefix when using --split-chapters for videos with internal chapters: - • section\_title (string): Title of the chapter - • section\_number (numeric): Number of the chapter within the file - • section\_start (numeric): Start time of the chapter in seconds - • section\_end (numeric): End time of the chapter in seconds Available only when used in --print: - • urls (string): The URLs of all requested formats, one in each line - • filename (string): Name of the video file. Note that the actual filename may differ - • formats\_table (table): The video format table as printed by --list-formats - • thumbnails\_table (table): The thumbnail format table as printed by --list-thumbnails - • subtitles\_table (table): The subtitle format table as printed by --list-subs - • automatic\_captions\_table (table): The automatic subtitle format table as printed by --list-subs Available only after the video is downloaded (post\_process/after\_move): - • filepath: Actual path of downloaded video file Available only in --sponsorblock-chapter-title: - • start\_time (numeric): Start time of the chapter in seconds - • end\_time (numeric): End time of the chapter in seconds - • categories (list): The SponsorBlock categories (https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Types#Category) the chapter belongs to - • category (string): The smallest SponsorBlock category the chapter belongs to - • category\_names (list): Friendly names of the categories - • name (string): Friendly name of the smallest category - • type (string): The SponsorBlock action type (https://wiki.sponsor.ajay.app/w/Types#Action\_Type) of the chapter Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. E.g. for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title yt-dlp test video and id YE7VzlLtp-4, this will result in a yt-dlp test video-YE7VzlLtp-4.mp4 file created in the current directory. **Note**: Some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present, since they depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such sequences will be replaced with placeholder value provided with --output-na-placeholder (NA by default). **Tip**: Look at the -j output to identify which fields are available for the particular URL For numeric sequences, you can use numeric related formatting (https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style-string-formatting); e.g. %(view\_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042. Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g. -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist\_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" which will result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for you. To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to stdout use -o -. 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 system or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title. ### Output template examples - ``` $ yt-dlp --print filename -o "test video.%(ext)s" ptd1NN40vMw test video.webm # Literal name with correct extension $ yt-dlp --print filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" ptd1NN40vMw To'y!🤯😂🤦🏻‍♂️.webm # All kinds of weird characters $ yt-dlp --print filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" ptd1NN40vMw --restrict-filenames To_y.webm # Restricted file name # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist $ yt-dlp -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re" # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directories according to their uploaded year $ yt-dlp -o "%(upload_date>%Y)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re" # Prefix playlist index with " - " separator, but only if it is available $ yt-dlp -o "%(playlist_index&{} - |)s%(title)s.%(ext)s" YE7VzlLtp-4 "https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists" # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory: $ yt-dlp -o "%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists" # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home $ yt-dlp -u user -p password -P "~/MyVideos" -o "%(playlist)s/%(chapter_number)s - %(chapter)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.udemy.com/java-tutorial" # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos $ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -o "%(series)s/%(season_number)s - %(season)s/%(episode_number)s - %(episode)s.%(ext)s" "https://videomore.ru/kino_v_detalayah/5_sezon/367617" # Download video as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\title.ext", subtitles as "C:\MyVideos\subs\uploader\title.ext" # and put all temporary files in "C:\MyVideos\tmp" $ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -P "temp:tmp" -P "subtitle:subs" -o "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" YE7VzlLtp-4 --write-subs # Download video as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\title.ext" and subtitles as "C:\MyVideos\uploader\subs\title.ext" $ yt-dlp -P "C:/MyVideos" -o "%(uploader)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" -o "subtitle:%(uploader)s/subs/%(title)s.%(ext)s" YE7VzlLtp-4 --write-subs # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout $ yt-dlp -o - YE7VzlLtp-4 ``` ## FORMAT SELECTION By default, yt-dlp tries to download the best available quality if you **don't** pass any options. This is generally equivalent to using -f bestvideo\*+bestaudio/best. However, if multiple audiostreams is enabled (--audio-multistreams), the default format changes to -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best. Similarly, if ffmpeg is unavailable, or if you use yt-dlp to stream to stdout (-o -), the default becomes -f best/bestvideo+bestaudio. **Deprecation warning**: Latest versions of yt-dlp can stream multiple formats to the stdout simultaneously using ffmpeg. So, in future versions, the default for this will be set to -f bv\*+ba/b similar to normal downloads. If you want to preserve the -f b/bv+ba setting, it is recommended to explicitly specify it in the configuration options. The general syntax for format selection is -f FORMAT (or --format FORMAT) where FORMAT is a *selector* *expression*, i.e. an expression that describes format or formats you would like to download. The simplest case is requesting a specific format; e.g. with -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can get the list of available format codes for particular video using --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor specific. You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as a single file. You can use -f - to interactively provide the format selector *for each video* You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats: - • all: Select **all formats** separately - • mergeall: Select and **merge all formats** (Must be used with --audio-multistreams, --video-multistreams or both) - • b\*, best\*: Select the best quality format that **contains either** a video or an audio or both (i.e.; vcodec!=none or acodec!=none) - • b, best: Select the best quality format that **contains both** video and audio. Equivalent to best\*\[vcodec!=none\]\[acodec!=none\] - • bv, bestvideo: Select the best quality **video-only** format. Equivalent to best\*\[acodec=none\] - • bv\*, bestvideo\*: Select the best quality format that **contains video**. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to best\*\[vcodec!=none\] - • ba, bestaudio: Select the best quality **audio-only** format. Equivalent to best\*\[vcodec=none\] - • ba\*, bestaudio\*: Select the best quality format that **contains audio**. It may also contain video. Equivalent to best\*\[acodec!=none\] (Do not use! (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/979#issuecomment-919629354)) - • w\*, worst\*: Select the worst quality format that contains either a video or an audio - • w, worst: Select the worst quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent to worst\*\[vcodec!=none\]\[acodec!=none\] - • wv, worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format. Equivalent to worst\*\[acodec=none\] - • wv\*, worstvideo\*: Select the worst quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to worst\*\[vcodec!=none\] - • wa, worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio-only format. Equivalent to worst\*\[vcodec=none\] - • wa\*, worstaudio\*: Select the worst quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent to worst\*\[acodec!=none\] For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use -f worstvideo. It is, however, recommended not to use worst and related options. When your format selector is worst, the format which is worst in all respects is selected. Most of the time, what you actually want is the video with the smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better to use -S +size or more rigorously, -S +size,+br,+res,+fps instead of -f worst. See Sorting Formats for more details. You can select the n'th best format of a type by using best\.\. For example, best.2 will select the 2nd best combined format. Similarly, bv\*.3 will select the 3rd best format that contains a video stream. 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. Note that formats on the left hand side are preferred; e.g. -f 22/17/18 will download format 22 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available, otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for download. If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio. You can merge the video and audio of multiple formats into a single file using -f \+\+... (requires ffmpeg installed); e.g. -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with ffmpeg. **Deprecation warning**: Since the *below* described behavior is complex and counter-intuitive, this will be removed and multistreams will be enabled by default in the future. A new operator will be instead added to limit formats to single audio/video Unless --video-multistreams is used, all formats with a video stream except the first one are ignored. Similarly, unless --audio-multistreams is used, all formats with an audio stream except the first one are ignored. E.g. -f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --video-multistreams --audio-multistreams will download and merge all 3 given formats. The resulting file will have 2 video streams and 2 audio streams. But -f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --no-video-multistreams will download and merge only bestvideo and bestaudio. best is ignored since another format containing a video stream (bestvideo) has already been selected. The order of the formats is therefore important. -f best+bestaudio --no-audio-multistreams will download only best while -f bestaudio+best --no-audio-multistreams will ignore best and download only bestaudio. ### Filtering Formats You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brackets, as in -f "best\[height=720\]" (or -f "\[filesize\>10M\]" since filters without a selector are interpreted as best). The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons \<, \<=, \>, \>=, = (equals), != (not equals): - • filesize: The number of bytes, if known in advance - • filesize\_approx: An estimate for the number of bytes - • width: Width of the video, if known - • height: Height of the video, if known - • aspect\_ratio: Aspect ratio of the video, if known - • tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in kbps - • abr: Average audio bitrate in kbps - • vbr: Average video bitrate in kbps - • asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz - • fps: Frame rate - • audio\_channels: The number of audio channels - • stretched\_ratio: width:height of the video's pixels, if not square Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $= (ends with), \*= (contains), ~= (matches regex) and following string meta fields: - • url: Video URL - • ext: File extension - • acodec: Name of the audio codec in use - • vcodec: Name of the video codec in use - • container: Name of the container format - • protocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download, lower-case (http, https, rtmp, rtmpe, f4m, ism, http\_dash\_segments, m3u8, or m3u8\_native) - • language: Language code - • dynamic\_range: The dynamic range of the video - • format\_id: A short description of the format - • format: A human-readable description of the format - • format\_note: Additional info about the format - • resolution: Textual description of width and height Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation ! in order to produce an opposite comparison, e.g. !\*= (does not contain). The comparand of a string comparison needs to be quoted with either double or single quotes if it contains spaces or special characters other than .\_-. **Note**: None of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by the particular extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the website. Any other field made available by the extractor can also be used for filtering. 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 "bv\[height\<=?720\]\[tbr\>500\]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos where the height is not known) with a bitrate greater than 500 kbps. You can also use the filters with all to download all formats that satisfy the filter, e.g. -f "all\[vcodec=none\]" selects all audio-only formats. Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses; e.g. -f "(mp4,webm)\[height\<480\]" will download the best pre-merged mp4 and webm formats with a height lower than 480. ### Sorting Formats You can change the criteria for being considered the best by using -S (--format-sort). The general format for this is --format-sort field1,field2.... The available fields are: - • hasvid: Gives priority to formats that have a video stream - • hasaud: Gives priority to formats that have an audio stream - • ie\_pref: The format preference - • lang: The language preference as determined by the extractor (e.g. original language preferred over audio description) - • quality: The quality of the format - • source: The preference of the source - • proto: Protocol used for download (https/ftps \> http/ftp \> m3u8\_native/m3u8 \> http\_dash\_segments\> websocket\_frag \> f4f/f4m) - • vcodec: Video Codec (av01 \> vp9.2 \> vp9 \> h265 \> h264 \> vp8 \> h263 \> theora \> other) - • acodec: Audio Codec (flac/alac \> wav/aiff \> opus \> vorbis \> aac \> mp4a \> mp3 \> ac4 \> eac3 \> ac3 \> dts \> other) - • codec: Equivalent to vcodec,acodec - • vext: Video Extension (mp4 \> mov \> webm \> flv \> other). If --prefer-free-formats is used, webm is preferred. - • aext: Audio Extension (m4a \> aac \> mp3 \> ogg \> opus \> webm \> other). If --prefer-free-formats is used, the order changes to ogg \> opus \> webm \> mp3 \> m4a \> aac - • ext: Equivalent to vext,aext - • filesize: Exact filesize, if known in advance - • fs\_approx: Approximate filesize - • size: Exact filesize if available, otherwise approximate filesize - • height: Height of video - • width: Width of video - • res: Video resolution, calculated as the smallest dimension. - • fps: Framerate of video - • hdr: The dynamic range of the video (DV \> HDR12 \> HDR10+ \> HDR10 \> HLG \> SDR) - • channels: The number of audio channels - • tbr: Total average bitrate in kbps - • vbr: Average video bitrate in kbps - • abr: Average audio bitrate in kbps - • br: Average bitrate in kbps, tbr/vbr/abr - • asr: Audio sample rate in Hz **Deprecation warning**: Many of these fields have (currently undocumented) aliases, that may be removed in a future version. It is recommended to use only the documented field names. All fields, unless specified otherwise, are sorted in descending order. To reverse this, prefix the field with a +. E.g. +res prefers format with the smallest resolution. Additionally, you can suffix a preferred value for the fields, separated by a :. E.g. res:720 prefers larger videos, but no larger than 720p and the smallest video if there are no videos less than 720p. For codec and ext, you can provide two preferred values, the first for video and the second for audio. E.g. +codec:avc:m4a (equivalent to +vcodec:avc,+acodec:m4a) sets the video codec preference to h264 \> h265 \> vp9 \> vp9.2 \> av01 \> vp8 \> h263 \> theora and audio codec preference to mp4a \> aac \> vorbis \> opus \> mp3 \> ac3 \> dts. You can also make the sorting prefer the nearest values to the provided by using ~ as the delimiter. E.g. filesize~1G prefers the format with filesize closest to 1 GiB. The fields hasvid and ie\_pref are always given highest priority in sorting, irrespective of the user-defined order. This behavior can be changed by using --format-sort-force. Apart from these, the default order used is: lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,vcodec,channels,acodec,size,br,asr,proto,ext,hasaud,source,id. The extractors may override this default order, but they cannot override the user-provided order. Note that the default for hdr is hdr:12; i.e. Dolby Vision is not preferred. This choice was made since DV formats are not yet fully compatible with most devices. This may be changed in the future. If your format selector is worst, the last item is selected after sorting. This means it will select the format that is worst in all respects. Most of the time, what you actually want is the video with the smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better to use -f best -S +size,+br,+res,+fps. If you use the -S/--format-sort option multiple times, each subsequent sorting argument will be prepended to the previous one, and only the highest priority entry of any duplicated field will be preserved. E.g. -S proto -S res is equivalent to -S res,proto, and -S res:720,fps -S vcodec,res:1080 is equivalent to -S vcodec,res:1080,fps. You can use --format-sort-reset to disregard any previously passed -S/--format-sort arguments and reset to the default order. **Tip**: You can use the -v -F to see how the formats have been sorted (worst to best). ### Format Selection examples - ``` # Download and merge the best video-only format and the best audio-only format, # or download the best combined format if video-only format is not available $ yt-dlp -f "bv+ba/b" # Download best format that contains video, # and if it doesn't already have an audio stream, merge it with best audio-only format $ yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba/b" # Same as above $ yt-dlp # Download the best video-only format and the best audio-only format without merging them # For this case, an output template should be used since # by default, bestvideo and bestaudio will have the same file name. $ yt-dlp -f "bv,ba" -o "%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s" # Download and merge the best format that has a video stream, # and all audio-only formats into one file $ yt-dlp -f "bv*+mergeall[vcodec=none]" --audio-multistreams # Download and merge the best format that has a video stream, # and the best 2 audio-only formats into one file $ yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba+ba.2" --audio-multistreams # The following examples show the old method (without -S) of format selection # and how to use -S to achieve a similar but (generally) better result # Download the worst video available (old method) $ yt-dlp -f "wv*+wa/w" # Download the best video available but with the smallest resolution $ yt-dlp -S "+res" # Download the smallest video available $ yt-dlp -S "+size,+br" # Download the best mp4 video available, or the best video if no mp4 available $ yt-dlp -f "bv*[ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[ext=mp4] / bv*+ba/b" # Download the best video with the best extension # (For video, mp4 > mov > webm > flv. For audio, m4a > aac > mp3 ...) $ yt-dlp -S "ext" # Download the best video available but no better than 480p, # or the worst video if there is no video under 480p $ yt-dlp -f "bv*[height<=480]+ba/b[height<=480] / wv*+ba/w" # Download the best video available with the largest height but no better than 480p, # or the best video with the smallest resolution if there is no video under 480p $ yt-dlp -S "height:480" # Download the best video available with the largest resolution but no better than 480p, # or the best video with the smallest resolution if there is no video under 480p # Resolution is determined by using the smallest dimension. # So this works correctly for vertical videos as well $ yt-dlp -S "res:480" # Download the best video (that also has audio) but no bigger than 50 MB, # or the worst video (that also has audio) if there is no video under 50 MB $ yt-dlp -f "b[filesize<50M] / w" # Download the largest video (that also has audio) but no bigger than 50 MB, # or the smallest video (that also has audio) if there is no video under 50 MB $ yt-dlp -f "b" -S "filesize:50M" # Download the best video (that also has audio) that is closest in size to 50 MB $ yt-dlp -f "b" -S "filesize~50M" # Download best video available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol, # or the best video available via any protocol if there is no such video $ yt-dlp -f "(bv*+ba/b)[protocol^=http][protocol!*=dash] / (bv*+ba/b)" # Download best video available via the best protocol # (https/ftps > http/ftp > m3u8_native > m3u8 > http_dash_segments ...) $ yt-dlp -S "proto" # Download the best video with either h264 or h265 codec, # or the best video if there is no such video $ yt-dlp -f "(bv*[vcodec~='^((he|a)vc|h26[45])']+ba) / (bv*+ba/b)" # Download the best video with best codec no better than h264, # or the best video with worst codec if there is no such video $ yt-dlp -S "codec:h264" # Download the best video with worst codec no worse than h264, # or the best video with best codec if there is no such video $ yt-dlp -S "+codec:h264" # More complex examples # Download the best video no better than 720p preferring framerate greater than 30, # or the worst video (still preferring framerate greater than 30) if there is no such video $ yt-dlp -f "((bv*[fps>30]/bv*)[height<=720]/(wv*[fps>30]/wv*)) + ba / (b[fps>30]/b)[height<=720]/(w[fps>30]/w)" # Download the video with the largest resolution no better than 720p, # or the video with the smallest resolution available if there is no such video, # preferring larger framerate for formats with the same resolution $ yt-dlp -S "res:720,fps" # Download the video with smallest resolution no worse than 480p, # or the video with the largest resolution available if there is no such video, # preferring better codec and then larger total bitrate for the same resolution $ yt-dlp -S "+res:480,codec,br" ``` ## MODIFYING METADATA The metadata obtained by the extractors can be modified by using --parse-metadata and --replace-in-metadata \--replace-in-metadata FIELDS REGEX REPLACE is used to replace text in any metadata field using Python regular expression (https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#regular-expression-syntax). Backreferences (https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html?highlight=backreferences#re.sub) can be used in the replace string for advanced use. The general syntax of --parse-metadata FROM:TO is to give the name of a field or an output template to extract data from, and the format to interpret it as, separated by a colon :. Either a Python regular expression (https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#regular-expression-syntax) with named capture groups, a single field name, or a similar syntax to the output template (only %(field)s formatting is supported) can be used for TO. The option can be used multiple times to parse and modify various fields. Note that these options preserve their relative order, allowing replacements to be made in parsed fields and vice versa. Also, any field thus created can be used in the output template and will also affect the media file's metadata added when using --embed-metadata. This option also has a few special uses: - • You can download an additional URL based on the metadata of the currently downloaded video. To do this, set the field additional\_urls to the URL that you want to download. E.g. --parse-metadata "description:(?P\https?://www\\.vimeo\\.com/\\d+)" will download the first vimeo video found in the description - • You can use this to change the metadata that is embedded in the media file. To do this, set the value of the corresponding field with a meta\_ prefix. For example, any value you set to meta\_description field will be added to the description field in the file - you can use this to set a different "description" and "synopsis". To modify the metadata of individual streams, use the meta\\_ prefix (e.g. meta1\_language). Any value set to the meta\_ field will overwrite all default values. **Note**: Metadata modification happens before format selection, post-extraction and other post-processing operations. Some fields may be added or changed during these steps, overriding your changes. For reference, these are the fields yt-dlp adds by default to the file metadata: | | | | --- | --- | | Metadata fields | From | | title | track or title | | date | upload\_date | | description, synopsis | description | | purl, comment | webpage\_url | | track | track\_number | | artist | artist, artists, creator, creators, uploader or uploader\_id | | composer | composer or composers | | genre | genre, genres, categories or tags | | album | album or series | | album\_artist | album\_artist or album\_artists | | disc | disc\_number | | show | series | | season\_number | season\_number | | episode\_id | episode or episode\_id | | episode\_sort | episode\_number | | language of each stream | the format's language | **Note**: The file format may not support some of these fields ### Modifying metadata examples - ``` # Interpret the title as "Artist - Title" $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "title:%(artist)s - %(title)s" # Regex example $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "description:Artist - (?P.+)" # Copy the episode field to the title field (with FROM and TO as single fields) $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "episode:title" # Set title as "Series name S01E05" $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "%(series)s S%(season_number)02dE%(episode_number)02d:%(title)s" # Prioritize uploader as the "artist" field in video metadata $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "%(uploader|)s:%(meta_artist)s" --embed-metadata # Set "comment" field in video metadata using description instead of webpage_url, # handling multiple lines correctly $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "description:(?s)(?P.+)" --embed-metadata # Do not set any "synopsis" in the video metadata $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata ":(?P)" # Remove "formats" field from the infojson by setting it to an empty string $ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "video::(?P)" --write-info-json # Replace all spaces and "_" in title and uploader with a `-` $ yt-dlp --replace-in-metadata "title,uploader" "[ _]" "-" ``` ## EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS Some extractors accept additional arguments which can be passed using --extractor-args KEY:ARGS. ARGS is a ; (semicolon) separated string of ARG=VAL1,VAL2. E.g. --extractor-args "youtube:player-client=tv,mweb;formats=incomplete" --extractor-args "twitter:api=syndication" Note: In CLI, ARG can use - instead of \_; e.g. youtube:player-client" becomes youtube:player\_client" The following extractors use this feature: ### youtube - • lang: Prefer translated metadata (title, description etc) of this language code (case-sensitive). By default, the video primary language metadata is preferred, with a fallback to en translated. See youtube/\_base.py (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/415b4c9f955b1a0391204bd24a7132590e7b3bdb/yt\_dlp/extractor/youtube/\_base.py#L402-L409) for the list of supported content language codes - • skip: One or more of hls, dash or translated\_subs to skip extraction of the m3u8 manifests, dash manifests and auto-translated subtitles (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/4090#issuecomment-1158102032) respectively - • player\_client: Clients to extract video data from. The currently available clients are web, web\_safari, web\_embedded, web\_music, web\_creator, mweb, ios, visionos, android, android\_vr, tv, tv\_downgraded, tv\_samsung, and tv\_simply. By default, tv\_samsung,visionos,web is used. If no JavaScript runtime/engine is available, then web and tv\_samsung are omitted. If logged-in cookies are passed to yt-dlp, then web\_embedded,tv\_samsung,web is used for free accounts and web\_creator,tv\_samsung,web is used for premium accounts. The web\_music client is added for music.youtube.com URLs when logged-in cookies are used. The web\_embedded client is added for age-restricted videos but only successfully works around the age-restriction sometimes (e.g. if the video is embeddable). The web\_embedded client may be added as a fallback if android\_vr or visionos is unable to access a video. The web\_creator client is added for age-restricted videos if account age-verification is required. Some clients, such as web\_creator and web\_music, require a po\_token for their formats to be downloadable. Some clients, such as web\_creator, will only work with authentication. Not all clients support authentication via cookies. You can use default for the default clients, or you can use all for all clients (not recommended). You can prefix a client with - to exclude it, e.g. youtube:player\_client=default,-web - • player\_skip: Skip some network requests that are generally needed for robust extraction. One or more of configs (skip client configs), webpage (skip initial webpage), js (skip js player), initial\_data (skip initial data/next ep request). While these options can help reduce the number of requests needed or avoid some rate-limiting, they could cause issues such as missing formats or metadata. See #860 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/860) and #12826 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/12826) for more details - • webpage\_skip: Skip extraction of embedded webpage data. One or both of player\_response, initial\_data. These options are for testing purposes and don't skip any network requests. Neither is skipped by default; however, if a player\_js\_version value other than actual is used, then webpage\_skip=player\_response is implied - • webpage\_client: Client to use for the video webpage request. One of web (default) or web\_safari - • player\_params: YouTube player parameters to use for player requests. Will overwrite any default ones set by yt-dlp. - • player\_js\_variant: The player javascript variant to use for n/sig deciphering. The known variants are: main, tcc, tce, es5, es6, es6\_tcc, es6\_tce, tv, tv\_es6, phone, house. The default is main, and the others are for debugging purposes. You can use actual to go with what is prescribed by the site - • player\_js\_version: The player javascript version to use for n/sig deciphering, in the format of signature\_timestamp@hash (e.g. 20348@0004de42). The default is to use what is prescribed by the site, and can be selected with actual. Using any other value will imply webpage\_skip=player\_response - • comment\_sort: top or new (default) - choose comment sorting mode (on YouTube's side) - • max\_comments: Limit the amount of comments to gather. Comma-separated list of integers representing max-comments,max-parents,max-replies,max-replies-per-thread,max-depth. Default is all,all,all,all,all - • A max-depth value of 1 will discard all replies, regardless of the max-replies or max-replies-per-thread values given - • E.g. all,all,1000,10,2 will get a maximum of 1000 replies total, with up to 10 replies per thread, and only 2 levels of depth (i.e. top-level comments plus their immediate replies). 1000,all,100 will get a maximum of 1000 comments, with a maximum of 100 replies total - • formats: Change the types of formats to return. dashy (convert HTTP to DASH), duplicate (identical content but different URLs or protocol; includes dashy), incomplete (cannot be downloaded completely - live and post-live dash, post-live m3u8, and live adaptive https without --live-from-start), missing\_pot (include formats that require a PO Token but are missing one) - • innertube\_host: Innertube API host to use for all API requests; e.g. studio.youtube.com, youtubei.googleapis.com. Note that cookies exported from one subdomain will not work on others - • innertube\_key: Innertube API key to use for all API requests. By default, no API key is used - • raise\_incomplete\_data: Incomplete Data Received raises an error instead of reporting a warning - • data\_sync\_id: Overrides the account Data Sync ID used in Innertube API requests. This may be needed if you are using an account with youtube:player\_skip=webpage,configs or youtubetab:skip=webpage - • visitor\_data: Overrides the Visitor Data used in Innertube API requests. This should be used with player\_skip=webpage,configs and without cookies. Note: this may have adverse effects if used improperly. If a session from a browser is wanted, you should pass cookies instead (which contain the Visitor ID) - • po\_token: Proof of Origin (PO) Token(s) to use. Comma-separated list of PO Tokens in the format CLIENT.CONTEXT+PO\_TOKEN, e.g. youtube:po\_token=web.gvs+XXX,web.player=XXX,web\_safari.gvs+YYY. Context can be any of gvs (Google Video Server URLs), player (Innertube player request) or subs (Subtitles) - • pot\_trace: Enable debug logging for PO Token fetching. Either true or false (default) - • fetch\_pot: Policy to use for fetching a PO Token from providers. One of always (always try fetch a PO Token regardless if the client requires one for the given context), never (never fetch a PO Token), or auto (default; only fetch a PO Token if the client requires one for the given context) - • jsc\_trace: Enable debug logging for JS Challenge fetching. Either true or false (default) - • use\_ad\_playback\_context: Skip preroll ads to eliminate the mandatory wait period before download. Do NOT use this when passing premium account cookies to yt-dlp, as it will result in a loss of premium formats. Only effective with the mweb and web\_music player clients. Either true or false (default) ### youtube-ejs - • jitless: Run supported Javascript engines in JIT-less mode. Supported runtimes are deno, node and bun. Provides better security at the cost of performance/speed. Do note that node and bun are still considered insecure. Either true or false (default) ### youtubepot-webpo - • bind\_to\_visitor\_id: Whether to use the Visitor ID instead of Visitor Data for caching WebPO tokens. Either true (default) or false ### youtubetab (YouTube playlists, channels, feeds, etc.) - • skip: One or more of webpage (skip initial webpage download), authcheck (allow the download of playlists requiring authentication when no initial webpage is downloaded. This may cause unwanted behavior, see #1122 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/1122) for more details) - • approximate\_date: Extract approximate upload\_date and timestamp in flat-playlist. This may cause date-based filters to be slightly off ### generic - • fragment\_query: Passthrough any query in mpd/m3u8 manifest URLs to their fragments if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as fragment\_query=VALUE. Note that if the stream has an HLS AES-128 key, then the query parameters will be passed to the key URI as well, unless the key\_query extractor-arg is passed, or unless an external key URI is provided via the hls\_key extractor-arg. Does not apply to ffmpeg - • variant\_query: Passthrough the master m3u8 URL query to its variant playlist URLs if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as variant\_query=VALUE - • key\_query: Passthrough the master m3u8 URL query to its HLS AES-128 decryption key URI if no value is provided, or else apply the query string given as key\_query=VALUE. Note that this will have no effect if the key URI is provided via the hls\_key extractor-arg. Does not apply to ffmpeg - • hls\_key: An HLS AES-128 key URI *or* key (as hex), and optionally the IV (as hex), in the form of (URI\|KEY)\[,IV\]; e.g. generic:hls\_key=ABCDEF1234567980,0xFEDCBA0987654321. Passing any of these values will force usage of the native HLS downloader and override the corresponding values found in the m3u8 playlist - • is\_live: Bypass live HLS detection and manually set live\_status - a value of false will set not\_live, any other value (or no value) will set is\_live - • impersonate: Target(s) to try and impersonate with the initial webpage request; e.g. generic:impersonate=safari,chrome-110. Use generic:impersonate to impersonate any available target, and use generic:impersonate=false to disable impersonation (default) ### vikichannel - • video\_types: Types of videos to download - one or more of episodes, movies, clips, trailers ### youtubewebarchive - • check\_all: Try to check more at the cost of more requests. One or more of thumbnails, captures ### gamejolt - • comment\_sort: hot (default), you (cookies needed), top, new - choose comment sorting mode (on GameJolt's side) ### hotstar - • res: resolution to ignore - one or more of sd, hd, fhd - • vcodec: vcodec to ignore - one or more of h264, h265, dvh265 - • dr: dynamic range to ignore - one or more of sdr, hdr10, dv ### instagram - • app\_id: The value of the X-IG-App-ID header used for API requests. Can be the actual ID number, ios, or web (default) ### niconicochannelplus - • max\_comments: Maximum number of comments to extract - default is 120 ### tiktok - • api\_hostname: Hostname to use for mobile API calls, e.g. api22-normal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com - • app\_name: Default app name to use with mobile API calls, e.g. trill - • app\_version: Default app version to use with mobile API calls - should be set along with manifest\_app\_version, e.g. 34.1.2 - • manifest\_app\_version: Default numeric app version to use with mobile API calls, e.g. 2023401020 - • aid: Default app ID to use with mobile API calls, e.g. 1180 - • app\_info: Enable mobile API extraction with one or more app info strings in the format of \/\[app\_name\]/\[app\_version\]/\[manifest\_app\_version\]/\[aid\], where iid is the unique app install ID. iid is the only required value; all other values and their / separators can be omitted, e.g. tiktok:app\_info=1234567890123456789 or tiktok:app\_info=123,456/trill///1180,789//34.0.1/340001 - • device\_id: Enable mobile API extraction with a genuine device ID to be used with mobile API calls. Default is a random 19-digit string ### rokfinchannel - • tab: Which tab to download - one of new, top, videos, podcasts, streams, stacks ### twitter - • api: Select one of graphql (default), legacy or syndication as the API for tweet extraction. Has no effect if logged in ### stacommu, wrestleuniverse - • device\_id: UUID value assigned by the website and used to enforce device limits for paid livestream content. Can be found in browser local storage ### twitch - • client\_id: Client ID value to be sent with GraphQL requests, e.g. twitch:client\_id=kimne78kx3ncx6brgo4mv6wki5h1ko ### nhkradirulive (NHK らじる★らじる LIVE) - • area: Which regional variation to extract. Valid areas are: sapporo, sendai, tokyo, nagoya, osaka, hiroshima, matsuyama, fukuoka. Defaults to tokyo ### nflplusreplay - • type: Type(s) of game replays to extract. Valid types are: full\_game, full\_game\_spanish, condensed\_game and all\_22. You can use all to extract all available replay types, which is the default ### jiocinema - • refresh\_token: The refreshToken UUID from browser local storage can be passed to extend the life of your login session when logging in with token as username and the accessToken from browser local storage as password ### jiosaavn - • bitrate: Audio bitrates to request. One or more of 16, 32, 64, 128, 320. Default is 128,320 ### afreecatvlive - • cdn: One or more CDN IDs to use with the API call for stream URLs, e.g. gcp\_cdn, gs\_cdn\_pc\_app, gs\_cdn\_mobile\_web, gs\_cdn\_pc\_web ### soundcloud - • formats: Formats to request from the API. Requested values should be in the format of {protocol}\_{codec}, e.g. hls\_opus,http\_aac. The \* character functions as a wildcard, e.g. \*\_mp3, and can be passed by itself to request all formats. Known protocols include http, hls and hls-aes; known codecs include aac, opus and mp3. Original download formats are always extracted. Default is http\_aac,hls\_aac,http\_opus,hls\_opus,http\_mp3,hls\_mp3 ### orfon (orf:on) - • prefer\_segments\_playlist: Prefer a playlist of program segments instead of a single complete video when available. If individual segments are desired, use --concat-playlist never --extractor-args "orfon:prefer\_segments\_playlist" ### bilibili - • prefer\_multi\_flv: Prefer extracting flv formats over mp4 for older videos that still provide legacy formats ### sonylivseries - • sort\_order: Episode sort order for series extraction - one of asc (ascending, oldest first) or desc (descending, newest first). Default is asc ### streaks - • api\_key: API key for the X-Streaks-Api-Key header ### tver - • backend: Backend API to use for extraction - one of streaks (default) or brightcove (deprecated) ### vimeo - • client: Client to extract video data from. The currently available clients are android and web. Only one client can be used. The web client is used by default, and it only works with account cookies or login credentials. The android client only works with previously cached OAuth tokens - • original\_format\_policy: Policy for when to try extracting original formats. One of always, never, or auto. The default auto policy tries to avoid exceeding the web client's API rate-limit by only making an extra request when Vimeo publicizes the video's downloadability ### adn - • profile\_id: The numeric ID of the premium account profile that will be used to download videos (default: 1) ### zan - • split\_angles: Split multi-angle streams into separate angle formats. Forces re-encoding of the video stream during download, and requires ffmpeg. Either true or false (default) **Note**: These options may be changed/removed in the future without concern for backward compatibility ## INSTALLATION You can install yt-dlp using the binaries, pip (https://pypi.org/project/yt-dlp) or one using a third-party package manager. See the wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation) for detailed instructions **Note**: The manpages, shell completion (autocomplete) files etc. are available inside the source tarball (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp.tar.gz) ### UPDATE You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the release binaries If you installed with pip (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation#with-pip), simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program For other third-party package managers, see the wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation#third-party-package-managers) or refer to their documentation There are currently three release channels for binaries: stable, nightly and master. - • stable is the default channel, which offers releases published on a (mostly) monthly schedule. While it is named stable due to many of its changes having been tested by users of the nightly or master release channels, the latest stable release is often "stale" and prone to external breakage (i.e. sites changing things on their end and breaking yt-dlp). - • The nightly channel offers releases that publish shortly before midnight UTC on any day that sees changes to the codebase. This channel serves as a snapshot of the project's development, and it is the **recommended channel for regular users** of yt-dlp. The nightly releases are available from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases) or as development releases of the yt-dlp PyPI package (which can be installed with pip's --pre flag). - • The master channel offers "canary" releases that publish after each push to the master branch. This channel will always provide the very latest fixes and features, but may be prone to bugs or regressions. The master releases are available from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-master-builds (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-master-builds/releases). When using --update/-U, a release binary will only update to its current channel. --update-to CHANNEL can be used to switch to a different channel when a newer version is available. --update-to \[CHANNEL@\]TAG can also be used to upgrade or downgrade to specific tags from a channel. You may also use --update-to \ (\/\) to update to a channel on a completely different repository. Be careful with what repository you are updating to though, there is no verification done for binaries from different repositories. Example usage: - • yt-dlp --update-to master switch to the master channel and update to its latest release - • yt-dlp --update-to stable@2023.07.06 upgrade/downgrade to release to stable channel tag 2023.07.06 - • yt-dlp --update-to 2023.10.07 upgrade/downgrade to tag 2023.10.07 if it exists on the current channel - • yt-dlp --update-to example/yt-dlp@2023.09.24 upgrade/downgrade to the release from the example/yt-dlp repository, tag 2023.09.24 **Important**: Any user experiencing an issue with the stable release should install or update to the nightly release before submitting a bug report: - ``` # To update to nightly from stable executable/binary: yt-dlp --update-to nightly # To install nightly with pip: python -m pip install -U --pre "yt-dlp[default]" ``` When running a yt-dlp version that is older than 90 days, you will see a warning message suggesting to update to the latest version. You can suppress this warning by adding --no-update to your command or configuration file. ### DEPENDENCIES Python versions 3.11+ (CPython and PyPy) are supported. Other versions and implementations may or may not work correctly. While all the other dependencies are optional, ffmpeg, ffprobe, yt-dlp-ejs and a supported JavaScript runtime/engine are highly recommended ### Strongly recommended - • **ffmpeg** and **ffprobe** (https://www.ffmpeg.org) - Required for merging separate video and audio files, as well as for various post-processing tasks. License depends on the build (https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html) Since ffmpeg is such an important dependency, we provide our own builds at yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds (https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds). In the past, patches were applied to these builds in order to fix common issues for yt-dlp users, but currently our builds are equivalent to upstream ffmpeg. See the readme (https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds#patches-applied) for details **Important**: What you need is ffmpeg *binary*, **NOT** the Python package of the same name (https://pypi.org/project/ffmpeg) - • **yt-dlp-ejs** (https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs) - Required for full YouTube support. Licensed under Unlicense (https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs/blob/main/LICENSE), bundles MIT (https://github.com/davidbonnet/astring/blob/main/LICENSE) and ISC (https://github.com/meriyah/meriyah/blob/main/LICENSE.md) components. A JavaScript runtime/engine like **deno** (https://deno.land) (recommended), **node.js** (https://nodejs.org), **bun** (https://bun.sh), or **QuickJS** (https://bellard.org/quickjs/) is also required to run yt-dlp-ejs. See the wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS). ### Networking - • **certifi** (https://github.com/certifi/python-certifi)\* - Provides Mozilla's root certificate bundle. Licensed under MPLv2 (https://github.com/certifi/python-certifi/blob/master/LICENSE) - • **brotli** (https://github.com/google/brotli)\* or **brotlicffi** (https://github.com/python-hyper/brotlicffi) - Brotli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotli) content encoding support. Both licensed under MIT 1 (https://github.com/google/brotli/blob/master/LICENSE) 2 (https://github.com/python-hyper/brotlicffi/blob/master/LICENSE) - • **websockets** (https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets)\* - For downloading over websocket. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets/blob/main/LICENSE) - • **requests** (https://github.com/psf/requests)\* - HTTP library. For HTTPS proxy and persistent connections support. Licensed under Apache-2.0 (https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/main/LICENSE) ### Impersonation The following provide support for impersonating browser requests. This may be required for some sites that employ TLS fingerprinting. - • **curl\_cffi** (https://github.com/lexiforest/curl\_cffi) (recommended) - Python binding for curl-impersonate (https://github.com/lexiforest/curl-impersonate). Provides impersonation targets for Chrome, Edge and Safari. Licensed under MIT (https://github.com/lexiforest/curl\_cffi/blob/main/LICENSE) - • Can be installed with the curl-cffi extra, e.g. pip install "yt-dlp\[default,curl-cffi\]" - • Currently included in most builds *except* yt-dlp (Unix zipimport binary) and yt-dlp\_x86 (Windows 32-bit) ### Metadata - • **mutagen** (https://github.com/quodlibet/mutagen)\* - For --embed-thumbnail in certain formats. Licensed under GPLv2+ (https://github.com/quodlibet/mutagen/blob/master/COPYING) - • **AtomicParsley** (https://github.com/wez/atomicparsley) - For --embed-thumbnail in mp4/m4a files when mutagen/ffmpeg cannot. Licensed under GPLv2+ (https://github.com/wez/atomicparsley/blob/master/COPYING) - • **xattr** (https://github.com/xattr/xattr), **pyxattr** (https://github.com/iustin/pyxattr) or **setfattr** (http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/attr) - For writing xattr metadata (--xattrs) on **Mac** and **BSD**. Licensed under MIT (https://github.com/xattr/xattr/blob/master/LICENSE.txt), LGPL2.1 (https://github.com/iustin/pyxattr/blob/master/COPYING) and GPLv2+ (http://git.savannah.nongnu.org/cgit/attr.git/tree/doc/COPYING) respectively ### Misc - • **pycryptodomex** (https://github.com/Legrandin/pycryptodome)\* - For decrypting AES-128 HLS streams and various other data. Licensed under BSD-2-Clause (https://github.com/Legrandin/pycryptodome/blob/master/LICENSE.rst) - • **phantomjs** (https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs) - Used in some extractors where JavaScript needs to be run. No longer used for YouTube. To be deprecated in the near future. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/LICENSE.BSD) - • **secretstorage** (https://github.com/mitya57/secretstorage)\* - For --cookies-from-browser to access the **Gnome** keyring while decrypting cookies of **Chromium**-based browsers on **Linux**. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause (https://github.com/mitya57/secretstorage/blob/master/LICENSE) - • Any external downloader that you want to use with --downloader ### Deprecated - • **rtmpdump** (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu) - For downloading rtmp streams. ffmpeg can be used instead with --downloader ffmpeg. Licensed under GPLv2+ (http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu) To use or redistribute the dependencies, you must agree to their respective licensing terms. The standalone release binaries are built with the Python interpreter and the packages marked with **\*** included. If you do not have the necessary dependencies for a task you are attempting, yt-dlp will warn you. All the currently available dependencies are visible at the top of the --verbose output ### COMPILE ### Standalone PyInstaller Builds To build the standalone executable, you must have Python and pyinstaller (plus any of yt-dlp's optional dependencies if needed). The executable will be built for the same CPU architecture as the Python used. You can run the following commands: - ``` python devscripts/install_deps.py --include-group pyinstaller python devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py python -m bundle.pyinstaller ``` On some systems, you may need to use py or python3 instead of python. python -m bundle.pyinstaller accepts any arguments that can be passed to pyinstaller, such as --onefile/-F or --onedir/-D, which is further documented here (https://pyinstaller.org/en/stable/usage.html#what-to-generate). **Note**: Pyinstaller versions below 4.4 do not support (https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller#requirements-and-tested-platforms) Python installed from the Windows store without using a virtual environment. **Important**: Running pyinstaller directly **instead** **of** using python -m bundle.pyinstaller is **not** officially supported. This may or may not work correctly. ### Platform-independent Binary (UNIX) You will need the build tools python (3.11+), zip, make (GNU), pandoc\* and pytest\*. After installing these, simply run make. You can also run make yt-dlp instead to compile only the binary without updating any of the additional files. (The build tools marked with **\*** are not needed for this) ### Related scripts - • devscripts/install\_deps.py - Install dependencies for yt-dlp. - • devscripts/update-version.py - Update the version number based on the current date. - • devscripts/set-variant.py - Set the build variant of the executable. - • devscripts/make\_changelog.py - Create a markdown changelog using short commit messages and update CONTRIBUTORS file. - • devscripts/make\_lazy\_extractors.py - Create lazy extractors. Running this before building the binaries (any variant) will improve their startup performance. Set the environment variable YTDLP\_NO\_LAZY\_EXTRACTORS to something nonempty to forcefully disable lazy extractor loading. Note: See their --help for more info. ### Forking the project If you fork the project on GitHub, you can run your fork's build workflow to automatically build the selected version(s) as artifacts. Alternatively, you can run the release workflow or enable the nightly workflow to create full (pre-)releases. ## PLUGINS Note that **all** plugins are imported even if not invoked, and that **there are no checks** performed on plugin code. **Use plugins at your own risk and only if you trust the code!** Plugins can be of \s extractor or postprocessor. - Extractor plugins do not need to be enabled from the CLI and are automatically invoked when the input URL is suitable for it. - Extractor plugins take priority over built-in extractors. - Postprocessor plugins can be invoked using --use-postprocessor NAME. Plugins are loaded from the namespace packages yt\_dlp\_plugins.extractor and yt\_dlp\_plugins.postprocessor. In other words, the file structure on the disk looks something like: - ``` yt_dlp_plugins/ extractor/ myplugin.py postprocessor/ myplugin.py ``` yt-dlp looks for these yt\_dlp\_plugins namespace folders in many locations (see below) and loads in plugins from **all** of them. Set the environment variable YTDLP\_NO\_PLUGINS to something nonempty to disable loading plugins entirely. See the wiki for some known plugins (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Plugins) ### Installing Plugins Plugins can be installed using various methods and locations. - 1\. **Configuration directories**: Plugin packages (containing a yt\_dlp\_plugins namespace folder) can be dropped into the following standard configuration locations: - • **User Plugins** - • ${XDG\_CONFIG\_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ (recommended on Linux/macOS) - • ${XDG\_CONFIG\_HOME}/yt-dlp-plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ - • ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp/plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ (recommended on Windows) - • ${APPDATA}/yt-dlp-plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ - • \~/.yt-dlp/plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ - • \~/yt-dlp-plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ - • **System Plugins** - • /etc/yt-dlp/plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ - • /etc/yt-dlp-plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ - 2\. **Executable location**: Plugin packages can similarly be installed in a yt-dlp-plugins directory under the executable location (recommended for portable installations): - • Binary: where \/yt-dlp.exe, \/yt-dlp-plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ - • Source: where \/yt\_dlp/\_\_main\_\_.py, \/yt-dlp-plugins/\/yt\_dlp\_plugins/ - 3\. **pip and other locations in** PYTHONPATH - • Plugin packages can be installed and managed using pip. See yt-dlp-sample-plugins (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-sample-plugins) for an example. - • Note: plugin files between plugin packages installed with pip must have unique filenames. - • Any path in PYTHONPATH is searched in for the yt\_dlp\_plugins namespace folder. - • Note: This does not apply for Pyinstaller builds. .zip, .egg and .whl archives containing a yt\_dlp\_plugins namespace folder in their root are also supported as plugin packages. - • e.g. ${XDG\_CONFIG\_HOME}/yt-dlp/plugins/mypluginpkg.zip where mypluginpkg.zip contains yt\_dlp\_plugins/\/myplugin.py Run yt-dlp with --verbose to check if the plugin has been loaded. ### Developing Plugins See the yt-dlp-sample-plugins (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-sample-plugins) repo for a template plugin package and the Plugin Development (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Plugin-Development) section of the wiki for a plugin development guide. All public classes with a name ending in IE/PP are imported from each file for extractors and postprocessors respectively. This respects underscore prefix (e.g. \_MyBasePluginIE is private) and \_\_all\_\_. Modules can similarly be excluded by prefixing the module name with an underscore (e.g. \_myplugin.py). To replace an existing extractor with a subclass of one, set the plugin\_name class keyword argument (e.g. class MyPluginIE(ABuiltInIE, plugin\_name='myplugin') will replace ABuiltInIE with MyPluginIE). Since the extractor replaces the parent, you should exclude the subclass extractor from being imported separately by making it private using one of the methods described above. If you are a plugin author, add yt-dlp-plugins (https://github.com/topics/yt-dlp-plugins) as a topic to your repository for discoverability. See the Developer Instructions (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#developer-instructions) on how to write and test an extractor. ## EMBEDDING YT-DLP yt-dlp makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and thus should be callable from any programming language. Your program should avoid parsing the normal stdout since they may change in future versions. Instead, they should use options such as -J, --print, --progress-template, --exec etc to create console output that you can reliably reproduce and parse. From a Python program, you can embed yt-dlp in a more powerful fashion, like this: - ``` from yt_dlp import YoutubeDL URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4'] with YoutubeDL() as ydl: ydl.download(URLS) ``` Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options available, have a look at yt\_dlp/YoutubeDL.py or help(yt\_dlp.YoutubeDL) in a Python shell. If you are already familiar with the CLI, you can use devscripts/cli\_to\_api.py (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/devscripts/cli\_to\_api.py) to translate any CLI switches to YoutubeDL params. **Tip**: If you are porting your code from youtube-dl to yt-dlp, one important point to look out for is that we do not guarantee the return value of YoutubeDL.extract\_info to be json serializable, or even be a dictionary. It will be dictionary-like, but if you want to ensure it is a serializable dictionary, pass it through YoutubeDL.sanitize\_info as shown in the example below ### Embedding examples ### Extracting information - ``` import json import yt_dlp URL = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4' # ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.YoutubeDL) for a list of available options and public functions ydl_opts = {} with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: info = ydl.extract_info(URL, download=False) # ℹ️ ydl.sanitize_info makes the info json-serializable print(json.dumps(ydl.sanitize_info(info))) ``` ### Download using an info-json - ``` import yt_dlp INFO_FILE = 'path/to/video.info.json' with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL() as ydl: error_code = ydl.download_with_info_file(INFO_FILE) print('Some videos failed to download' if error_code else 'All videos successfully downloaded') ``` ### Extract audio - ``` import yt_dlp URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4'] ydl_opts = { 'format': 'm4a/bestaudio/best', # ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.postprocessor) for a list of available Postprocessors and their arguments 'postprocessors': [{ # Extract audio using ffmpeg 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio', 'preferredcodec': 'm4a', }] } with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: error_code = ydl.download(URLS) ``` ### Filter videos - ``` import yt_dlp URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4'] def longer_than_a_minute(info, *, incomplete): """Download only videos longer than a minute (or with unknown duration)""" duration = info.get('duration') if duration and duration < 60: return 'The video is too short' ydl_opts = { 'match_filter': longer_than_a_minute, } with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: error_code = ydl.download(URLS) ``` ### Adding logger and progress hook - ``` import yt_dlp URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4'] class MyLogger: def debug(self, msg): # For compatibility with youtube-dl, both debug and info are passed into debug # You can distinguish them by the prefix '[debug] ' if msg.startswith('[debug] '): pass else: self.info(msg) def info(self, msg): pass def warning(self, msg): pass def error(self, msg): print(msg) # ℹ️ See "progress_hooks" in help(yt_dlp.YoutubeDL) def my_hook(d): if d['status'] == 'finished': print('Done downloading, now post-processing ...') ydl_opts = { 'logger': MyLogger(), 'progress_hooks': [my_hook], } with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: ydl.download(URLS) ``` ### Add a custom PostProcessor - ``` import yt_dlp URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4'] # ℹ️ See help(yt_dlp.postprocessor.PostProcessor) class MyCustomPP(yt_dlp.postprocessor.PostProcessor): def run(self, info): self.to_screen('Doing stuff') return [], info with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL() as ydl: # ℹ️ "when" can take any value in yt_dlp.utils.POSTPROCESS_WHEN ydl.add_post_processor(MyCustomPP(), when='pre_process') ydl.download(URLS) ``` ### Use a custom format selector - ``` import yt_dlp URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4'] def format_selector(ctx): """ Select the best video and the best audio that won't result in an mkv. NOTE: This is just an example and does not handle all cases """ # formats are already sorted worst to best formats = ctx.get('formats')[::-1] # acodec='none' means there is no audio best_video = next(f for f in formats if f['vcodec'] != 'none' and f['acodec'] == 'none') # find compatible audio extension audio_ext = {'mp4': 'm4a', 'webm': 'webm'}[best_video['ext']] # vcodec='none' means there is no video best_audio = next(f for f in formats if ( f['acodec'] != 'none' and f['vcodec'] == 'none' and f['ext'] == audio_ext)) # These are the minimum required fields for a merged format yield { 'format_id': f'{best_video["format_id"]}+{best_audio["format_id"]}', 'ext': best_video['ext'], 'requested_formats': [best_video, best_audio], # Must be + separated list of protocols 'protocol': f'{best_video["protocol"]}+{best_audio["protocol"]}' } ydl_opts = { 'format': format_selector, } with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: ydl.download(URLS) ``` ## CHANGES FROM YOUTUBE-DL ### New features - • Forked from **yt-dlc@f9401f2** (https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc/commit/f9401f2a91987068139c5f757b12fc711d4c0cee) and merged with **youtube-dl@a08f2b7** (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/a08f2b7e4567cdc50c0614ee0a4ffdff49b8b6e6) (exceptions (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/21)) - • **SponsorBlock Integration**: You can mark/remove sponsor sections in YouTube videos by utilizing the SponsorBlock (https://sponsor.ajay.app) API - • **Format Sorting**: The default format sorting options have been changed so that higher resolution and better codecs will be now preferred instead of simply using larger bitrate. Furthermore, you can now specify the sort order using -S. This allows for much easier format selection than what is possible by simply using --format (examples) - • **Merged with animelover1984/youtube-dl**: You get most of the features and improvements from animelover1984/youtube-dl (https://github.com/animelover1984/youtube-dl) including --write-comments, BiliBiliSearch, BilibiliChannel, Embedding thumbnail in mp4/ogg/opus, playlist infojson etc. See #31 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/31) for details. - • **YouTube improvements**: - • Supports Clips, Stories (ytstories:\), Search (including filters)**\***, YouTube Music Search, Channel-specific search, Search prefix (ytsearch:)**\***, Mixes, and Feeds (:ytfav, :ytwatchlater, :ytsubs, :ythistory, :ytrec, :ytnotif) - • Fix for n-sig based throttling (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326) **\*** - • Download livestreams from the start using --live-from-start (*experimental*) - • Channel URLs download all uploads of the channel, including shorts and live - • **Cookies from browser**: Cookies can be automatically extracted from all major web browsers using --cookies-from-browser BROWSER\[+KEYRING\]\[:PROFILE\]\[::CONTAINER\] - • **Download time range**: Videos can be downloaded partially based on either timestamps or chapters using --download-sections - • **Split video by chapters**: Videos can be split into multiple files based on chapters using --split-chapters - • **Multi-threaded fragment downloads**: Download multiple fragments of m3u8/mpd videos in parallel. Use --concurrent-fragments (-N) option to set the number of threads used - • **New and fixed extractors**: Many new extractors have been added and a lot of existing ones have been fixed. See the changelog or the list of supported sites - • **New MSOs**: Philo, Spectrum, SlingTV, Cablevision, RCN etc. - • **Subtitle extraction from manifests**: Subtitles can be extracted from streaming media manifests. See commit/be6202f (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/be6202f12b97858b9d716e608394b51065d0419f) for details - • **Multiple paths and output templates**: You can give different output templates and download paths for different types of files. You can also set a temporary path where intermediary files are downloaded to using --paths (-P) - • **Portable Configuration**: Configuration files are automatically loaded from the home and root directories. See CONFIGURATION for details - • **Output template improvements**: Output templates can now have date-time formatting, numeric offsets, object traversal etc. See output template for details. Even more advanced operations can also be done with the help of --parse-metadata and --replace-in-metadata - • **Other new options**: Many new options have been added such as --alias, --print, --concat-playlist, --wait-for-video, --retry-sleep, --sleep-requests, --convert-thumbnails, --force-download-archive, --force-overwrites, --break-match-filters etc - • **Improvements**: Regex and other operators in --format/--match-filters, multiple --postprocessor-args and --downloader-args, faster archive checking, more format selection options, merge multi-video/audio, multiple --config-locations, --exec at different stages, etc - • **Plugins**: Extractors and PostProcessors can be loaded from an external file. See plugins for details - • **Self updater**: The releases can be updated using yt-dlp -U, and downgraded using --update-to if required - • **Automated builds**: Nightly/master builds can be used with --update-to nightly and --update-to master See changelog or commits (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commits) for the full list of changes Features marked with a **\*** have been back-ported to youtube-dl ### Differences in default behavior Some of yt-dlp's default options are different from that of youtube-dl and youtube-dlc: - • yt-dlp supports only Python 3.11+, and will remove support for more versions as they become EOL (https://devguide.python.org/versions/#python-release-cycle); while youtube-dl still supports Python 2.6+ and 3.2+ (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/30568#issue-1118238743) - • Some options no longer work. See removed options for details - • avconv is not supported as an alternative to ffmpeg - • yt-dlp stores config files in slightly different locations to youtube-dl. See CONFIGURATION for a list of correct locations - • The default output template is %(title)s \[%(id)s\].%(ext)s. There is no real reason for this change. This was changed before yt-dlp was ever made public and now there are no plans to change it back to %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s. Instead, you may use --compat-options filename - • The default format sorting is different from youtube-dl and prefers higher resolution and better codecs rather than higher bitrates. You can use the --format-sort option to change this to any order you prefer, or use --compat-options format-sort to use youtube-dl's sorting order. Older versions of yt-dlp preferred VP9 due to its broader compatibility; you can use --compat-options prefer-vp9-sort to revert to that format sorting preference. These two compat options cannot be used together - • The default format selector is bv\*+ba/b. This means that if a combined video + audio format that is better than the best video-only format is found, the former will be preferred. Use -f bv+ba/b or --compat-options format-spec to revert this - • Unlike youtube-dlc, yt-dlp does not allow merging multiple audio/video streams into one file by default (since this conflicts with the use of -f bv\*+ba). If needed, this feature must be enabled using --audio-multistreams and --video-multistreams. You can also use --compat-options multistreams to enable both - • \--no-abort-on-error is enabled by default. Use --abort-on-error or --compat-options abort-on-error to abort on errors instead - • When writing metadata files such as thumbnails, description or infojson, the same information (if available) is also written for playlists. Use --no-write-playlist-metafiles or --compat-options no-playlist-metafiles to not write these files - • \--add-metadata attaches the infojson to mkv files in addition to writing the metadata when used with --write-info-json. Use --no-embed-info-json or --compat-options no-attach-info-json to revert this - • Some metadata are embedded into different fields when using --add-metadata as compared to youtube-dl. Most notably, comment field contains the webpage\_url and synopsis contains the description. You can use --parse-metadata to modify this to your liking or use --compat-options embed-metadata to revert this - • playlist\_index behaves differently when used with options like --playlist-reverse and --playlist-items. See #302 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/302) for details. You can use --compat-options playlist-index if you want to keep the earlier behavior - • The output of -F is listed in a new format. Use --compat-options list-formats to revert this - • Live chats (if available) are considered as subtitles. Use --sub-langs all,-live\_chat to download all subtitles except live chat. You can also use --compat-options no-live-chat to prevent any live chat/danmaku from downloading - • YouTube channel URLs download all uploads of the channel. To download only the videos in a specific tab, pass the tab's URL. If the channel does not show the requested tab, an error will be raised. Also, /live URLs raise an error if there are no live videos instead of silently downloading the entire channel. You may use --compat-options no-youtube-channel-redirect to revert all these redirections - • Unavailable videos are also listed for YouTube playlists. Use --compat-options no-youtube-unavailable-videos to remove this - • The upload dates extracted from YouTube are in UTC. - • If ffmpeg is used as the downloader, the downloading and merging of formats happen in a single step when possible. Use --compat-options no-direct-merge to revert this - • Thumbnail embedding in mp4 is done with mutagen if possible. Use --compat-options embed-thumbnail-atomicparsley to force the use of AtomicParsley instead - • Some internal metadata such as filenames are removed by default from the infojson. Use --no-clean-infojson or --compat-options no-clean-infojson to revert this - • When --embed-subs and --write-subs are used together, the subtitles are written to disk and also embedded in the media file. You can use just --embed-subs to embed the subs and automatically delete the separate file. See #630 (comment) (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/630#issuecomment-893659460) for more info. --compat-options no-keep-subs can be used to revert this - • certifi will be used for SSL root certificates, if installed. If you want to use system certificates (e.g. self-signed), use --compat-options no-certifi - • yt-dlp's sanitization of invalid characters in filenames is different/smarter than in youtube-dl. You can use --compat-options filename-sanitization to revert to youtube-dl's behavior - • (Not currently implemented) \[STRIKEOUT:yt-dlp tries to parse the external downloader outputs into the standard progress output if possible. You can use --compat-options no-external-downloader-progress to get the downloader output as-is\] - • yt-dlp versions from 2021.09.01 to 2022.11.11 (inclusive) applied --match-filters to nested playlists. This was an unintentional side-effect of 8f18ac (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/8f18aca8717bb0dd49054555af8d386e5eda3a88) and is fixed in d7b460 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/d7b460d0e5fc710950582baed2e3fc616ed98a80). Use --compat-options playlist-match-filter to revert this - • yt-dlp versions from 2021.11.10 to 2023.06.21 (inclusive) estimated filesize\_approx values for fragmented/manifest formats. This was added for convenience in f2fe69 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/f2fe69c7b0d208bdb1f6292b4ae92bc1e1a7444a), but was reverted in 0dff8e (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/0dff8e4d1e6e9fb938f4256ea9af7d81f42fd54f) due to the potentially extreme inaccuracy of the estimated values. Use --compat-options manifest-filesize-approx to keep extracting the estimated values - • yt-dlp uses modern http client backends such as requests. Use --compat-options prefer-legacy-http-handler to prefer the legacy http handler (urllib) to be used for standard http requests. - • The sub-modules swfinterp, casefold are removed. - • Passing --simulate (or calling extract\_info with download=False) no longer alters the default format selection. See #9843 (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/9843) for details. - • yt-dlp no longer applies the server modified time to downloaded files by default. Use --mtime or --compat-options mtime-by-default to revert this. For convenience, there are some compat option aliases available to use: - • \--compat-options all: Use all compat options (**Do NOT use** **this!**) - • \--compat-options youtube-dl: Same as --compat-options all,-multistreams,-playlist-match-filter,-manifest-filesize-approx,-allow-unsafe-ext,-prefer-vp9-sort,-allow-unsafe-exec-expansion - • \--compat-options youtube-dlc: Same as --compat-options all,-no-live-chat,-no-youtube-channel-redirect,-playlist-match-filter,-manifest-filesize-approx,-allow-unsafe-ext,-prefer-vp9-sort,-allow-unsafe-exec-expansion - • \--compat-options 2021: Same as --compat-options 2022,no-certifi,filename-sanitization - • \--compat-options 2022: Same as --compat-options 2023,playlist-match-filter,no-external-downloader-progress,prefer-legacy-http-handler,manifest-filesize-approx - • \--compat-options 2023: Same as --compat-options 2024,prefer-vp9-sort - • \--compat-options 2024: Same as --compat-options 2025,mtime-by-default - • \--compat-options 2025: Currently does nothing. Use this to enable all future compat options Using one of the yearly compat option aliases will pin yt-dlp's default behavior to what it was at the *end* of that calendar year. The following compat options restore vulnerable behavior from before security patches: - • \--compat-options allow-unsafe-ext: Allow files with any extension (including unsafe ones) to be downloaded (GHSA-79w7-vh3h-8g4j (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/security/advisories/GHSA-79w7-vh3h-8g4j)) :warning: Only use if a valid file download is rejected because its extension is detected as uncommon **This option can enable remote code execution!** Consider opening an issue (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/new/choose) instead! - • \--compat-options allow-unsafe-exec-expansion: The --exec option allows output template syntax to be used in its commands; however, for security reasons the conversions that can be used are restricted to i/d (signed integer decimal), f (floating-point decimal) and q (shell-quoted). yt-dlp versions from 2021.04.11 to 2026.03.17 (inclusive) did not apply this restriction. This option reverts this restriction :warning: **This option can enable remote code execution!** Consider using %()q conversions in your exec command templates for any string values. ### Deprecated options These are all the deprecated options and the current alternative to achieve the same effect ### Almost redundant options While these options are almost the same as their new counterparts, there are some differences that prevents them being redundant - ``` -j, --dump-json --print "%()j" -F, --list-formats --print formats_table --list-thumbnails --print thumbnails_table --print playlist:thumbnails_table --list-subs --print automatic_captions_table --print subtitles_table ``` ### Redundant options While these options are redundant, they are still expected to be used due to their ease of use - ``` --get-description --print description --get-duration --print duration_string --get-filename --print filename --get-format --print format --get-id --print id --get-thumbnail --print thumbnail -e, --get-title --print title -g, --get-url --print urls --match-title REGEX --match-filters "title ~= (?i)REGEX" --reject-title REGEX --match-filters "title !~= (?i)REGEX" --min-views COUNT --match-filters "view_count >=? COUNT" --max-views COUNT --match-filters "view_count <=? COUNT" --break-on-reject Use --break-match-filters --user-agent UA --add-headers "User-Agent:UA" --referer URL --add-headers "Referer:URL" --playlist-start NUMBER -I NUMBER: --playlist-end NUMBER -I :NUMBER --playlist-reverse -I ::-1 --no-playlist-reverse Default --no-colors --color no_color ``` ### Not recommended While these options still work, their use is not recommended since there are other alternatives to achieve the same - ``` --force-generic-extractor --ies generic,default --exec-before-download CMD --exec "before_dl:CMD" --no-exec-before-download --no-exec --all-formats -f all --all-subs --sub-langs all --write-subs --print-json -j --no-simulate --autonumber-size NUMBER Use string formatting, e.g. %(autonumber)03d --autonumber-start NUMBER Use internal field formatting like %(autonumber+NUMBER)s --id -o "%(id)s.%(ext)s" --metadata-from-title FORMAT --parse-metadata "%(title)s:FORMAT" --hls-prefer-native --downloader "m3u8:native" --hls-prefer-ffmpeg --downloader "m3u8:ffmpeg" --list-formats-old --compat-options list-formats (Alias: --no-list-formats-as-table) --list-formats-as-table --compat-options -list-formats [Default] --geo-bypass --xff "default" --no-geo-bypass --xff "never" --geo-bypass-country CODE --xff CODE --geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK --xff IP_BLOCK ``` ### Developer options These options are not intended to be used by the end-user - ``` --test Download only part of video for testing extractors --load-pages Load pages dumped by --write-pages --allow-unplayable-formats List unplayable formats also --no-allow-unplayable-formats Default ``` ### Old aliases These are aliases that are no longer documented for various reasons - ``` --clean-infojson --clean-info-json --force-write-download-archive --force-write-archive --no-clean-infojson --no-clean-info-json --no-split-tracks --no-split-chapters --no-write-srt --no-write-subs --prefer-unsecure --prefer-insecure --rate-limit RATE --limit-rate RATE --split-tracks --split-chapters --srt-lang LANGS --sub-langs LANGS --trim-file-names LENGTH --trim-filenames LENGTH --write-srt --write-subs --yes-overwrites --force-overwrites ``` ### Sponskrub Options Support for SponSkrub (https://github.com/faissaloo/SponSkrub) has been removed in favor of the --sponsorblock options - ``` --sponskrub --sponsorblock-mark all --no-sponskrub --no-sponsorblock --sponskrub-cut --sponsorblock-remove all --no-sponskrub-cut --sponsorblock-remove -all --sponskrub-force Not applicable --no-sponskrub-force Not applicable --sponskrub-location Not applicable --sponskrub-args Not applicable ``` ### No longer supported These options may no longer work as intended - ``` --prefer-avconv avconv is not officially supported by yt-dlp (Alias: --no-prefer-ffmpeg) --prefer-ffmpeg Default (Alias: --no-prefer-avconv) -C, --call-home Not implemented --no-call-home Default --include-ads No longer supported --no-include-ads Default --write-annotations No supported site has annotations now --no-write-annotations Default --cn-verification-proxy URL Removed alias for --geo-verification-proxy URL --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Removed alias for --extractor-args "youtube:skip=dash" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-dash-manifest) --youtube-skip-hls-manifest Removed alias for --extractor-args "youtube:skip=hls" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-hls-manifest) --youtube-include-dash-manifest Default (Alias: --no-youtube-skip-dash-manifest) --youtube-include-hls-manifest Default (Alias: --no-youtube-skip-hls-manifest) --youtube-print-sig-code Removed testing functionality --dump-user-agent No longer supported --xattr-set-filesize No longer supported --compat-options seperate-video-versions No longer needed --compat-options no-youtube-prefer-utc-upload-date No longer supported ``` ### Removed These aliases have been removed and may be reused. Please update your scripts and configuration files accordingly - ``` -A, --auto-number -o "%(autonumber)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" -t, -l, --title, --literal -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" --avconv-location --ffmpeg-location --dump-headers --print-traffic --dump-intermediate-pages --dump-pages ``` ## CONTRIBUTING See CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions on Opening an Issue and Contributing code to the project ## WIKI See the Wiki (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki) for more information