yt-dlp: The Ultimate Command-Line Video Downloader with Open-Source GUI

In this previous blog, I introduced you to FFmpeg, and now I’m going to introduce you to another excellent open-source tool: yt-dlp.

yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with support for thousands of sites.

You can use it for all sorts of things, but the feature you’ll probably use most often is downloading videos or audio from YouTube to your archive, given the crazy censorship on YouTube these days. If you want to save a video that disappears within a few hours of being uploaded, give yt-dlp a go!

Installation

First, install it using Homebrew:

brew install yt-dlp

Common Commands

Here are some commands I usually use:

Download the best quality available (Standard):

yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser brave 'URL'

List all available formats for a video:

yt-dlp -F --cookies-from-browser brave 'URL'

Download a specific format (e.g., format 299+140):

yt-dlp -f 299+140 --cookies-from-browser brave 'URL'

Download all available subtitles without downloading the video:

yt-dlp --write-subs --all-subs --skip-download 'URL'

Download and merge into an MP4 container (FFmpeg is required):

yt-dlp --merge-output-format mp4 --cookies-from-browser brave 'URL'

💡 Tips

1. To download videos from YouTube, it is better to use your browser’s cookies (e.g., Brave, Firefox, or Chrome) to increase the success rate; using --cookies-from-browser brave allows yt-dlp to bypass bot detection and access age-restricted content by using your browser’s session. However, this is usually not necessary for other platforms like X or Vimeo.
2. If you want to use Safari’s cookies, you need to give yt-dlp permission to access your Safari cookies in the system settings first.

(TO BE CONTINUED)