4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

yt-dlp / yt-dlp Public

Code Issues 497 Pull requests 81 Discussions Actions Projects 2 Wiki Security Insights

master 3 branches 56 tags Go to file Code About

A youtube-dl fork with additional features

pukkandan [reddit] Prevent infinite loop … 07689fc 21 hours ago 20,499 commits and fixes

discord.gg/h5mncfw63r
.github [doc] Minor improvements 22 hours ago

devscripts [cleanup] Misc fixes 21 hours ago # python # youtube-dl # video-downloader

# sponsorblock # youtube-dlc # sponskrub # yt-dlp

test Improve --clean-infojson yesterday
Readme
yt_dlp [reddit] Prevent infinite loop 21 hours ago
Unlicense License
ytdlp_plugins [cleanup] Upgrade syntax 18 days ago
24.3k stars
.editorconfig [docs] Add an .editorconfig file (#3220) last month 202 watching

.gitattributes [docs] Minor improvements (#3309, #3343) 22 days ago 1.8k forks

.gitignore [cleanup] Sort imports 18 days ago

CONTRIBUTING.md [docs] Improve embedding docs and other minor fixes 12 days ago Releases 52

CONTRIBUTORS Release 2022.04.08 22 days ago yt-dlp 2022.04.08 Latest

22 days ago
Changelog.md [cleanup] Misc cleanup (#2173) 18 days ago
+ 51 releases
Collaborators.md [docs] Minor improvements last month

LICENSE addedd a serious Public Domain dedication, see http://unlicense.org/ 10 years ago
Sponsor this project
MANIFEST.in [build] Add requirements.txt to pip distributions 2 months ago
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/…
Makefile [cleanup,build] Cleanup some build-related code 3 days ago

README.md [doc] Minor improvements 22 hours ago

Used by 9.1k
pyinst.py [build] Fix --onedir on macOS yesterday

pytest.ini [test] Use pytest instead of nosetests (#482) 9 months ago + 9,117

requirements.txt Use certificates from certifi if installed (#3115) last month

setup.cfg [cleanup] Misc cleanup and refactor (#2173) 12 days ago Contributors 946

setup.py [doc] Minor improvements 22 hours ago

supportedsites.md [cleanup] Misc cleanup and refactor (#2173) 12 days ago

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 1/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

tox.ini [test] Use pytest instead of nosetests (#482) 9 months ago

yt-dlp.cmd [test] Convert warnings into errors 12 days ago + 935 contributors

yt-dlp.sh [test] Convert warnings into errors 12 days ago

Languages

Python 99.9% Other 0.1%

DOWNLOAD V2022.04.08 PYPI DONATE 54 USERS 1054 ONLINE

SUPPORTED SITES UNLICENSE TESTS PASSING COMMITS 121/MONTH TODAY

yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork based on the now inactive youtube-dlc. The main focus of this project is adding new
features and patches while also keeping up to date with the original project

NEW FEATURES
Differences in default behavior
INSTALLATION
Update
Release Files
Dependencies
Compile
USAGE AND OPTIONS
General Options
Network Options
Geo-restriction
Video Selection
Download Options
Filesystem Options
Thumbnail Options
Internet Shortcut Options
Verbosity and Simulation Options
Workarounds

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 2/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

Video Format Options

Subtitle Options
Authentication Options
Post-processing Options
SponsorBlock Options
Extractor Options
CONFIGURATION
Authentication with .netrc file
OUTPUT TEMPLATE
Output template and Windows batch files
Output template examples
FORMAT SELECTION
Filtering Formats
Sorting Formats
Format Selection examples
MODIFYING METADATA
Modifying metadata examples
EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS
PLUGINS
EMBEDDING YT-DLP
Embedding examples
DEPRECATED OPTIONS
CONTRIBUTING
Opening an Issue
Developer Instructions
MORE

NEW FEATURES
Based on youtube-dl 2021.12.17 commit/6508688 (exceptions) and youtube-dlc 2020.11.11-3 commit/f9401f2:
You get all the features and patches of youtube-dlc in addition to the latest youtube-dl

SponsorBlock Integration: You can mark/remove sponsor sections in youtube videos by utilizing the
SponsorBlock 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)

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 3/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

Merged with animelover1984/youtube-dl: You get most of the features and improvements from
animelover1984/youtube-dl including --write-comments , BiliBiliSearch , BilibiliChannel , Embedding
thumbnail in mp4/ogg/opus, playlist infojson etc. Note that the NicoNico livestreams are not available. See #31
for details.

Youtube improvements:

All Feeds ( :ytfav , :ytwatchlater , :ytsubs , :ythistory , :ytrec , :ytnotif ) and private playlists supports
downloading multiple pages of content
Search ( ytsearch: , ytsearchdate: ), search URLs and in-channel search works
Mixes supports downloading multiple pages of content
Some (but not all) age-gated content can be downloaded without cookies
Fix for n-sig based throttling
Redirect channel's home URL automatically to /video to preserve the old behaviour
255kbps audio is extracted (if available) from youtube music when premium cookies are given

Youtube music Albums, channels etc can be downloaded (except self-uploaded music)
Download livestreams from the start using --live-from-start (experimental)

Cookies from browser: Cookies can be automatically extracted from all major web browsers using --cookies-
from-browser BROWSER[+KEYRING][:PROFILE]

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

Aria2c with HLS/DASH: You can use aria2c as the external downloader for DASH(mpd) and HLS(m3u8) formats

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

Subtitle extraction from manifests: Subtitles can be extracted from streaming media manifests. See
commit/be6202f 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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 4/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

Other new options: Many new options have been added such as --concat-playlist , --print , --wait-for-
video , --sleep-requests , --convert-thumbnails , --write-link , --force-download-archive , --force-
overwrites , --break-on-reject etc

Improvements: Regex and other operators in --format / --match-filter , 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

See changelog or commits for the full list of changes

Differences in default behavior

Some of yt-dlp's default options are different from that of youtube-dl and youtube-dlc:

The options --auto-number ( -A ), --title ( -t ) and --literal ( -l ), 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

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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 5/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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 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
All experiences of a funimation episode are considered as a single video. This behavior breaks existing archives.
Use --compat-options seperate-video-versions to extract information from only the default player
Youtube live chat (if available) is considered as a subtitle. Use --sub-langs all,-live_chat to download all
subtitles except live chat. You can also use --compat-options no-live-chat to prevent live chat from
downloading
Youtube channel URLs are automatically redirected to /video . Append a /featured to the URL to download
only the videos in the home page. If the channel does not have a videos tab, we try to download the equivalent
UU playlist instead. For all other tabs, 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
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 private fields 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) 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
youtube-dl tries to remove some superfluous punctuations from filenames. While this can sometimes be helpfull,
it is often undesirable. So yt-dlp tries to keep the fields in the filenames as close to their original values as
possible. You can use --compat-options filename-sanitization to revert to youtube-dl's behavior

For ease of use, a few more compat options are available:

--compat-options all : Use all compat options

--compat-options youtube-dl : Same as --compat-options all,-multistreams

--compat-options youtube-dlc : Same as --compat-options all,-no-live-chat,-no-youtube-channel-redirect

INSTALLATION
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 6/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

You can install yt-dlp using one of the following methods:

Using the release binary

You can simply download the correct binary file for your OS

WINDOWS X64 LINUX/MACOS/BSD SOURCE TAR OTHER ALL VERSIONS

Note: The manpages, shell completion files etc. are available in the source tarball

In UNIX-like OSes (MacOS, Linux, BSD), you can also install the same in one of the following ways:

sudo curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

sudo wget https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -O /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

sudo aria2c https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp --dir /usr/local/bin -o yt-

dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

With PIP
You can install the PyPI package with:

python3 -m pip install -U yt-dlp

You can install without any of the optional dependencies using:

python3 -m pip install --no-deps -U yt-dlp

If you want to be on the cutting edge, you can also install the master branch with:

python3 -m pip install --force-reinstall https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/archive/master.tar.gz

Note that on some systems, you may need to use py or python instead of python3

With Homebrew
macOS or Linux users that are using Homebrew can also install it by:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 7/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

brew install yt-dlp/taps/yt-dlp

UPDATE
You can use yt-dlp -U to update if you are using the provided release

If you installed with pip, simply re-run the same command that was used to install the program

If you installed using Homebrew, run brew upgrade yt-dlp/taps/yt-dlp

RELEASE FILES

Recommended

File Description

yt-dlp Platform-independant binary. Needs Python (recommended for Linux/BSD)

yt-dlp.exe Windows (Win7 SP1+) standalone x64 binary (recommended for Windows)

yt-dlp_macos MacOS (10.15+) standalone executable (recommended for MacOS)

Alternatives

File Description

yt-dlp_x86.exe Windows (Vista SP2+) standalone x86 (32-bit) binary

Windows (Win7 SP1+) standalone x64 binary built with py2exe .

yt-dlp_min.exe
Does not contain pycryptodomex , needs VC++14

yt-dlp_win.zip Unpackaged Windows executable (no auto-update)

yt-dlp_macos.zip Unpackaged MacOS (10.15+) executable (no auto-update)

Misc

File Description

yt-dlp.tar.gz Source tarball. Also contains manpages, completions, etc

SHA2-512SUMS GNU-style SHA512 sums

SHA2-256SUMS GNU-style SHA256 sums

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 8/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

DEPENDENCIES
Python versions 3.6+ (CPython and PyPy) are supported. Other versions and implementations may or may not work
correctly.

While all the other dependencies are optional, ffmpeg and ffprobe are highly recommended

ffmpeg and ffprobe - Required for merging separate video and audio files as well as for various post-processing
tasks. License depends on the build
mutagen* - For embedding thumbnail in certain formats. Licensed under GPLv2+
pycryptodomex* - For decrypting AES-128 HLS streams and various other data. Licensed under BSD-2-Clause
websockets* - For downloading over websocket. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
secretstorage - For accessing the Gnome keyring while decrypting cookies of Chromium-based browsers on
Linux. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
brotli* or brotlicffi - Brotli content encoding support. Both licensed under MIT 1 2
certifi* - Provides Mozilla's root certificate bundle. Licensed under MPLv2
AtomicParsley - For embedding thumbnail in mp4/m4a if mutagen/ffmpeg cannot. Licensed under GPLv2+
rtmpdump - For downloading rtmp streams. ffmpeg will be used as a fallback. Licensed under GPLv2+
mplayer or mpv - For downloading rstp streams. ffmpeg will be used as a fallback. Licensed under GPLv2+
phantomjs - Used in extractors where javascript needs to be run. Licensed under BSD-3-Clause
sponskrub - For using the now deprecated sponskrub options. Licensed under GPLv3+
Any external downloader that you want to use with --downloader

To use or redistribute the dependencies, you must agree to their respective licensing terms.

The Windows and MacOS standalone release binaries are built with the Python interpreter and the packages marked
with * included.

Note: There are some regressions in newer ffmpeg versions that causes various issues when used alongside yt-dlp.
Since ffmpeg is such an important dependency, we provide custom builds with patches for these issues at yt-
dlp/FFmpeg-Builds. See the readme for details on the specific issues solved by these builds

COMPILE
For Windows: To build the Windows executable, you must have pyinstaller (and any of yt-dlp's optional dependencies
if needed). Once you have all the necessary dependencies installed, (optionally) build lazy extractors using
devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py , and then just run pyinst.py . The executable will be built for the same
architecture (32/64 bit) as the python used to build it.

py -m pip install -U pyinstaller -r requirements.txt

py devscripts/make_lazy_extractors.py
py pyinst.py

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 9/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

Note that pyinstaller does not support Python installed from the Windows store without using a virtual environment

For Unix: You will need the required build tools: python , make (GNU), pandoc , zip , pytest
Then simply run make . You can also run make yt-dlp instead to compile only the binary without updating any of the
additional files

Note: In either platform, devscripts/update-version.py can be used to automatically update the version number

You can also fork the project on github and run your fork's build workflow to automatically build a release

USAGE AND OPTIONS

yt-dlp [OPTIONS] [--] URL [URL...]

Ctrl+F is your friend :D

General Options:

-h, --help Print this help text and exit

--version Print program version and exit
-U, --update Update this program to latest version. Make
sure that you have sufficient permissions
(run with sudo if needed)
-i, --ignore-errors 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)
--dump-user-agent Display the current user-agent and exit
--list-extractors List all supported extractors and exit
--extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported
extractors and exit
--force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic
extractor
--default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For
example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos
from google videos for the search term
"large apple". 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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 10/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

--ignore-config Don't load any more configuration files

except those given by --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. Can be used multiple
times and inside other configuration files
--flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
only list them
--no-flat-playlist Extract the videos of a playlist
--live-from-start Download livestreams from the start.
Currently only supported for YouTube
(Experimental)
--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)
--no-colors Do not emit color codes in output
--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

Network Options:

--proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy.

To enable SOCKS proxy, specify a proper
scheme. For example
socks5://user:[email protected]: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
-4, --force-ipv4 Make all connections via IPv4
-6, --force-ipv6 Make all connections via IPv6

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 11/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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
--geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking
X-Forwarded-For HTTP header (default)
--no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via
faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
--geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with
explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
country code
--geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK Force bypass geographic restriction with
explicitly provided IP block in CIDR
notation

Video Selection:

--playlist-start NUMBER Playlist video to start at (default is 1)

--playlist-end NUMBER Playlist video to end at (default is last)
--playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify
indices of the videos in the playlist
separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos
indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can
specify range: "--playlist-items
1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos
at index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13
--min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than
SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
--max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE
(e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
--date DATE Download only videos uploaded on this date.
The date can be "YYYYMMDD" or in the format
"(now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?"
--datebefore DATE Download only videos uploaded on or before
this date. The date formats accepted is the
same as --date
--dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after
this date. The date formats accepted is the
same as --date
--match-filters FILTER Generic video filter. Any field (see
"OUTPUT TEMPLATE") 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
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 12/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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 atleast one of
the conditions are met. Eg: --match-filter
!is_live --match-filter "like_count>?100 &
description~='(?i)\bcats \& dogs\b'"
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" (ignoring case). Use
"--match-filter -" to interactively ask
whether to download each video
--no-match-filter Do not use generic video filter (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
--break-on-reject Stop the download process when encountering
a file that has been filtered out
--break-per-input Make --break-on-existing and --break-on-
reject act only on the current input URL
--no-break-per-input --break-on-existing and --break-on-reject
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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 13/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

"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)
--skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments for DASH,
hlsnative and ISM (default)
(Alias: --no-abort-on-unavailable-fragment)
--abort-on-unavailable-fragment Abort downloading 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-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
--no-playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in default order
(default)
--playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order
--xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
expected file size
--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
--downloader [PROTO:]NAME Name or path of the external downloader to
use (optionally) prefixed by the protocols
(http, ftp, m3u8, dash, rstp, rtmp, mms) to
use it for. Currently supports native,
aria2c, avconv, axel, curl, ffmpeg, httpie,
wget. You can use this option multiple
times to set different downloaders for
different protocols. For example,
--downloader aria2c --downloader
"dash,m3u8:native" will use aria2c for
http/ftp downloads, and the native
downloader for dash/m3u8 downloads (Alias:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 14/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

--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 value for unavailable meta
fields in output filename template
(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 Make filenames Windows-compatible only if
using Windows (default)
--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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 15/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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 (default)
--no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set
the file modification time
--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 private fields such as
filenames from the infojson. Note that it
could still contain some personal
information (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]
The name of the browser and (optionally)
the name/path of the profile to load
cookies from, separated by a ":". Currently
supported browsers are: brave, chrome,
chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari,
vivaldi. By default, the most recently
accessed profile is used. The keyring used
for decrypting Chromium cookies on Linux
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 16/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

can be (optionally) specified after the

browser name separated by a "+". Currently
supported keyrings are: basictext,
gnomekeyring, kwallet
--no-cookies-from-browser Do not load cookies from browser (default)
--cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl
can store some downloaded information (such
as client ids and signatures) permanently.
By default $XDG_CACHE_HOME/yt-dlp or
~/.cache/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-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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 17/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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, and "video" (default).
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 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
README.md
"download-title:%(info.id)s-%(progress.eta)s"
-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
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 18/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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 (Currently
supported only for YouTube)
--add-header FIELD:VALUE Specify a custom HTTP header and its value,
separated by a colon ":". You can use this
option multiple times
--bidi-workaround Work around terminals that lack
bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv
or fribidi executable in PATH
--sleep-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
--S-force, --format-sort-force Force user specified sort order to have
precedence over all fields, see "Sorting
Formats" for more details
--no-format-sort-force Some fields have precedence over the user
specified sort order (default), see
"Sorting Formats" for more details
--video-multistreams Allow multiple video streams to be merged
into a single file
--no-video-multistreams Only one video stream is downloaded for
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 19/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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 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 If a merge is required (e.g.
bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
webm, flv. Ignored if no merge is required

Subtitle Options:

--write-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, for example: "srt" or
"ass/srt/best"
--sub-langs LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download (can
be regex) or "all" separated by commas.
(Eg: --sub-langs "en.*,ja") You can prefix
the language code with a "-" to exempt it
from the requested languages. (Eg:
--sub-langs all,-live_chat) Use --list-subs
for a list of available language tags

Authentication Options:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 20/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

-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
--video-password PASSWORD Video password (vimeo, youku)
--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

Post-Processing Options:

-x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files

(requires ffmpeg and ffprobe)
--audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format to convert the audio
to when -x is used. Currently supported
formats are: best (default) or one of aac,
flac, mp3, m4a, opus, vorbis, wav, alac
--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: mp4, mkv,
flv, webm, mov, avi, mka, ogg, aac, flac,
mp3, m4a, opus, vorbis, wav, alac). If
target container does not support the
video/audio codec, remuxing will fail. You
can specify multiple rules; Eg.
"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
re-encoding is 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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 21/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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. Eg:
--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 FROM:TO Parse additional metadata like title/artist
from other fields; see "MODIFYING METADATA"
for details
--replace-in-metadata FIELDS REGEX REPLACE
Replace text in a metadata field using the
given regex. This option can be used
multiple times
--xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 22/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

(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
same codecs and number of streams to be
concatable. 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 file if we can, warn
otherwise), force (try fixing even if 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 (after_move if
unspecified), separated by a ":". Supported
values of "WHEN" are the same as that of
--use-postprocessor. Same syntax as the
output template can be used to pass any
field as arguments to the command. After
download, an additional field "filepath"
that contains the final path of the
downloaded file is also available, and if
no fields are passed, %(filepath)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: srt, vtt, ass, lrc)
(Alias: --convert-subtitles)
--convert-thumbnails FORMAT Convert the thumbnails to another format
(currently supported: jpg, png, webp)
--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. Time ranges
prefixed by a "*" can also be used in place
of chapters to remove the specified range.
Eg: --remove-chapters "*10:15-15:00"
--remove-chapters "intro". This option can
be used multiple times
--no-remove-chapters Do not remove any chapters from the file
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 23/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

(default)
--force-keyframes-at-cuts Force keyframes around the chapters before
removing/splitting them. Requires a
re-encode and thus is very slow, 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),
"before_dl" (before each video download),
"post_process" (after each video download;
default), "after_move" (after moving video
file to it's final locations),
"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

--sponsorblock-mark CATS SponsorBlock categories to create chapters

for, separated by commas. Available
categories are all, default(=all), sponsor,
intro, outro, selfpromo, preview, filler,
interaction, music_offtopic, poi_highlight.
You can prefix the category with a "-" to
exempt it. See [1] for description of the
categories. Eg: --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 is not available

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 24/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

--sponsorblock-chapter-title TEMPLATE
The title template for SponsorBlock
chapters created by --sponsorblock-mark.
The same syntax as the output template is
used, but 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 to different
formats at discontinuities such as ad
breaks (default)
--extractor-args KEY:ARGS Pass these arguments to the extractor. See
"EXTRACTOR ARGUMENTS" for details. You can
use this option multiple times to give
arguments for different extractors

CONFIGURATION
You can configure yt-dlp by placing any supported command line option to a configuration file. The configuration is
loaded from the following locations:

1. Main Configuration: The file given by --config-location

2. Portable Configuration: yt-dlp.conf in the same directory as the bundled binary. If you are running from
source-code ( <root dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py ), the root directory is used instead.

3. Home Configuration: yt-dlp.conf in the home path given by -P , or in the current directory if no such path is
given

4. User Configuration:
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 25/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

%XDG_CONFIG_HOME%/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Linux/macOS)

%XDG_CONFIG_HOME%/yt-dlp.conf

%APPDATA%/yt-dlp/config (recommended on Windows)

%APPDATA%/yt-dlp/config.txt

~/yt-dlp.conf

~/yt-dlp.conf.txt

%XDG_CONFIG_HOME% defaults to ~/.config if undefined. On windows, %APPDATA% generally points to C:\Users\

<user name>\AppData\Roaming and ~ points to %HOME% if present, %USERPROFILE% (generally C:\Users\<user
name> ), or %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%

5. System Configuration: /etc/yt-dlp.conf

For example, with the following configuration file yt-dlp will always extract the audio, not 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

# Do not copy the mtime

--no-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 that options in 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 .

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.

Authentication with .netrc file

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 26/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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 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 <extractor> login <username> password <password>

For example:

machine youtube login [email protected] 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 $HOME ( ~ ) in UNIX. On Windows, it is %HOME% if present, %USERPROFILE%
(generally C:\Users\<user name> ) or %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%

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.

tl;dr: navigate me to examples.

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. For example, %(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:

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 27/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

1. Object traversal: The dictionaries and lists available in metadata can be traversed by using a . (dot) separator.
You can also do python slicing using : . Eg: %(tags.0)s , %(subtitles.en.-1.ext)s , %(id.3:7:-1)s , %
(formats.:.format_id)s . %()s refers to the entire infodict. Note that all the fields that become available using
this method are not listed below. Use -j to see such fields

2. Addition: Addition and subtraction of numeric fields can be done using + and - respectively. Eg: %
(playlist_index+10)03d , %(n_entries+1-playlist_index)d

3. Date/time Formatting: Date/time fields can be formatted according to strftime formatting by specifying it
separated from the field name using a > . Eg: %(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 , . Eg: %

(release_date>%Y,upload_date>%Y|Unknown)s

5. Replacement: A replacement value can specified using a & separator. 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.

6. Default: A literal default value can be specified for when the field is empty using a | separator. This overrides -
-output-na-template . Eg: %(uploader|Unknown)s

7. More Conversions: In addition to the normal format types diouxXeEfFgGcrs , B , j , l , q , D , S can be used
for converting to Bytes, json (flag # for pretty-printing), a comma separated list (flag # for \n newline-
separated), a string quoted for the terminal (flag # to split a list into different arguments), to add Decimal
suffixes (Eg: 10M) (flag # to use 1024 as factor), and to Sanitize as filename (flag # for restricted), respectively

8. Unicode normalization: The format type U can be used for NFC unicode normalization. The alternate form flag
( # ) changes the normalization to NFD and the conversion flag + can be used for NFKC/NFKD compatibility
equivalence normalization. Eg: %(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 . For example, -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. Eg: --write-thumbnail -o "thumbnail:" will write thumbnails
only for playlists and not for video.

The available fields are:

id (string): Video identifier

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 28/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

title (string): Video title

fulltitle (string): Video title ignoring live timestamp and generic title

url (string): Video URL

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

license (string): License name the video is licensed under

creator (string): The creator of the video

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

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

uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader

channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on

channel_id (string): Id of the channel

channel_follower_count (numeric): Number of followers of the channel

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

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 give 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)
age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)

live_status (string): One of "is_live", "was_live", "is_upcoming", "not_live"

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"

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 29/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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

format (string): A human-readable description of the format

format_id (string): Format code specified by --format

format_note (string): Additional info about the format

width (numeric): Width of the video

height (numeric): Height of the video

resolution (string): Textual description of width and height

tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s

abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s

acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use

asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz

vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s

fps (numeric): Frame rate

dynamic_range (string): The dynamic range of the video

vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use

container (string): Name of the container format

filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance

filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes

protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual download

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

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_id or playlist_title

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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 30/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

webpage_url (string): A URL to the video webpage which if given to yt-dlp should allow to get 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 same as webpage_url for playlist entries)

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 programme:

series (string): Title of the series or programme 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

artist (string): Artist(s) of the track

genre (string): Genre(s) of the track

album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to

album_type (string): Type of the album

album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album

disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs to

release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released

Available 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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 31/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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 be different due to post-processing.
Use --exec echo to get the name after all postprocessing is complete
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 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 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

Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will be replaced by the actual value
corresponding to the sequence name. For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title yt-
dlp test video and id BaW_jenozKc , this will result in a yt-dlp test video-BaW_jenozKc.mp4 file created in the
current directory.

Note that 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, for example, %(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.

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 32/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

Output template and Windows batch files

If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you must escape plain percent characters ( % )
by doubling, so that -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become -o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s" . However
you should not touch % 's that are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion should stay intact: -
o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s" .

Output template examples

$ yt-dlp --get-filename -o "test video.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc

test video.webm # Literal name with correct extension

$ yt-dlp --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc

youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.webm # All kinds of weird characters

$ yt-dlp --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames

youtube-dl_test_video_.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=PLwi

# 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=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQ

# Prefix playlist index with " - " separator, but only if it is available
$ yt-dlp -o '%(playlist_index|)s%(playlist_index& - |)s%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc "https://www.youtube.co

# 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/

# 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.%(ex

# 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.%(ex

# 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" BaW_jenoz --wr

# 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)

# Stream the video being downloaded to stdout

$ yt-dlp -o - BaW_jenozKc

FORMAT SELECTION
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 33/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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.

tl;dr: navigate me to examples.

The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example 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

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!)

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]

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 34/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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<type>.<n> . 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, for example -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 <format1>+<format2>+... (requires
ffmpeg installed), for example -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. For example,
-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 and merge both formats 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]" ).

The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons < , <= , > , >= , = (equals), != (not equals):

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 35/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

filesize : The number of bytes, if known in advance

width : Width of the video, if known

height : Height of the video, if known

tbr : Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s

abr : Average audio bitrate in KBit/s

vbr : Average video bitrate in KBit/s

asr : Audio sampling rate in Hertz

fps : Frame rate

Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $= (ends with), *= (contains), ~= (matches regex)
and following string meta fields:

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 , rtsp , rtmp ,
rtmpe , mms , f4m , ism , http_dash_segments , m3u8 , or m3u8_native )

format_id : A short description of the format

language : Language code

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 that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be present since this solely depends on the
metadata obtained by 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 "[height<=?720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos where the height is
not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s. You can also use the filters with all to download all formats that
satisfy the filter. For example, -f "all[vcodec=none]" selects all audio-only formats.

Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if you want to download the best pre-merged
mp4 and webm formats with a height lower than 480 you can use -f "(mp4,webm)[height<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:

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 36/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

hasvid : Gives priority to formats that has a video stream

hasaud : Gives priority to formats that has a audio stream

ie_pref : The format preference

lang : The language preference

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 > mms / rtsp > 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 > eac3 > ac3 >
dts > other)

codec : Equivalent to vcodec,acodec

vext : Video Extension ( mp4 > 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 opus > ogg > webm > m4a > mp3 > aac .
ext : Equivalent to vext,aext

filesize : Exact filesize, if known in advance

fs_approx : Approximate filesize calculated from the manifests

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 )

tbr : Total average bitrate in KBit/s

vbr : Average video bitrate in KBit/s

abr : Average audio bitrate in KBit/s

br : Equivalent to using 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.

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 37/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

All fields, unless specified otherwise, are sorted in descending order. To reverse this, prefix the field with a + . Eg:
+res prefers format with the smallest resolution. Additionally, you can suffix a preferred value for the fields,
separated by a : . Eg: 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. Eg: +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. Eg: 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 behaviour can be changed by using --format-sort-force . Apart from these, the default order used is:
lang,quality,res,fps,hdr:12,codec:vp9.2,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 has codec:vp9.2 ; i.e. av1 is not preferred. Similarly, the default for hdr is hdr:12 ; i.e. dolby
vision is not preferred. These choices are made since DV and AV1 formats are not yet fully compatible with most
devices. This may be changed in the future as more devices become capable of smoothly playing back these formats.

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 .

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,

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 38/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

# 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 > 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 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 best video (that also has audio) that is closest in size to 50 MB
$ yt-dlp -f "b" -S "filesize~50M"
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 39/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

# 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]/

# 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

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 40/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

--replace-in-metadata FIELDS REGEX REPLACE is used to replace text in any metadata field using python regular
expression. Backreferences 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 with named
capture groups 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 any field created by this can be used in the output template and will also affect the media file's metadata
added when using --add-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. Eg: --parse-metadata "description:(?
P<additional_urls>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. For example, you can use this to set a different "description" and "synopsis".
To modify the metadata of individual streams, use the meta<n>_ prefix (Eg: 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 , creator , uploader or uploader_id

genre genre

album album

album_artist album_artist

disc disc_number

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 41/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

Metadata fields From

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<artist>.+)"

# 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" --add-metadata

# Set "comment" field in video metadata using description instead of webpage_url,

# handling multiple lines correctly
$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata "description:(?s)(?P<meta_comment>.+)" --add-metadata

# Remove "formats" field from the infojson by setting it to an empty string

$ yt-dlp --parse-metadata ":(?P<formats>)" -j

# 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 . Eg: --extractor-args "youtube:player-
client=android_embedded,web;include_live_dash" --extractor-args "funimation:version=uncut"

The following extractors use this feature:

youtube
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 42/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

skip : One or more of hls , dash or translated_subs to skip extraction of the m3u8 manifests, dash manifests
and auto-translated subtitles respectively
player_client : Clients to extract video data from. The main clients are web , android and ios with variants
_music , _embedded , _embedscreen , _creator (Eg: web_embedded ); and mweb and tv_embedded (agegate
bypass) with no variants. By default, android,web is used, but tv_embedded and creator variants are added as
required for age-gated videos. Similarly the music variants are added for music.youtube.com urls. You can use
all to use all the clients, and default for the default clients.

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). While these options can help
reduce the number of requests needed or avoid some rate-limiting, they could cause some issues. See #860 for
more details
include_live_dash : Include live dash formats even without --live-from-start (These formats don't download
properly)
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 . Default is all,all,all,all
E.g. all,all,1000,10 will get a maximum of 1000 replies total, with up to 10 replies per thread.
1000,all,100 will get a maximum of 1000 comments, with a maximum of 100 replies total

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
for more details)
approximate_date : Extract approximate upload_date in flat-playlist. This may cause date-based filters to be
slightly off

funimation

language : Languages to extract. Eg: funimation:language=english,japanese

version : The video version to extract - uncut or simulcast

crunchyroll

language : Languages to extract. Eg: crunchyroll:language=jaJp

hardsub : Which hard-sub versions to extract. Eg: crunchyroll:hardsub=None,enUS

crunchyrollbeta

format : Which stream type(s) to extract. Default is adaptive_hls Eg: crunchyrollbeta:format=vo_adaptive_hls

Potentially useful values include adaptive_hls , adaptive_dash , vo_adaptive_hls , vo_adaptive_dash ,
download_hls , trailer_hls , trailer_dash

hardsub : Preference order for which hardsub versions to extract. Default is None (no hardsubs). Eg:
crunchyrollbeta:hardsub=en-US,None
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 43/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

vikichannel

video_types : Types of videos to download - one or more of episodes , movies , clips , trailers

niconico

segment_duration : Segment duration in milliseconds for HLS-DMC formats. Use it at your own risk since this
feature may result in your account termination.

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

tiktok

app_version : App version to call mobile APIs with - should be set along with manifest_app_version . (e.g.
20.2.1 )

manifest_app_version : Numeric app version to call mobile APIs with. (e.g. 221 )

rokfinchannel

tab : Which tab to download. One of new , top , videos , podcasts , streams , stacks . (E.g.
rokfinchannel:tab=streams )

NOTE: These options may be changed/removed in the future without concern for backward compatibility

PLUGINS
Plugins are loaded from <root-dir>/ytdlp_plugins/<type>/__init__.py ; where <root-dir> is the directory of the
binary ( <root-dir>/yt-dlp ), or the root directory of the module if you are running directly from source-code ( <root
dir>/yt_dlp/__main__.py ). Plugins are currently not supported for the pip version

Plugins can be of <type> 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. Postprocessor plugins can be invoked using --
use-postprocessor NAME .

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 44/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

See ytdlp_plugins for example 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

If you are a plugin author, add ytdlp-plugins as a topic to your repository for discoverability

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=BaW_jenozKc']
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 .

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=BaW_jenozKc'

# 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)

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 45/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

# 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=BaW_jenozKc']

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=BaW_jenozKc']

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,
}
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 46/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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=BaW_jenozKc']

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=BaW_jenozKc']

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 47/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

# 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:

ydl.add_post_processor(MyCustomPP())
ydl.download(URLS)

Use a custom format selector

import yt_dlp

URL = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']

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)

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 48/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

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-filter "title ~= (?i)REGEX"
--reject-title REGEX --match-filter "title !~= (?i)REGEX"
--min-views COUNT --match-filter "view_count >=? COUNT"
--max-views COUNT --match-filter "view_count <=? COUNT"
--user-agent UA --add-header "User-Agent:UA"
--referer URL --add-header "Referer:URL"

Not recommended

While these options still work, their use is not recommended since there are other alternatives to achieve the same

--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. Eg: %(autonumber)03d
--autonumber-start NUMBER Use internal field formatting like %(autonumber+NUMBER)s
--id -o "%(id)s.%(ext)s"

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 49/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

--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] (Alias: --no-list-formats-old)
--youtube-skip-dash-manifest --extractor-args "youtube:skip=dash" (Alias: --no-youtube-include-dash-
manifest)
--youtube-skip-hls-manifest --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)

Developer options

These options are not intended to be used by the end-user

--test Download only part of video for testing extractors

--youtube-print-sig-code For testing youtube signatures
--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

--avconv-location --ffmpeg-location
--clean-infojson --clean-info-json
--cn-verification-proxy URL --geo-verification-proxy URL
--dump-headers --print-traffic
--dump-intermediate-pages --dump-pages
--force-write-download-archive --force-write-archive
--load-info --load-info-json
--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 has been deprecated in favor of the --sponsorblock options
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 50/51
4/30/22, 7:33 AM GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A youtube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

--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

Removed

These options were deprecated since 2014 and have now been entirely removed

-A, --auto-number -o "%(autonumber)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"

-t, -l, --title, --literal -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"

CONTRIBUTING
See CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions on Opening an Issue and Contributing code to the project

MORE
For FAQ see the youtube-dl README

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp 51/51