1YOUTUBE-DL(1) YOUTUBE-DL(1)
2
6 youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
7
9 youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
10
12 youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from
13 YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter,
14 version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should
15 work on your Unix box, on Windows or on macOS. It is released to the
16 public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it
17 however you like.
18
20 -h, --help
21 Print this help text and exit
22 --version
24 Print program version and exit
25 -U, --update
27 Update this program to latest version. Make sure that you have
28 sufficient permissions (run with sudo if needed)
29 -i, --ignore-errors
31 Continue on download errors, for example to skip unavailable
32 videos in a playlist
33 --abort-on-error
35 Abort downloading of further videos (in the playlist or the com‐
36 mand line) if an error occurs
37 --dump-user-agent
39 Display the current browser identification
40 --list-extractors
42 List all supported extractors
43 --extractor-descriptions
45 Output descriptions of all supported extractors
46 --force-generic-extractor
48 Force extraction to use the generic extractor
49 --default-search PREFIX
51 Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For example "gvsearch2:"
52 downloads two videos from google videos for youtube-dl "large
53 apple". Use the value "auto" to let youtube-dl guess ("au‐
54 to_warning" to emit a warning when guessing). "error" just
55 throws an error. The default value "fixup_error" repairs broken
56 URLs, but emits an error if this is not possible instead of
57 searching.
58 --ignore-config
60 Do not read configuration files. When given in the global con‐
61 figuration file /etc/youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the user con‐
62 figuration in ~/.config/youtube- dl/config (%APPDA‐
63 TA%/youtube-dl/config.txt on Windows)
64 --config-location PATH
66 Location of the configuration file; either the path to the con‐
67 fig or its containing directory.
68 --flat-playlist
70 Do not extract the videos of a playlist, only list them.
71 --mark-watched
73 Mark videos watched (YouTube only)
74 --no-mark-watched
76 Do not mark videos watched (YouTube only)
77 --no-color
79 Do not emit color codes in output
80 Network Options:
82 --proxy URL
83 Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy. To enable SOCKS
84 proxy, specify a proper scheme. For example
85 socks5://127.0.0.1:1080/. Pass in an empty string (--proxy "")
86 for direct connection
87 --socket-timeout SECONDS
89 Time to wait before giving up, in seconds
90 --source-address IP
92 Client-side IP address to bind to
93 -4, --force-ipv4
95 Make all connections via IPv4
96 -6, --force-ipv6
98 Make all connections via IPv6
99 Geo Restriction:
101 --geo-verification-proxy URL
102 Use this proxy to verify the IP address for some geo-restricted
103 sites. The default proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the
104 option is not present) is used for the actual downloading.
105 --geo-bypass
107 Bypass geographic restriction via faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP
108 header
109 --no-geo-bypass
111 Do not bypass geographic restriction via faking X-Forwarded-For
112 HTTP header
113 --geo-bypass-country CODE
115 Force bypass geographic restriction with explicitly provided
116 two-letter ISO 3166-2 country code
117 --geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK
119 Force bypass geographic restriction with explicitly provided IP
120 block in CIDR notation
121 Video Selection:
123 --playlist-start NUMBER
124 Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
125 --playlist-end NUMBER
127 Playlist video to end at (default is last)
128 --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC
130 Playlist video items to download. Specify indices of the videos
131 in the playlist separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
132 1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in
133 the playlist. You can specify range: "--playlist-items
134 1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos at index 1, 2, 3, 7,
135 10, 11, 12 and 13.
136 --match-title REGEX
138 Download only matching titles (regex or caseless sub-string)
139 --reject-title REGEX
141 Skip download for matching titles (regex or caseless sub-string)
142 --max-downloads NUMBER
144 Abort after downloading NUMBER files
145 --min-filesize SIZE
147 Do not download any videos smaller than SIZE (e.g. 50k or
148 44.6m)
149 --max-filesize SIZE
151 Do not download any videos larger than SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
152 --date DATE
154 Download only videos uploaded in this date
155 --datebefore DATE
157 Download only videos uploaded on or before this date (i.e. in‐
158 clusive)
159 --dateafter DATE
161 Download only videos uploaded on or after this date (i.e. in‐
162 clusive)
163 --min-views COUNT
165 Do not download any videos with less than COUNT views
166 --max-views COUNT
168 Do not download any videos with more than COUNT views
169 --match-filter FILTER
171 Generic video filter. Specify any key (see the "OUTPUT TEM‐
172 PLATE" for a list of available keys) to match if the key is
173 present, !key to check if the key is not present, key > NUMBER
174 (like "comment_count > 12", also works with >=, <, <=, !=, =) to
175 compare against a number, key = 'LITERAL' (like "uploader =
176 'Mike Smith'", also works with !=) to match against a string
177 literal and & to require multiple matches. Values which are not
178 known are excluded unless you put a question mark (?) after the
179 operator. For example, to only match videos that have been
180 liked more than 100 times and disliked less than 50 times (or
181 the dislike functionality is not available at the given ser‐
182 vice), but who also have a description, use --match-filter
183 "like_count > 100 & dislike_count <? 50 & description" .
184 --no-playlist
186 Download only the video, if the URL refers to a video and a
187 playlist.
188 --yes-playlist
190 Download the playlist, if the URL refers to a video and a
191 playlist.
192 --age-limit YEARS
194 Download only videos suitable for the given age
195 --download-archive FILE
197 Download only videos not listed in the archive file. Record the
198 IDs of all downloaded videos in it.
199 --include-ads
201 Download advertisements as well (experimental)
202 Download Options:
204 -r, --limit-rate RATE
205 Maximum download rate in bytes per second (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
206 -R, --retries RETRIES
208 Number of retries (default is 10), or "infinite".
209 --fragment-retries RETRIES
211 Number of retries for a fragment (default is 10), or "infinite"
212 (DASH, hlsnative and ISM)
213 --skip-unavailable-fragments
215 Skip unavailable fragments (DASH, hlsnative and ISM)
216 --abort-on-unavailable-fragment
218 Abort downloading when some fragment is not available
219 --keep-fragments
221 Keep downloaded fragments on disk after downloading is finished;
222 fragments are erased by default
223 --buffer-size SIZE
225 Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K) (default is 1024)
226 --no-resize-buffer
228 Do not automatically adjust the buffer size. By default, the
229 buffer size is automatically resized from an initial value of
230 SIZE.
231 --http-chunk-size SIZE
233 Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP downloading (e.g. 10485760
234 or 10M) (default is disabled). May be useful for bypassing
235 bandwidth throttling imposed by a webserver (experimental)
236 --playlist-reverse
238 Download playlist videos in reverse order
239 --playlist-random
241 Download playlist videos in random order
242 --xattr-set-filesize
244 Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with expected file size
245 --hls-prefer-native
247 Use the native HLS downloader instead of ffmpeg
248 --hls-prefer-ffmpeg
250 Use ffmpeg instead of the native HLS downloader
251 --hls-use-mpegts
253 Use the mpegts container for HLS videos, allowing to play the
254 video while downloading (some players may not be able to play
255 it)
256 --external-downloader COMMAND
258 Use the specified external downloader. Currently supports
259 aria2c,avconv,axel,curl,ffmpeg,httpie,wget
260 --external-downloader-args ARGS
262 Give these arguments to the external downloader
263 Filesystem Options:
265 -a, --batch-file FILE
266 File containing URLs to download ('-' for stdin), one URL per
267 line. Lines starting with '#', ';' or ']' are considered as
268 comments and ignored.
269 --id Use only video ID in file name
271 -o, --output TEMPLATE
273 Output filename template, see the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for all the
274 info
275 --autonumber-start NUMBER
277 Specify the start value for %(autonumber)s (default is 1)
278 --restrict-filenames
280 Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters, and avoid "&" and
281 spaces in filenames
282 -w, --no-overwrites
284 Do not overwrite files
285 -c, --continue
287 Force resume of partially downloaded files. By default,
288 youtube-dl will resume downloads if possible.
289 --no-continue
291 Do not resume partially downloaded files (restart from begin‐
292 ning)
293 --no-part
295 Do not use .part files - write directly into output file
296 --no-mtime
298 Do not use the Last-modified header to set the file modification
299 time
300 --write-description
302 Write video description to a .description file
303 --write-info-json
305 Write video metadata to a .info.json file
306 --write-annotations
308 Write video annotations to a .annotations.xml file
309 --load-info-json FILE
311 JSON file containing the video information (created with the
312 "--write-info-json" option)
313 --cookies FILE
315 File to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in
316 --cache-dir DIR
318 Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl can store some down‐
319 loaded information permanently. By default
320 $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the mo‐
321 ment, only YouTube player files (for videos with obfuscated sig‐
322 natures) are cached, but that may change.
323 --no-cache-dir
325 Disable filesystem caching
326 --rm-cache-dir
328 Delete all filesystem cache files
329 Thumbnail images:
331 --write-thumbnail
332 Write thumbnail image to disk
333 --write-all-thumbnails
335 Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
336 --list-thumbnails
338 Simulate and list all available thumbnail formats
339 Verbosity / Simulation Options:
341 -q, --quiet
342 Activate quiet mode
343 --no-warnings
345 Ignore warnings
346 -s, --simulate
348 Do not download the video and do not write anything to disk
349 --skip-download
351 Do not download the video
352 -g, --get-url
354 Simulate, quiet but print URL
355 -e, --get-title
357 Simulate, quiet but print title
358 --get-id
360 Simulate, quiet but print id
361 --get-thumbnail
363 Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
364 --get-description
366 Simulate, quiet but print video description
367 --get-duration
369 Simulate, quiet but print video length
370 --get-filename
372 Simulate, quiet but print output filename
373 --get-format
375 Simulate, quiet but print output format
376 -j, --dump-json
378 Simulate, quiet but print JSON information. See the "OUTPUT
379 TEMPLATE" for a description of available keys.
380 -J, --dump-single-json
382 Simulate, quiet but print JSON information for each command-line
383 argument. If the URL refers to a playlist, dump the whole
384 playlist information in a single line.
385 --print-json
387 Be quiet and print the video information as JSON (video is still
388 being downloaded).
389 --newline
391 Output progress bar as new lines
392 --no-progress
394 Do not print progress bar
395 --console-title
397 Display progress in console titlebar
398 -v, --verbose
400 Print various debugging information
401 --dump-pages
403 Print downloaded pages encoded using base64 to debug problems
404 (very verbose)
405 --write-pages
407 Write downloaded intermediary pages to files in the current di‐
408 rectory to debug problems
409 --print-traffic
411 Display sent and read HTTP traffic
412 -C, --call-home
414 Contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
415 --no-call-home
417 Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
418 Workarounds:
420 --encoding ENCODING
421 Force the specified encoding (experimental)
422 --no-check-certificate
424 Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
425 --prefer-insecure
427 Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve information about the
428 video. (Currently supported only for YouTube)
429 --user-agent UA
431 Specify a custom user agent
432 --referer URL
434 Specify a custom referer, use if the video access is restricted
435 to one domain
436 --add-header FIELD:VALUE
438 Specify a custom HTTP header and its value, separated by a colon
439 ':'. You can use this option multiple times
440 --bidi-workaround
442 Work around terminals that lack bidirectional text support. Re‐
443 quires bidiv or fribidi executable in PATH
444 --sleep-interval SECONDS
446 Number of seconds to sleep before each download when used alone
447 or a lower bound of a range for randomized sleep before each
448 download (minimum possible number of seconds to sleep) when used
449 along with --max-sleep-interval.
450 --max-sleep-interval SECONDS
452 Upper bound of a range for randomized sleep before each download
453 (maximum possible number of seconds to sleep). Must only be
454 used along with --min-sleep-interval.
455 Video Format Options:
457 -f, --format FORMAT
458 Video format code, see the "FORMAT SELECTION" for all the info
459 --all-formats
461 Download all available video formats
462 --prefer-free-formats
464 Prefer free video formats unless a specific one is requested
465 -F, --list-formats
467 List all available formats of requested videos
468 --youtube-skip-dash-manifest
470 Do not download the DASH manifests and related data on YouTube
471 videos
472 --merge-output-format FORMAT
474 If a merge is required (e.g. bestvideo+bestaudio), output to
475 given container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg, webm, flv. Ig‐
476 nored if no merge is required
477 Subtitle Options:
479 --write-sub
480 Write subtitle file
481 --write-auto-sub
483 Write automatically generated subtitle file (YouTube only)
484 --all-subs
486 Download all the available subtitles of the video
487 --list-subs
489 List all available subtitles for the video
490 --sub-format FORMAT
492 Subtitle format, accepts formats preference, for example: "srt"
493 or "ass/srt/best"
494 --sub-lang LANGS
496 Languages of the subtitles to download (optional) separated by
497 commas, use --list- subs for available language tags
498 Authentication Options:
500 -u, --username USERNAME
501 Login with this account ID
502 -p, --password PASSWORD
504 Account password. If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
505 ask interactively.
506 -2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR
508 Two-factor authentication code
509 -n, --netrc
511 Use .netrc authentication data
512 --video-password PASSWORD
514 Video password (vimeo, smotri, youku)
515 Adobe Pass Options:
517 --ap-mso MSO
518 Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV provider) identifier,
519 use --ap-list-mso for a list of available MSOs
520 --ap-username USERNAME
522 Multiple-system operator account login
523 --ap-password PASSWORD
525 Multiple-system operator account password. If this option is
526 left out, youtube-dl will ask interactively.
527 --ap-list-mso
529 List all supported multiple-system operators
530 Post-processing Options:
532 -x, --extract-audio
533 Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or av‐
534 conv and ffprobe or avprobe)
535 --audio-format FORMAT
537 Specify audio format: "best", "aac", "flac", "mp3", "m4a",
538 "opus", "vorbis", or "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without
539 -x
540 --audio-quality QUALITY
542 Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert a value between 0
543 (better) and 9 (worse) for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K
544 (default 5)
545 --recode-video FORMAT
547 Encode the video to another format if necessary (currently sup‐
548 ported: mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
549 --postprocessor-args ARGS
551 Give these arguments to the postprocessor
552 -k, --keep-video
554 Keep the video file on disk after the post- processing; the
555 video is erased by default
556 --no-post-overwrites
558 Do not overwrite post-processed files; the post-processed files
559 are overwritten by default
560 --embed-subs
562 Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4, webm and mkv videos)
563 --embed-thumbnail
565 Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
566 --add-metadata
568 Write metadata to the video file
569 --metadata-from-title FORMAT
571 Parse additional metadata like song title / artist from the
572 video title. The format syntax is the same as --output. Regu‐
573 lar expression with named capture groups may also be used. The
574 parsed parameters replace existing values. Example: --metada‐
575 ta-from- title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a title like
576 "Coldplay - Paradise". Example (regex): --metadata-from-title
577 "(?P.+?) - (?P
578 .+)"
579 --xattrs
581 Write metadata to the video file's xattrs (using dublin core and
582 xdg standards)
583 --fixup POLICY
585 Automatically correct known faults of the file. One of never
586 (do nothing), warn (only emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
587 default; fix file if we can, warn otherwise)
588 --prefer-avconv
590 Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the postprocessors
591 --prefer-ffmpeg
593 Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the postprocessors (de‐
594 fault)
595 --ffmpeg-location PATH
597 Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary; either the path to the bi‐
598 nary or its containing directory.
599 --exec CMD
601 Execute a command on the file after downloading, similar to
602 find's -exec syntax. Example: --exec 'adb push {} /sdcard/Mu‐
603 sic/ && rm {}'
604 --convert-subs FORMAT
606 Convert the subtitles to other format (currently supported:
607 srt|ass|vtt|lrc)
608
610 You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line op‐
611 tion to a configuration file. On Linux and macOS, the system wide con‐
612 figuration file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide
613 configuration file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the us‐
614 er wide configuration file locations are %APPDATA%\youtube-dl\con‐
615 fig.txt or C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf. Note that by default
616 configuration file may not exist so you may need to create it yourself.
617 For example, with the following configuration file youtube-dl will al‐
619 ways extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all
620 videos under Movies directory in your home directory:
621 # Lines starting with # are comments
623 # Always extract audio
625 -x
626 # Do not copy the mtime
628 --no-mtime
629 # Use this proxy
631 --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
632 # Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
634 -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
635 Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka
637 switches used in regular command line calls thus there must be no
638 whitespace after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.
639 You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration
641 file for a particular youtube-dl run.
642 You can also use --config-location if you want to use custom configura‐
644 tion file for a particular youtube-dl run.
645 Authentication with .netrc file
647 You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for ex‐
648 tractors that support authentication (by providing login and password
649 with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as
650 command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent track‐
651 ing plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve
652 this using a .netrc file (https://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info)
653 on a per extractor basis. For that you will need to create a .netrc
654 file in your $HOME and restrict permissions to read/write by only you:
655 touch $HOME/.netrc
657 chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
658 After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following
660 format, where extractor is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
661 machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
663 For example:
665 machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
667 machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password
668 To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc
670 to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.
671 On Windows you may also need to setup the %HOME% environment variable
673 manually. For example:
674 set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
676
678 The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file
679 names.
680 tl;dr: navigate me to examples.
682 The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a
684 single file, like in youtube-dl -o fun‐
685 ny_video.flv "https://some/video". However, it may contain special se‐
686 quences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special
687 sequences may be formatted according to python string formatting opera‐
688 tions (https://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#string-format‐
689 ting). For example, %(NAME)s or %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a
690 percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses, followed by format‐
691 ting operations. Allowed names along with sequence type are:
692 · id (string): Video identifier
694 · title (string): Video title
696 · url (string): Video URL
698 · ext (string): Video filename extension
700 · alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
702 · display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
704 · uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
706 · license (string): License name the video is licensed under
708 · creator (string): The creator of the video
710 · release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was re‐
712 leased
713 · timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became
715 available
716 · upload_date (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
718 · uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
720 · channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on
722 · channel_id (string): Id of the channel
724 · location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
726 · duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
728 · view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the
730 platform
731 · like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
733 · dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
735 · repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
737 · average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale
739 used depends on the webpage
740 · comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video
742 · age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
744 · is_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a
746 fixed-length video
747 · start_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
749 start, as specified in the URL
750 · end_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
752 end, as specified in the URL
753 · format (string): A human-readable description of the format
755 · format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
757 · format_note (string): Additional info about the format
759 · width (numeric): Width of the video
761 · height (numeric): Height of the video
763 · resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
765 · tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
767 · abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
769 · acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
771 · asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
773 · vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
775 · fps (numeric): Frame rate
777 · vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
779 · container (string): Name of the container format
781 · filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
783 · filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
785 · protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual
787 download
788 · extractor (string): Name of the extractor
790 · extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
792 · epoch (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
794 · autonumber (numeric): Five-digit number that will be increased with
796 each download, starting at zero
797 · playlist (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the video
799 · playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded
801 with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
802 · playlist_id (string): Playlist identifier
804 · playlist_title (string): Playlist title
806 · playlist_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader
808 · playlist_uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist upload‐
810 er
811 Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or sec‐
813 tion:
814 · chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
816 · chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
818 · chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
820 Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
822 · series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode
824 belongs to
825 · season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
827 · season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode be‐
829 longs to
830 · season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
832 · episode (string): Title of the video episode
834 · episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a season
836 · episode_id (string): Id of the video episode
838 Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
840 · track (string): Title of the track
842 · track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disc
844 · track_id (string): Id of the track
846 · artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
848 · genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
850 · album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
852 · album_type (string): Type of the album
854 · album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
856 · disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium
858 the track belongs to
859 · release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
861 Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will
863 be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name.
864 Note that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since
865 they depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such
866 sequences will be replaced with NA.
867 For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title
869 youtube-dl test video and id BaW_jenozKcj, this will result in a
870 youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4 file created in the current di‐
871 rectory.
872 For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for exam‐
874 ple, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded
875 with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.
876 Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g.
878 -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' which will re‐
879 sult in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this
880 path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for
881 you.
882 To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to
884 stdout use -o -.
885 The current default template is %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s.
887 In some cases, you don't want special characters such as 中, spaces, or
889 &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows sys‐
890 tem or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases,
891 add the --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:
892 Output template and Windows batch files
894 If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then
895 you must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that
896 -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become -o "%%(ti‐
897 tle)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that are not
898 plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion should stay
899 intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
900 Output template examples
902 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of sin‐
903 gle.
904 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
906 youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
907 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
909 youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
910 # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
912 $ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re
913 # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
915 $ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists
916 # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
918 $ youtube-dl -u user -p password -o '~/MyVideos/%(playlist)s/%(chapter_number)s - %(chapter)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.udemy.com/java-tutorial/
919 # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
921 $ youtube-dl -o "C:/MyVideos/%(series)s/%(season_number)s - %(season)s/%(episode_number)s - %(episode)s.%(ext)s" https://videomore.ru/kino_v_detalayah/5_sezon/367617
922 # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
924 $ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc
925
927 By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality,
928 i.e. if you want the best quality you don't need to pass any special
929 options, youtube-dl will guess it for you by default.
930 But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for exam‐
932 ple when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key mecha‐
933 nism for achieving this is so-called format selection based on which
934 you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on some
935 criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
936 The general syntax for format selection is --format FORMAT or shorter
938 -f FORMAT where FORMAT is a selector expression, i.e. an expression
939 that describes format or formats you would like to download.
940 tl;dr: navigate me to examples.
942 The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with
944 -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You
945 can get the list of available format codes for particular video using
946 --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor spe‐
947 cific.
948 You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3,
950 mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format
951 of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm
952 will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as
953 a single file.
954 You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:
956 · best: Select the best quality format represented by a single file
958 with video and audio.
959 · worst: Select the worst quality format represented by a single file
961 with video and audio.
962 · bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format (e.g. DASH
964 video). May not be available.
965 · worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be
967 available.
968 · bestaudio: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be
970 available.
971 · worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May not be
973 available.
974 For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can
976 use -f worstvideo.
977 If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same
979 formats available, you can specify the order of preference using slash‐
980 es. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left
981 hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format
982 22 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's
983 available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available, oth‐
984 erwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for
985 download.
986 If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma
988 as a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three for‐
989 mats, of course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example
990 combined with the precedence feature:
991 -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
992 You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brack‐
994 ets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
995 The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=,
997 >, >=, = (equals), != (not equals):
998 · filesize: The number of bytes, if known in advance
1000 · width: Width of the video, if known
1002 · height: Height of the video, if known
1004 · tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
1006 · abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
1008 · vbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
1010 · asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz
1012 · fps: Frame rate
1014 Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $=
1016 (ends with), *= (contains) and following string meta fields:
1017 · ext: File extension
1019 · acodec: Name of the audio codec in use
1021 · vcodec: Name of the video codec in use
1023 · container: Name of the container format
1025 · protocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download,
1027 lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m, ism,
1028 http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native)
1029 · format_id: A short description of the format
1031 Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation ! in order to pro‐
1033 duce an opposite comparison, e.g. !*= (does not contain).
1034 Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be
1036 present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particu‐
1037 lar extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.
1038 Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a
1040 question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters,
1041 so -f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos
1042 where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.
1043 You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file us‐
1045 ing -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv in‐
1046 stalled), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best
1047 video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together
1048 with ffmpeg/avconv.
1049 Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if
1051 you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower
1052 than 480 you can use -f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'.
1053 Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses
1055 -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection (see #5447
1056 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/5447), #5456
1057 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/5456)). If ffmpeg or
1058 avconv are installed this results in downloading bestvideo and bestau‐
1059 dio separately and muxing them together into a single file giving the
1060 best overall quality available. Otherwise it falls back to best and
1061 results in downloading the best available quality served as a single
1062 file. best is also needed for videos that don't come from YouTube be‐
1063 cause they don't provide the audio and video in two different files.
1064 If you want to only download some DASH formats (for example if you are
1065 not interested in getting videos with a resolution higher than 1080p),
1066 you can add -f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best to your configu‐
1067 ration file. Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to stdout (and
1068 most likely to pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly
1069 specify output template as -o -, youtube-dl still uses -f best format
1070 selection in order to start content delivery immediately to your player
1071 and not to wait until bestvideo and bestaudio are downloaded and muxed.
1072 If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to
1074 youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available
1075 quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify
1076 your choice with -f best. You may want to add it to the configuration
1077 file in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
1078 Format selection examples
1080 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of sin‐
1081 gle.
1082 # Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
1084 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'
1085 # Download best format available but no better than 480p
1087 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'
1088 # Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
1090 $ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'
1091 # Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
1093 $ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'
1094 # Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
1096 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'
1097 Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as
1099 bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.
1100
1102 Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options --date,
1103 --datebefore or --dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:
1104 · Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
1106 · Relative dates: Dates in the format (now|to‐
1108 day)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?
1109 Examples:
1111 # Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
1113 $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months
1114 # Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
1116 $ youtube-dl --date 19700101
1117 $ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
1119 $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
1120
1122 How do I update youtube-dl?
1123 If you've followed our manual installation instructions (https://ytdl-
1124 org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html), you can simply run
1125 youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
1126 If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is suffi‐
1128 cient to update.
1129 If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like apt-get
1131 or yum, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that
1132 distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb,
1133 youtube-dl releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even
1134 daily. Simply go to https://yt-dl.org to find out the current version.
1135 Unfortunately, there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your
1136 distribution serves a really outdated version. You can (and should)
1137 complain to your distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
1138 As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your
1140 package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For
1141 that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
1142 sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
1144 Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions
1146 (https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html):
1147 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
1149 sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
1150 hash -r
1151 Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.
1153 youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
1155 Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.
1156 I'm getting an error
1158 Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
1159 YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so
1161 you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube
1162 videos.
1163 If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py
1165 or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do
1166 not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with
1167 Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs
1168 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/youtube-dl/+filebug) to the
1169 Ubuntu packaging people (mailto:ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com?sub‐
1170 ject=outdated%20version%20of%20youtube-dl) - all they have to do is up‐
1171 date the package to a somewhat recent version. See above for a way to
1172 update.
1173 I'm getting an error when trying to use output template:
1175 error: using output template conflicts with using ti‐
1176 tle, video ID or auto number
1177 Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title,
1179 --id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration
1180 file. Remove the latter if any.
1181 Do I always have to pass -citw?
1183 By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally,
1184 if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please
1185 file an issue where you explain that (https://yt-dl.org/bug)). There‐
1186 fore, it is unnecessary and sometimes harmful to copy long option
1187 strings from webpages. In particular, the only option out of -citw
1188 that is regularly useful is -i.
1189 Can you please put the -b option back?
1191 Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now de‐
1192 faults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by
1193 YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer
1194 need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not
1195 report them to be available in a specific high quality format you're
1196 interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and
1197 youtube-dl will try to download it.
1198 I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's
1200 this?
1201 Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download
1203 too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the
1204 CAPTCHA (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/154), but at the
1205 moment, your best course of action is pointing a web browser to the
1206 youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
1207 Do I need any other programs?
1209 youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want
1210 to convert video/audio, you'll need avconv (https://libav.org/) or ffm‐
1211 peg (https://www.ffmpeg.org/). On some sites - most notably YouTube -
1212 videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format without sound.
1213 youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present and automati‐
1214 cally pick the best option.
1215 Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be down‐
1217 loaded when rtmpdump (https://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/) is installed.
1218 Downloading MMS and RTSP videos requires either mplayer (https://mplay‐
1219 erhq.hu/) or mpv (https://mpv.io/) to be installed.
1220 I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
1222 Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv
1223 (https://mpv.io/), vlc (https://www.videolan.org/) or mplayer
1224 (https://www.mplayerhq.hu/).
1225 I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on
1227 another machine / in my web browser.
1228 It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video
1230 (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the
1231 same cookies and/or HTTP headers. Use the --cookies option to write
1232 the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read
1233 cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to
1234 be used, use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl.
1235 You can also get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output
1236 obtained with --dump-json.
1237 It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are
1239 only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of
1240 videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or us‐
1241 er-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
1242 Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are not supported by
1244 browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own
1245 downloader must support these as well.
1246 If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running
1248 youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs
1249 youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to std‐
1250 out, or simply allow the player to download the files written by
1251 youtube-dl in turn.
1252 ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
1254 YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
1255 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to up‐
1256 date youtube-dl.
1257 ERROR: unable to download video
1259 YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is
1260 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to up‐
1261 date youtube-dl.
1262 Video URL contains an ampersand and I'm getting some strange
1264 output [1] 2839 or 'v' is not recognized as an internal or exter‐
1265 nal command
1266 That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of
1268 the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing
1269 you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell
1270 from interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you
1271 have to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a back‐
1272 slash (which approach will work depends on your shell).
1273 For example if your URL is
1275 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with
1276 following command:
1277 youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'
1279 or
1281 youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc
1283 For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
1285 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"
1287 ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
1289 In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence
1290 in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See
1291 above for how to update youtube-dl.
1292 HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
1294 These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP ad‐
1295 dress because of overuse. Contact the service and ask them to unblock
1296 your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address al‐
1297 ready - use the --proxy or --source-address options to select another
1298 IP address.
1299 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
1301 The error
1302 File "youtube-dl", line 2
1304 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
1305 means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to
1307 Python 2.6 or 2.7.
1308 What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
1310 Since June 2012 (#342 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/is‐
1311 sues/342)) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unzip
1312 it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some systems) or
1313 clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify the code,
1314 you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile the ex‐
1315 ecutable, run make youtube-dl.
1316 The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll
1318 To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
1319 Redistributable Package (x86) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/down‐
1320 load/details.aspx?id=5555).
1321 On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should
1323 I put the exe files?
1324 If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're run‐
1326 ning the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
1327 To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for
1329 youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or
1330 C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there,
1331 and then set your PATH environment variable (https://www.ja‐
1332 va.com/en/download/help/path.xml) to include that directory.
1333 From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access
1335 both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg)
1336 by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're
1337 in.
1338 How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
1340 Use the -o to specify an output template, for example -o "/home/us‐
1341 er/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for all of your
1342 downloads, put the option into your configuration file.
1343 How do I download a video starting with a -?
1345 Either prepend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from
1346 the options with --:
1347 youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
1349 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
1350 How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
1352 Use the --cookies option, for example --cookies /path/to/cook‐
1353 ies/file.txt.
1354 In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser ex‐
1356 tension for exporting cookies. For example, cookies.txt
1357 (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cookiestxt/njabckikapfpffap‐
1358 mjgojcnbfjonfjfg) (for Chrome) or cookies.txt (https://addons.mozil‐
1359 la.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookies-txt/) (for Firefox).
1360 Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the
1362 first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or
1363 # Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format
1364 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline) in the cookies file and convert
1365 newlines if necessary to correspond with your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n)
1366 for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS,
1367 etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request when using --cookies is a good sign
1368 of invalid newline format.
1369 Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a
1371 particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use
1372 case is working around CAPTCHA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA)
1373 some websites require you to solve in particular cases in order to get
1374 access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
1375 How do I stream directly to media player?
1377 You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with
1378 -o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be
1379 capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For ex‐
1380 ample, streaming to vlc (https://www.videolan.org/) can be achieved
1381 with:
1382 youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
1384 How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
1386 Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially
1387 download the complete playlist with --download-archive /path/to/down‐
1388 load/archive/file.txt that will record identifiers of all the videos in
1389 a special file. Each subsequent run with the same --download-archive
1390 will download only new videos and skip all videos that have been down‐
1391 loaded before. Note that only successful downloads are recorded in the
1392 file.
1393 For example, at first,
1395 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1397 will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist
1399 and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download
1400 new videos if any:
1401 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1403 Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?
1405 When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with
1406 the built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly
1407 invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better
1408 than the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.
1409 When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a
1411 given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl
1412 will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the
1413 moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions
1414 of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or ffm‐
1415 peg.
1416 In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in
1418 the list of supported sites by youtube-dl (https://ytdl-
1419 org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html) cannot mandate one spe‐
1420 cific downloader.
1421 If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your
1423 configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download cor‐
1424 rectly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue (https://yt-
1425 dl.org/bug) or a pull request which details why the native or the ffm‐
1426 peg HLS downloader is a better choice for your use case.
1427 Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows
1429 current movies for free?
1430 As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not in‐
1432 clude support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As
1433 a rule of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is
1434 quite obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by
1435 the creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free
1436 license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
1437 A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but
1439 just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should not be
1440 included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the
1441 whole front page of the service is filled with videos they are not al‐
1442 lowed to distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the
1443 service shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.
1444 Support requests for services that do purchase the rights to distribute
1446 their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply
1447 include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
1448 How can I speed up work on my issue?
1450 (Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The
1451 youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to
1452 solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a
1453 while. To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
1454 First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker
1456 (https://yt-dl.org/bugs). That allows us to coordinate all efforts by
1457 users and developers, and serves as a unified point. Unfortunately,
1458 the youtube-dl project has grown too large to use personal email as an
1459 effective communication channel.
1460 Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack
1462 all the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell
1463 access to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the is‐
1464 sue from multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local cen‐
1465 sorship or misconfiguration issues.
1466 If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take
1468 matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay
1469 somebody else to do so).
1470 Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small com‐
1472 ment ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but
1473 fixed from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do
1474 not declare your issue as important or urgent.
1475 How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
1477 For one, have a look at the list of supported sites (docs/supported‐
1478 sites.md). Note that it can sometimes happen that the site changes its
1479 URL scheme (say, from https://example.com/video/1234567 to https://ex‐
1480 ample.com/v/1234567 ) and youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in
1481 that list as unsupported. In that case, simply report a bug.
1482 It is not possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's
1484 because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches all URLs.
1485 You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extrac‐
1486 tor, but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos
1487 from lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may
1488 also be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself.
1489 Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or
1490 removing the generic extractor.
1491 If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call
1493 youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is
1494 either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which
1495 by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or
1496 catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python pro‐
1497 gram.
1498
1500 Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting
1501 instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for
1502 instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old,
1503 because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general
1504 shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times
1505 before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if
1506 it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL
1507 they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid prob‐
1508 lems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
1509 youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so
1511 we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those
1512 simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be
1513 able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As
1514 such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's
1515 required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through
1516 some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of
1517 youtube-dl is current.
1518
1520 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds
1521 (https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html) or get them from
1522 their distribution.
1523 To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything ei‐
1525 ther. Simply execute
1526 python -m youtube_dl
1528 To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a
1530 test file directly; any of the following work:
1531 python -m unittest discover
1533 python test/test_download.py
1534 nosetests
1535 See item 6 of new extractor tutorial for how to run extractor specific
1537 test cases.
1538 If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
1540 · python
1542 · make (only GNU make is supported)
1544 · pandoc
1546 · zip
1548 · nosetests
1550 Adding support for a new site
1552 If you want to add support for a new site, first of all make sure this
1553 site is not dedicated to copyright infringement (README.md#can-you-add-
1554 support-for-this-anime-video-site-or-site-which-shows-current-movies-
1555 for-free). youtube-dl does not support such sites thus pull requests
1556 adding support for them will be rejected.
1557 After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally,
1559 you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called yourex‐
1560 tractor):
1561 1. Fork this repository (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/fork)
1563 2. Check out the source code with:
1565 git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
1567 3. Start a new git branch with
1569 cd youtube-dl
1571 git checkout -b yourextractor
1572 4. Start with this simple template and save it to youtube_dl/extrac‐
1574 tor/yourextractor.py:
1575 # coding: utf-8
1577 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1578 from .common import InfoExtractor
1580 class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
1583 _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
1584 _TEST = {
1585 'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
1586 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
1587 'info_dict': {
1588 'id': '42',
1589 'ext': 'mp4',
1590 'title': 'Video title goes here',
1591 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
1592 # TODO more properties, either as:
1593 # * A value
1594 # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
1595 # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
1596 # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
1597 }
1598 }
1599 def _real_extract(self, url):
1601 video_id = self._match_id(url)
1602 webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
1603 # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
1605 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
1606 return {
1608 'id': video_id,
1609 'title': title,
1610 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
1611 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
1612 # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
1613 }
1614 5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1616 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/ex‐
1617 tractor/extractors.py).
1618 6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor.
1620 This should fail at first, but you can continually re-run it until
1621 you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename
1622 _TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests
1623 will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor, TestDown‐
1624 load.test_YourExtractor_1, TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc.
1625 Note that tests with only_matching key in test's dict are not
1626 counted in.
1627 7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py
1629 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/ex‐
1630 tractor/common.py) for possible helper methods and a detailed de‐
1631 scription of what your extractor should and may return
1632 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1633 dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extrac‐
1634 tor/common.py#L94-L303). Add tests and code for as many as you
1635 want.
1636 8. Make sure your code follows youtube-dl coding conventions and check
1638 the code with flake8 (http://flake8.pycqa.org/en/latest/in‐
1639 dex.html#quickstart):
1640 $ flake8 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1642 9. Make sure your code works under all Python
1644 (https://www.python.org/) versions claimed supported by youtube-dl,
1645 namely 2.6, 2.7, and 3.2+.
1646 10. When the tests pass, add (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-add) the new
1648 files and commit (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit) them and
1649 push (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push) the result, like this:
1650 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1652 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1653 $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
1654 $ git push origin yourextractor
1655 11. Finally, create a pull request (https://help.github.com/arti‐
1657 cles/creating-a-pull-request). We'll then review and merge it.
1658 In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
1660 youtube-dl coding conventions
1662 This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and
1663 future-proof extractor code.
1664 Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout
1666 of the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your con‐
1667 trol and this layout tends to change. As an extractor implementer your
1668 task is not only to write code that will extract media links and meta‐
1669 data correctly but also to minimize dependency on the source's layout
1670 and even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready
1671 for that. This is important because it will allow the extractor not to
1672 break on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions
1673 working. Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a
1674 new version of youtube-dl with a fix incorporated, all the previous
1675 versions become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that
1676 may not be so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say,
1677 some non rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
1678 Mandatory and optional metafields
1680 For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor ex‐
1681 tracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an information dictio‐
1682 nary (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1683 dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extrac‐
1684 tor/common.py#L94-L303) or simply info dict. Only the following meta
1685 fields in the info dict are considered mandatory for a successful ex‐
1686 traction process by youtube-dl:
1687 · id (media identifier)
1689 · title (media title)
1691 · url (media download URL) or formats
1693 In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you
1695 can't figure out the download location of the media the extraction does
1696 not make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats id and
1697 title as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the criti‐
1698 cal data that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any
1699 of them fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered complete‐
1700 ly broken.
1701 Any field (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1703 dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extrac‐
1704 tor/common.py#L188-L303) apart from the aforementioned ones are consid‐
1705 ered optional. That means that extraction should be tolerant to situa‐
1706 tions when sources for these fields can potentially be unavailable
1707 (even if they are always available at the moment) and future-proof in
1708 order not to break the extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
1709 Example
1711 Say you have some source dictionary meta that you've fetched as JSON
1712 with HTTP request and it has a key summary:
1713 meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
1715 Assume at this point meta's layout is:
1717 {
1719 ...
1720 "summary": "some fancy summary text",
1721 ...
1722 }
1723 Assume you want to extract summary and put it into the resulting info
1725 dict as description. Since description is an optional meta field you
1726 should be ready that this key may be missing from the meta dict, so
1727 that you should extract it like:
1728 description = meta.get('summary') # correct
1730 and not like:
1732 description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
1734 The latter will break extraction process with KeyError if summary dis‐
1736 appears from meta at some later time but with the former approach ex‐
1737 traction will just go ahead with description set to None which is per‐
1738 fectly fine (remember None is equivalent to the absence of data).
1739 Similarly, you should pass fatal=False when extracting optional data
1741 from a webpage with _search_regex, _html_search_regex or similar meth‐
1742 ods, for instance:
1743 description = self._search_regex(
1745 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1746 webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
1747 With fatal set to False if _search_regex fails to extract description
1749 it will emit a warning and continue extraction.
1750 You can also pass default=<some fallback value>, for example:
1752 description = self._search_regex(
1754 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1755 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1756 On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with de‐
1758 scription set to None. That is useful for metafields that may or may
1759 not be present.
1760 Provide fallbacks
1762 When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For exam‐
1763 ple if title is present in several places, try extracting from at least
1764 some of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the
1765 sources become unavailable.
1766 Example
1768 Say meta from the previous example has a title and you are about to ex‐
1769 tract it. Since title is a mandatory meta field you should end up with
1770 something like:
1771 title = meta['title']
1773 If title disappears from meta in future due to some changes on the
1775 hoster's side the extraction would fail since title is mandatory.
1776 That's expected.
1777 Assume that you have some another source you can extract title from,
1779 for example og:title HTML meta of a webpage. In this case you can pro‐
1780 vide a fallback scenario:
1781 title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
1783 This code will try to extract from meta first and if it fails it will
1785 try extracting og:title from a webpage.
1786 Regular expressions
1788 Don't capture groups you don't use
1789 Capturing group must be an indication that it's used somewhere in the
1790 code. Any group that is not used must be non capturing.
1791 Example
1793 Don't capture id attribute name here since you can't use it for any‐
1794 thing anyway.
1795 Correct:
1797 r'(?:id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
1799 Incorrect:
1801 r'(id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
1803 Make regular expressions relaxed and flexible
1805 When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy, relaxed and
1806 flexible, skipping insignificant parts that are more likely to change,
1807 allowing both single and double quotes for quoted values and so on.
1808 Example
1810 Say you need to extract title from the following HTML code:
1811 <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
1813 The code for that task should look similar to:
1815 title = self._search_regex(
1817 r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
1818 Or even better:
1820 title = self._search_regex(
1822 r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
1823 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1824 Note how you tolerate potential changes in the style attribute's value
1826 or switch from using double quotes to single for class attribute:
1827 The code definitely should not look like:
1829 title = self._search_regex(
1831 r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
1832 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1833 Long lines policy
1835 There is a soft limit to keep lines of code under 80 characters long.
1836 This means it should be respected if possible and if it does not make
1837 readability and code maintenance worse.
1838 For example, you should never split long string literals like URLs or
1840 some other often copied entities over multiple lines to fit this limit:
1841 Correct:
1843 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list=PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
1845 Incorrect:
1847 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list='
1849 'PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
1850 Use convenience conversion and parsing functions
1852 Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from
1853 youtube_dl/utils.py (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/mas‐
1854 ter/youtube_dl/utils.py): int_or_none, float_or_none. Use them for
1855 string to number conversions as well.
1856 Use url_or_none for safe URL processing.
1858 Use try_get for safe metadata extraction from parsed JSON.
1860 Use unified_strdate for uniform upload_date or any YYYYMMDD meta field
1862 extraction, unified_timestamp for uniform timestamp extraction,
1863 parse_filesize for filesize extraction, parse_count for count meta
1864 fields extraction, parse_resolution, parse_duration for duration ex‐
1865 traction, parse_age_limit for age_limit extraction.
1866 Explore youtube_dl/utils.py (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1868 dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/utils.py) for more useful convenience func‐
1869 tions.
1870 More examples
1872 Safely extract optional description from parsed JSON
1873 description = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0]['summary'], compat_str)
1874 Safely extract more optional metadata
1876 video = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0], dict) or {}
1877 description = video.get('summary')
1878 duration = float_or_none(video.get('durationMs'), scale=1000)
1879 view_count = int_or_none(video.get('views'))
1880
1882 youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and
1883 thus should be callable from any programming language. If you en‐
1884 counter any problems parsing its output, feel free to create a report
1885 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/new).
1886 From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful
1888 fashion, like this:
1889 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1891 import youtube_dl
1892 ydl_opts = {}
1894 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1895 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1896 Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options
1898 available, have a look at youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
1899 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1900 dl/blob/3e4cedf9e8cd3157df2457df7274d0c842421945/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py#L137-L312).
1901 For a start, if you want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a logger
1902 object.
1903 Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors
1905 (and a short message after the download is finished), and down‐
1906 loads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
1907 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1909 import youtube_dl
1910 class MyLogger(object):
1913 def debug(self, msg):
1914 pass
1915 def warning(self, msg):
1917 pass
1918 def error(self, msg):
1920 print(msg)
1921 def my_hook(d):
1924 if d['status'] == 'finished':
1925 print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
1926 ydl_opts = {
1929 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
1930 'postprocessors': [{
1931 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
1932 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
1933 'preferredquality': '192',
1934 }],
1935 'logger': MyLogger(),
1936 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
1937 }
1938 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1939 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1940
1942 Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: <https://github.com/ytdl-
1943 org/youtube-dl/issues>. Unless you were prompted to or there is anoth‐
1944 er pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug report),
1945 please do not send bug reports via personal email. For discussions,
1946 join us in the IRC channel #youtube-dl (irc://chat.freen‐
1947 ode.net/#youtube-dl) on freenode (webchat (https://webchat.freen‐
1948 ode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=youtube-dl)).
1949 Please include the full output of youtube-dl when run with -v, i.e.
1951 add -v flag to your command line, copy the whole output and post it in
1952 the issue body wrapped in ``` for better formatting. It should look
1953 similar to this:
1954 $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
1956 [debug] System config: []
1957 [debug] User config: []
1958 [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
1959 [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
1960 [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
1961 [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
1962 [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
1963 [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
1964 [debug] Proxy map: {}
1965 ...
1966 Do not post screenshots of verbose logs; only plain text is acceptable.
1968 The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging in‐
1970 formation. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible
1971 and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
1972 Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common mis‐
1974 takes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
1975 Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
1977 We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in
1978 most cases we eventually get the required information after asking back
1979 multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many
1980 contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may
1981 misread some parts.
1982 So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you
1984 want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
1985 · What the problem is
1987 · How it could be fixed
1989 · How your proposed solution would look like
1991 If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly miss‐
1993 ing some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're
1994 often too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info
1995 makes misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get
1996 frustrated by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move
1997 forward on them is to ask for clarification over and over.
1998 For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the com‐
2000 plete output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag. The error
2001 message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe
2002 how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
2003 If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding
2005 --call-home may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error
2006 is ERROR: Unable to extract ... and you cannot reproduce it from multi‐
2007 ple countries, add --dump-pages (warning: this will yield a rather
2008 large output, redirect it to the file log.txt by adding >log.txt 2>&1
2009 to your command-line) or upload the .dump files you get when you add
2010 --write-pages somewhere (https://gist.github.com/).
2011 Site support requests must contain an example URL. An example URL is a
2013 URL you might want to download, like
2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc. There should be an obvi‐
2015 ous video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main
2016 page of a video service (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/) is not an ex‐
2017 ample URL.
2018 Are you using the latest version?
2020 Before reporting any issue, type youtube-dl -U. This should report
2021 that you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are al‐
2022 ready fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for
2023 feature requests as well.
2024 Is the issue already documented?
2026 Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying
2027 to open. Search at the top of the window or browse the GitHub Issues
2028 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/search?type=Issues) of this
2029 repository. If there is an issue, feel free to write something along
2030 the lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01. Here
2031 is some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may be
2032 old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
2033 Why are existing options not enough?
2035 Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at the list
2036 of supported options (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/mas‐
2037 ter/README.md#options). Many feature requests are for features that
2038 actually exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in
2039 the issue report and detail how the existing similar options do not
2040 solve your problem.
2041 Is there enough context in your bug report?
2043 People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by
2044 breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already
2045 downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look
2046 whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However,
2047 what often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps:
2048 One simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
2049 We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original
2051 problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded
2052 video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the
2053 greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature
2054 request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should
2055 contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing
2056 feature would be useful.
2057 Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
2059 Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or
2060 should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open.
2061 While it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one
2062 ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot
2063 mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads
2064 to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth, un‐
2065 til someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
2066 In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to
2068 services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using
2069 the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user
2070 videos, White house podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue.
2071 Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature re‐
2072 quests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include outputs
2073 of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at hand.
2074 Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for a new
2075 video service.
2076 Is anyone going to need the feature?
2078 Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can person‐
2079 ally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like a
2080 good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by some‐
2081 one who requires them.
2082 Is your question about youtube-dl?
2084 It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely
2085 unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different, or even the re‐
2086 porter's own, application. Please make sure that you are actually us‐
2087 ing youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug
2088 to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the
2089 other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is
2090 related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
2091
2093 youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
2094 This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton
2096 (https://github.com/dbbolton) and is likewise released into the public
2097 domain.
2098 YOUTUBE-DL(1)