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,c url,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 --output-na-placeholder PLACEHOLDER
277 Placeholder value for unavailable meta fields in output filename
278 template (default is "NA")
279 --autonumber-start NUMBER
281 Specify the start value for %(autonumber)s (default is 1)
282 --restrict-filenames
284 Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters, and avoid "&" and
285 spaces in filenames
286 -w, --no-overwrites
288 Do not overwrite files
289 -c, --continue
291 Force resume of partially downloaded files. By default,
292 youtube-dl will resume downloads if possible.
293 --no-continue
295 Do not resume partially downloaded files (restart from begin‐
296 ning)
297 --no-part
299 Do not use .part files - write directly into output file
300 --no-mtime
302 Do not use the Last-modified header to set the file modification
303 time
304 --write-description
306 Write video description to a .description file
307 --write-info-json
309 Write video metadata to a .info.json file
310 --write-annotations
312 Write video annotations to a .annotations.xml file
313 --load-info-json FILE
315 JSON file containing the video information (created with the
316 "--write- info-json" option)
317 --cookies FILE
319 File to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in
320 --cache-dir DIR
322 Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl can store some down‐
323 loaded information permanently. By default
324 $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the mo‐
325 ment, only YouTube player files (for videos with obfuscated sig‐
326 natures) are cached, but that may change.
327 --no-cache-dir
329 Disable filesystem caching
330 --rm-cache-dir
332 Delete all filesystem cache files
333 Thumbnail images:
335 --write-thumbnail
336 Write thumbnail image to disk
337 --write-all-thumbnails
339 Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
340 --list-thumbnails
342 Simulate and list all available thumbnail formats
343 Verbosity / Simulation Options:
345 -q, --quiet
346 Activate quiet mode
347 --no-warnings
349 Ignore warnings
350 -s, --simulate
352 Do not download the video and do not write anything to disk
353 --skip-download
355 Do not download the video
356 -g, --get-url
358 Simulate, quiet but print URL
359 -e, --get-title
361 Simulate, quiet but print title
362 --get-id
364 Simulate, quiet but print id
365 --get-thumbnail
367 Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
368 --get-description
370 Simulate, quiet but print video description
371 --get-duration
373 Simulate, quiet but print video length
374 --get-filename
376 Simulate, quiet but print output filename
377 --get-format
379 Simulate, quiet but print output format
380 -j, --dump-json
382 Simulate, quiet but print JSON information. See the "OUTPUT
383 TEMPLATE" for a description of available keys.
384 -J, --dump-single-json
386 Simulate, quiet but print JSON information for each command-line
387 argument. If the URL refers to a playlist, dump the whole
388 playlist information in a single line.
389 --print-json
391 Be quiet and print the video information as JSON (video is still
392 being downloaded).
393 --newline
395 Output progress bar as new lines
396 --no-progress
398 Do not print progress bar
399 --console-title
401 Display progress in console titlebar
402 -v, --verbose
404 Print various debugging information
405 --dump-pages
407 Print downloaded pages encoded using base64 to debug problems
408 (very verbose)
409 --write-pages
411 Write downloaded intermediary pages to files in the current di‐
412 rectory to debug problems
413 --print-traffic
415 Display sent and read HTTP traffic
416 -C, --call-home
418 Contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
419 --no-call-home
421 Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
422 Workarounds:
424 --encoding ENCODING
425 Force the specified encoding (experimental)
426 --no-check-certificate
428 Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
429 --prefer-insecure
431 Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve information about the
432 video. (Currently supported only for YouTube)
433 --user-agent UA
435 Specify a custom user agent
436 --referer URL
438 Specify a custom referer, use if the video access is restricted
439 to one domain
440 --add-header FIELD:VALUE
442 Specify a custom HTTP header and its value, separated by a colon
443 ':'. You can use this option multiple times
444 --bidi-workaround
446 Work around terminals that lack bidirectional text support. Re‐
447 quires bidiv or fribidi executable in PATH
448 --sleep-interval SECONDS
450 Number of seconds to sleep before each download when used alone
451 or a lower bound of a range for randomized sleep before each
452 download (minimum possible number of seconds to sleep) when used
453 along with --max-sleep-interval.
454 --max-sleep-interval SECONDS
456 Upper bound of a range for randomized sleep before each download
457 (maximum possible number of seconds to sleep). Must only be
458 used along with --min- sleep-interval.
459 Video Format Options:
461 -f, --format FORMAT
462 Video format code, see the "FORMAT SELECTION" for all the info
463 --all-formats
465 Download all available video formats
466 --prefer-free-formats
468 Prefer free video formats unless a specific one is requested
469 -F, --list-formats
471 List all available formats of requested videos
472 --youtube-skip-dash-manifest
474 Do not download the DASH manifests and related data on YouTube
475 videos
476 --merge-output-format FORMAT
478 If a merge is required (e.g. bestvideo+bestaudio), output to
479 given container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg, webm, flv. Ig‐
480 nored if no merge is required
481 Subtitle Options:
483 --write-sub
484 Write subtitle file
485 --write-auto-sub
487 Write automatically generated subtitle file (YouTube only)
488 --all-subs
490 Download all the available subtitles of the video
491 --list-subs
493 List all available subtitles for the video
494 --sub-format FORMAT
496 Subtitle format, accepts formats preference, for example: "srt"
497 or "ass/srt/best"
498 --sub-lang LANGS
500 Languages of the subtitles to download (optional) separated by
501 commas, use --list-subs for available language tags
502 Authentication Options:
504 -u, --username USERNAME
505 Login with this account ID
506 -p, --password PASSWORD
508 Account password. If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
509 ask interactively.
510 -2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR
512 Two-factor authentication code
513 -n, --netrc
515 Use .netrc authentication data
516 --video-password PASSWORD
518 Video password (vimeo, youku)
519 Adobe Pass Options:
521 --ap-mso MSO
522 Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV provider) identifier,
523 use --ap-list-mso for a list of available MSOs
524 --ap-username USERNAME
526 Multiple-system operator account login
527 --ap-password PASSWORD
529 Multiple-system operator account password. If this option is
530 left out, youtube-dl will ask interactively.
531 --ap-list-mso
533 List all supported multiple-system operators
534 Post-processing Options:
536 -x, --extract-audio
537 Convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg/avconv
538 and ffprobe/avprobe)
539 --audio-format FORMAT
541 Specify audio format: "best", "aac", "flac", "mp3", "m4a",
542 "opus", "vorbis", or "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without
543 -x
544 --audio-quality QUALITY
546 Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert a value between 0
547 (better) and 9 (worse) for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K
548 (default 5)
549 --recode-video FORMAT
551 Encode the video to another format if necessary (currently sup‐
552 ported: mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
553 --postprocessor-args ARGS
555 Give these arguments to the postprocessor
556 -k, --keep-video
558 Keep the video file on disk after the post-processing; the video
559 is erased by default
560 --no-post-overwrites
562 Do not overwrite post-processed files; the post-processed files
563 are overwritten by default
564 --embed-subs
566 Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4, webm and mkv videos)
567 --embed-thumbnail
569 Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
570 --add-metadata
572 Write metadata to the video file
573 --metadata-from-title FORMAT
575 Parse additional metadata like song title / artist from the
576 video title. The format syntax is the same as --output. Regu‐
577 lar expression with named capture groups may also be used. The
578 parsed parameters replace existing values. Example: --metada‐
579 ta-from-title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a title like
580 "Coldplay - Paradise". Example (regex): --metadata-from-title
581 "(?P.+?) - (?P
582 .+)"
583 --xattrs
585 Write metadata to the video file's xattrs (using dublin core and
586 xdg standards)
587 --fixup POLICY
589 Automatically correct known faults of the file. One of never
590 (do nothing), warn (only emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
591 default; fix file if we can, warn otherwise)
592 --prefer-avconv
594 Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the postprocessors
595 --prefer-ffmpeg
597 Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the postprocessors (de‐
598 fault)
599 --ffmpeg-location PATH
601 Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary; either the path to the bi‐
602 nary or its containing directory.
603 --exec CMD
605 Execute a command on the file after downloading and post-pro‐
606 cessing, similar to find's -exec syntax. Example: --exec 'adb
607 push {} /sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
608 --convert-subs FORMAT
610 Convert the subtitles to other format (currently supported:
611 srt|ass|vtt|lrc)
612
614 You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line op‐
615 tion to a configuration file. On Linux and macOS, the system wide con‐
616 figuration file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide
617 configuration file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the us‐
618 er wide configuration file locations are %APPDATA%\youtube-dl\con‐
619 fig.txt or C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf. Note that by default
620 configuration file may not exist so you may need to create it yourself.
621 For example, with the following configuration file youtube-dl will al‐
623 ways extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all
624 videos under Movies directory in your home directory:
625 # Lines starting with # are comments
627 # Always extract audio
629 -x
630 # Do not copy the mtime
632 --no-mtime
633 # Use this proxy
635 --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
636 # Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
638 -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
639 Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka
641 switches used in regular command line calls thus there must be no
642 whitespace after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.
643 You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration
645 file for a particular youtube-dl run.
646 You can also use --config-location if you want to use custom configura‐
648 tion file for a particular youtube-dl run.
649 Authentication with .netrc file
651 You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for ex‐
652 tractors that support authentication (by providing login and password
653 with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as
654 command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent track‐
655 ing plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve
656 this using a .netrc file (https://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info)
657 on a per extractor basis. For that you will need to create a .netrc
658 file in your $HOME and restrict permissions to read/write by only you:
659 touch $HOME/.netrc
661 chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
662 After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following
664 format, where extractor is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
665 machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
667 For example:
669 machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
671 machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password
672 To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc
674 to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.
675 On Windows you may also need to setup the %HOME% environment variable
677 manually. For example:
678 set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
680
682 The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file
683 names.
684 tl;dr: navigate me to examples.
686 The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a
688 single file, like in youtube-dl -o fun‐
689 ny_video.flv "https://some/video". However, it may contain special se‐
690 quences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special
691 sequences may be formatted according to python string formatting opera‐
692 tions (https://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#string-format‐
693 ting). For example, %(NAME)s or %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a
694 percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses, followed by format‐
695 ting operations. Allowed names along with sequence type are:
696 · id (string): Video identifier
698 · title (string): Video title
700 · url (string): Video URL
702 · ext (string): Video filename extension
704 · alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
706 · display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
708 · uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
710 · license (string): License name the video is licensed under
712 · creator (string): The creator of the video
714 · release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was re‐
716 leased
717 · timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became
719 available
720 · upload_date (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
722 · uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
724 · channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on
726 · channel_id (string): Id of the channel
728 · location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
730 · duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
732 · view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the
734 platform
735 · like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
737 · dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
739 · repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
741 · average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale
743 used depends on the webpage
744 · comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video
746 · age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
748 · is_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a
750 fixed-length video
751 · start_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
753 start, as specified in the URL
754 · end_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
756 end, as specified in the URL
757 · format (string): A human-readable description of the format
759 · format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
761 · format_note (string): Additional info about the format
763 · width (numeric): Width of the video
765 · height (numeric): Height of the video
767 · resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
769 · tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
771 · abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
773 · acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
775 · asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
777 · vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
779 · fps (numeric): Frame rate
781 · vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
783 · container (string): Name of the container format
785 · filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
787 · filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
789 · protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual
791 download
792 · extractor (string): Name of the extractor
794 · extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
796 · epoch (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
798 · autonumber (numeric): Number that will be increased with each down‐
800 load, starting at --autonumber-start
801 · playlist (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the video
803 · playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded
805 with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
806 · playlist_id (string): Playlist identifier
808 · playlist_title (string): Playlist title
810 · playlist_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader
812 · playlist_uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist upload‐
814 er
815 Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or sec‐
817 tion:
818 · chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
820 · chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
822 · chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
824 Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
826 · series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode
828 belongs to
829 · season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
831 · season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode be‐
833 longs to
834 · season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
836 · episode (string): Title of the video episode
838 · episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a season
840 · episode_id (string): Id of the video episode
842 Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
844 · track (string): Title of the track
846 · track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disc
848 · track_id (string): Id of the track
850 · artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
852 · genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
854 · album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
856 · album_type (string): Type of the album
858 · album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
860 · disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium
862 the track belongs to
863 · release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
865 Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will
867 be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name.
868 Note that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since
869 they depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such
870 sequences will be replaced with placeholder value provided with --out‐
871 put-na-placeholder (NA by default).
872 For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title
874 youtube-dl test video and id BaW_jenozKcj, this will result in a
875 youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4 file created in the current di‐
876 rectory.
877 For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for exam‐
879 ple, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded
880 with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.
881 Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g.
883 -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' which will re‐
884 sult in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this
885 path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for
886 you.
887 To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to
889 stdout use -o -.
890 The current default template is %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s.
892 In some cases, you don't want special characters such as 中, spaces, or
894 &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows sys‐
895 tem or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases,
896 add the --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:
897 Output template and Windows batch files
899 If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then
900 you must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that
901 -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become -o "%%(ti‐
902 tle)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that are not
903 plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion should stay
904 intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
905 Output template examples
907 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of sin‐
908 gle.
909 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
911 youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
912 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
914 youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
915 # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
917 $ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re
918 # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
920 $ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists
921 # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
923 $ 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/
924 # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
926 $ 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
927 # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
929 $ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc
930
932 By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality,
933 i.e. if you want the best quality you don't need to pass any special
934 options, youtube-dl will guess it for you by default.
935 But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for exam‐
937 ple when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key mecha‐
938 nism for achieving this is so-called format selection based on which
939 you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on some
940 criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
941 The general syntax for format selection is --format FORMAT or shorter
943 -f FORMAT where FORMAT is a selector expression, i.e. an expression
944 that describes format or formats you would like to download.
945 tl;dr: navigate me to examples.
947 The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with
949 -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You
950 can get the list of available format codes for particular video using
951 --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor spe‐
952 cific.
953 You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3,
955 mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format
956 of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm
957 will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as
958 a single file.
959 You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:
961 · best: Select the best quality format represented by a single file
963 with video and audio.
964 · worst: Select the worst quality format represented by a single file
966 with video and audio.
967 · bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format (e.g. DASH
969 video). May not be available.
970 · worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be
972 available.
973 · bestaudio: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be
975 available.
976 · worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May not be
978 available.
979 For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can
981 use -f worstvideo.
982 If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same
984 formats available, you can specify the order of preference using slash‐
985 es. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left
986 hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format
987 22 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's
988 available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available, oth‐
989 erwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for
990 download.
991 If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma
993 as a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three for‐
994 mats, of course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example
995 combined with the precedence feature:
996 -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
997 You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brack‐
999 ets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
1000 The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=,
1002 >, >=, = (equals), != (not equals):
1003 · filesize: The number of bytes, if known in advance
1005 · width: Width of the video, if known
1007 · height: Height of the video, if known
1009 · tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
1011 · abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
1013 · vbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
1015 · asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz
1017 · fps: Frame rate
1019 Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $=
1021 (ends with), *= (contains) and following string meta fields:
1022 · ext: File extension
1024 · acodec: Name of the audio codec in use
1026 · vcodec: Name of the video codec in use
1028 · container: Name of the container format
1030 · protocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download,
1032 lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m, ism,
1033 http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native)
1034 · format_id: A short description of the format
1036 · language: Language code
1038 Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation ! in order to pro‐
1040 duce an opposite comparison, e.g. !*= (does not contain).
1041 Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be
1043 present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particu‐
1044 lar extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.
1045 Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a
1047 question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters,
1048 so -f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos
1049 where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.
1050 You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file us‐
1052 ing -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv in‐
1053 stalled), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best
1054 video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together
1055 with ffmpeg/avconv.
1056 Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if
1058 you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower
1059 than 480 you can use -f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'.
1060 Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses
1062 -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection (see #5447
1063 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/5447), #5456
1064 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/5456)). If ffmpeg or
1065 avconv are installed this results in downloading bestvideo and bestau‐
1066 dio separately and muxing them together into a single file giving the
1067 best overall quality available. Otherwise it falls back to best and
1068 results in downloading the best available quality served as a single
1069 file. best is also needed for videos that don't come from YouTube be‐
1070 cause they don't provide the audio and video in two different files.
1071 If you want to only download some DASH formats (for example if you are
1072 not interested in getting videos with a resolution higher than 1080p),
1073 you can add -f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best to your configu‐
1074 ration file. Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to stdout (and
1075 most likely to pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly
1076 specify output template as -o -, youtube-dl still uses -f best format
1077 selection in order to start content delivery immediately to your player
1078 and not to wait until bestvideo and bestaudio are downloaded and muxed.
1079 If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to
1081 youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available
1082 quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify
1083 your choice with -f best. You may want to add it to the configuration
1084 file in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
1085 Format selection examples
1087 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of sin‐
1088 gle.
1089 # Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
1091 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'
1092 # Download best format available but no better than 480p
1094 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'
1095 # Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
1097 $ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'
1098 # Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
1100 $ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'
1101 # Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
1103 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'
1104 Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as
1106 bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.
1107
1109 Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options --date,
1110 --datebefore or --dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:
1111 · Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
1113 · Relative dates: Dates in the format (now|to‐
1115 day)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?
1116 Examples:
1118 # Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
1120 $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months
1121 # Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
1123 $ youtube-dl --date 19700101
1124 $ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
1126 $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
1127
1129 How do I update youtube-dl?
1130 If you've followed our manual installation instructions (https://ytdl-
1131 org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html), you can simply run
1132 youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
1133 If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is suffi‐
1135 cient to update.
1136 If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like apt-get
1138 or yum, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that
1139 distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb,
1140 youtube-dl releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even
1141 daily. Simply go to https://yt-dl.org to find out the current version.
1142 Unfortunately, there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your
1143 distribution serves a really outdated version. You can (and should)
1144 complain to your distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
1145 As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your
1147 package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For
1148 that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
1149 sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
1151 Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions
1153 (https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html):
1154 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
1156 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
1157 hash -r
1158 Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.
1160 youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
1162 Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.
1163 I'm getting an error
1165 Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
1166 YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so
1168 you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube
1169 videos.
1170 If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py
1172 or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do
1173 not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with
1174 Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs
1175 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/youtube-dl/+filebug) to the
1176 Ubuntu packaging people (mailto:ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com?sub‐
1177 ject=outdated%20version%20of%20youtube-dl) - all they have to do is up‐
1178 date the package to a somewhat recent version. See above for a way to
1179 update.
1180 I'm getting an error when trying to use output template:
1182 error: using output template conflicts with using ti‐
1183 tle, video ID or auto number
1184 Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title,
1186 --id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration
1187 file. Remove the latter if any.
1188 Do I always have to pass -citw?
1190 By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally,
1191 if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please
1192 file an issue where you explain that (https://yt-dl.org/bug)). There‐
1193 fore, it is unnecessary and sometimes harmful to copy long option
1194 strings from webpages. In particular, the only option out of -citw
1195 that is regularly useful is -i.
1196 Can you please put the -b option back?
1198 Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now de‐
1199 faults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by
1200 YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer
1201 need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not
1202 report them to be available in a specific high quality format you're
1203 interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and
1204 youtube-dl will try to download it.
1205 I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's
1207 this?
1208 Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download
1210 too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the
1211 CAPTCHA (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/154), but at the
1212 moment, your best course of action is pointing a web browser to the
1213 youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
1214 Do I need any other programs?
1216 youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want
1217 to convert video/audio, you'll need avconv (https://libav.org/) or ffm‐
1218 peg (https://www.ffmpeg.org/). On some sites - most notably YouTube -
1219 videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format without sound.
1220 youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present and automati‐
1221 cally pick the best option.
1222 Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be down‐
1224 loaded when rtmpdump (https://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/) is installed.
1225 Downloading MMS and RTSP videos requires either mplayer (https://mplay‐
1226 erhq.hu/) or mpv (https://mpv.io/) to be installed.
1227 I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
1229 Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv
1230 (https://mpv.io/), vlc (https://www.videolan.org/) or mplayer
1231 (https://www.mplayerhq.hu/).
1232 I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on
1234 another machine / in my web browser.
1235 It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video
1237 (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the
1238 same cookies and/or HTTP headers. Use the --cookies option to write
1239 the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read
1240 cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to
1241 be used, use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl.
1242 You can also get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output
1243 obtained with --dump-json.
1244 It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are
1246 only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of
1247 videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or us‐
1248 er-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
1249 Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are not supported by
1251 browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own
1252 downloader must support these as well.
1253 If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running
1255 youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs
1256 youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to std‐
1257 out, or simply allow the player to download the files written by
1258 youtube-dl in turn.
1259 ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
1261 YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
1262 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to up‐
1263 date youtube-dl.
1264 ERROR: unable to download video
1266 YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is
1267 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to up‐
1268 date youtube-dl.
1269 Video URL contains an ampersand and I'm getting some strange
1271 output [1] 2839 or 'v' is not recognized as an internal or exter‐
1272 nal command
1273 That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of
1275 the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing
1276 you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell
1277 from interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you
1278 have to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a back‐
1279 slash (which approach will work depends on your shell).
1280 For example if your URL is
1282 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with
1283 following command:
1284 youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'
1286 or
1288 youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc
1290 For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
1292 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"
1294 ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
1296 In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence
1297 in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See
1298 above for how to update youtube-dl.
1299 HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
1301 These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP ad‐
1302 dress because of overuse. Usually this is a soft block meaning that
1303 you can gain access again after solving CAPTCHA. Just open a browser
1304 and solve a CAPTCHA the service suggests you and after that pass cook‐
1305 ies to youtube-dl. Note that if your machine has multiple external IPs
1306 then you should also pass exactly the same IP you've used for solving
1307 CAPTCHA with --source-address. Also you may need to pass a User-Agent
1308 HTTP header of your browser with --user-agent.
1309 If this is not the case (no CAPTCHA suggested to solve by the service)
1311 then you can contact the service and ask them to unblock your IP ad‐
1312 dress, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address already - use
1313 the --proxy or --source-address options to select another IP address.
1314 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
1316 The error
1317 File "youtube-dl", line 2
1319 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
1320 means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to
1322 Python 2.6 or 2.7.
1323 What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
1325 Since June 2012 (#342 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/is‐
1326 sues/342)) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unzip
1327 it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some systems) or
1328 clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify the code,
1329 you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile the ex‐
1330 ecutable, run make youtube-dl.
1331 The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll
1333 To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
1334 Redistributable Package (x86) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/down‐
1335 load/details.aspx?id=5555).
1336 On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should
1338 I put the exe files?
1339 If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're run‐
1341 ning the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
1342 To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for
1344 youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or
1345 C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there,
1346 and then set your PATH environment variable (https://www.ja‐
1347 va.com/en/download/help/path.xml) to include that directory.
1348 From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access
1350 both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg)
1351 by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're
1352 in.
1353 How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
1355 Use the -o to specify an output template, for example -o "/home/us‐
1356 er/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for all of your
1357 downloads, put the option into your configuration file.
1358 How do I download a video starting with a -?
1360 Either prepend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from
1361 the options with --:
1362 youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
1364 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
1365 How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
1367 Use the --cookies option, for example --cookies /path/to/cook‐
1368 ies/file.txt.
1369 In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser ex‐
1371 tension for exporting cookies. For example, Get cookies.txt
1372 (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-cookiestxt/bgaddhkodda‐
1373 jcdgocldbbfleckgcbcid/) (for Chrome) or cookies.txt (https://ad‐
1374 dons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookies-txt/) (for Firefox).
1375 Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the
1377 first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or
1378 # Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format
1379 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline) in the cookies file and convert
1380 newlines if necessary to correspond with your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n)
1381 for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS,
1382 etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request when using --cookies is a good sign
1383 of invalid newline format.
1384 Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a
1386 particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use
1387 case is working around CAPTCHA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA)
1388 some websites require you to solve in particular cases in order to get
1389 access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
1390 How do I stream directly to media player?
1392 You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with
1393 -o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be
1394 capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For ex‐
1395 ample, streaming to vlc (https://www.videolan.org/) can be achieved
1396 with:
1397 youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
1399 How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
1401 Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially
1402 download the complete playlist with --download-archive /path/to/down‐
1403 load/archive/file.txt that will record identifiers of all the videos in
1404 a special file. Each subsequent run with the same --download-archive
1405 will download only new videos and skip all videos that have been down‐
1406 loaded before. Note that only successful downloads are recorded in the
1407 file.
1408 For example, at first,
1410 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1412 will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist
1414 and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download
1415 new videos if any:
1416 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1418 Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?
1420 When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with
1421 the built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly
1422 invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better
1423 than the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.
1424 When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a
1426 given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl
1427 will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the
1428 moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions
1429 of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or ffm‐
1430 peg.
1431 In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in
1433 the list of supported sites by youtube-dl (https://ytdl-
1434 org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html) cannot mandate one spe‐
1435 cific downloader.
1436 If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your
1438 configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download cor‐
1439 rectly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue (https://yt-
1440 dl.org/bug) or a pull request which details why the native or the ffm‐
1441 peg HLS downloader is a better choice for your use case.
1442 Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows
1444 current movies for free?
1445 As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not in‐
1447 clude support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As
1448 a rule of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is
1449 quite obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by
1450 the creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free
1451 license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
1452 A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but
1454 just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should not be
1455 included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the
1456 whole front page of the service is filled with videos they are not al‐
1457 lowed to distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the
1458 service shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.
1459 Support requests for services that do purchase the rights to distribute
1461 their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply
1462 include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
1463 How can I speed up work on my issue?
1465 (Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The
1466 youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to
1467 solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a
1468 while. To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
1469 First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker
1471 (https://yt-dl.org/bugs). That allows us to coordinate all efforts by
1472 users and developers, and serves as a unified point. Unfortunately,
1473 the youtube-dl project has grown too large to use personal email as an
1474 effective communication channel.
1475 Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack
1477 all the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell
1478 access to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the is‐
1479 sue from multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local cen‐
1480 sorship or misconfiguration issues.
1481 If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take
1483 matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay
1484 somebody else to do so).
1485 Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small com‐
1487 ment ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but
1488 fixed from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do
1489 not declare your issue as important or urgent.
1490 How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
1492 For one, have a look at the list of supported sites (docs/supported‐
1493 sites.md). Note that it can sometimes happen that the site changes its
1494 URL scheme (say, from https://example.com/video/1234567 to https://ex‐
1495 ample.com/v/1234567 ) and youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in
1496 that list as unsupported. In that case, simply report a bug.
1497 It is not possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's
1499 because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches all URLs.
1500 You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extrac‐
1501 tor, but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos
1502 from lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may
1503 also be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself.
1504 Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or
1505 removing the generic extractor.
1506 If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call
1508 youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is
1509 either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which
1510 by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or
1511 catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python pro‐
1512 gram.
1513
1515 Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting
1516 instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for
1517 instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old,
1518 because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general
1519 shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times
1520 before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if
1521 it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL
1522 they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid prob‐
1523 lems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
1524 youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so
1526 we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those
1527 simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be
1528 able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As
1529 such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's
1530 required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through
1531 some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of
1532 youtube-dl is current.
1533
1535 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds
1536 (https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html) or get them from
1537 their distribution.
1538 To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything ei‐
1540 ther. Simply execute
1541 python -m youtube_dl
1543 To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a
1545 test file directly; any of the following work:
1546 python -m unittest discover
1548 python test/test_download.py
1549 nosetests
1550 See item 6 of new extractor tutorial for how to run extractor specific
1552 test cases.
1553 If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
1555 · python
1557 · make (only GNU make is supported)
1559 · pandoc
1561 · zip
1563 · nosetests
1565 Adding support for a new site
1567 If you want to add support for a new site, first of all make sure this
1568 site is not dedicated to copyright infringement (README.md#can-you-add-
1569 support-for-this-anime-video-site-or-site-which-shows-current-movies-
1570 for-free). youtube-dl does not support such sites thus pull requests
1571 adding support for them will be rejected.
1572 After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally,
1574 you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called yourex‐
1575 tractor):
1576 1. Fork this repository (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/fork)
1578 2. Check out the source code with:
1580 git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
1582 3. Start a new git branch with
1584 cd youtube-dl
1586 git checkout -b yourextractor
1587 4. Start with this simple template and save it to youtube_dl/extrac‐
1589 tor/yourextractor.py:
1590 # coding: utf-8
1592 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1593 from .common import InfoExtractor
1595 class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
1598 _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
1599 _TEST = {
1600 'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
1601 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
1602 'info_dict': {
1603 'id': '42',
1604 'ext': 'mp4',
1605 'title': 'Video title goes here',
1606 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
1607 # TODO more properties, either as:
1608 # * A value
1609 # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
1610 # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
1611 # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
1612 }
1613 }
1614 def _real_extract(self, url):
1616 video_id = self._match_id(url)
1617 webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
1618 # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
1620 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
1621 return {
1623 'id': video_id,
1624 'title': title,
1625 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
1626 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
1627 # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
1628 }
1629 5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1631 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/ex‐
1632 tractor/extractors.py).
1633 6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor.
1635 This should fail at first, but you can continually re-run it until
1636 you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename
1637 _TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests
1638 will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor, TestDown‐
1639 load.test_YourExtractor_1, TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc.
1640 Note that tests with only_matching key in test's dict are not
1641 counted in.
1642 7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py
1644 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/ex‐
1645 tractor/common.py) for possible helper methods and a detailed de‐
1646 scription of what your extractor should and may return
1647 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1648 dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extrac‐
1649 tor/common.py#L94-L303). Add tests and code for as many as you
1650 want.
1651 8. Make sure your code follows youtube-dl coding conventions and check
1653 the code with flake8 (https://flake8.pycqa.org/en/latest/in‐
1654 dex.html#quickstart):
1655 $ flake8 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1657 9. Make sure your code works under all Python
1659 (https://www.python.org/) versions claimed supported by youtube-dl,
1660 namely 2.6, 2.7, and 3.2+.
1661 10. When the tests pass, add (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-add) the new
1663 files and commit (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit) them and
1664 push (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push) the result, like this:
1665 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1667 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1668 $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
1669 $ git push origin yourextractor
1670 11. Finally, create a pull request (https://help.github.com/arti‐
1672 cles/creating-a-pull-request). We'll then review and merge it.
1673 In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
1675 youtube-dl coding conventions
1677 This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and
1678 future-proof extractor code.
1679 Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout
1681 of the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your con‐
1682 trol and this layout tends to change. As an extractor implementer your
1683 task is not only to write code that will extract media links and meta‐
1684 data correctly but also to minimize dependency on the source's layout
1685 and even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready
1686 for that. This is important because it will allow the extractor not to
1687 break on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions
1688 working. Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a
1689 new version of youtube-dl with a fix incorporated, all the previous
1690 versions become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that
1691 may not be so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say,
1692 some non rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
1693 Mandatory and optional metafields
1695 For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor ex‐
1696 tracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an information dictio‐
1697 nary (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1698 dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extrac‐
1699 tor/common.py#L94-L303) or simply info dict. Only the following meta
1700 fields in the info dict are considered mandatory for a successful ex‐
1701 traction process by youtube-dl:
1702 · id (media identifier)
1704 · title (media title)
1706 · url (media download URL) or formats
1708 In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you
1710 can't figure out the download location of the media the extraction does
1711 not make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats id and
1712 title as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the criti‐
1713 cal data that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any
1714 of them fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered complete‐
1715 ly broken.
1716 Any field (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1718 dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extrac‐
1719 tor/common.py#L188-L303) apart from the aforementioned ones are consid‐
1720 ered optional. That means that extraction should be tolerant to situa‐
1721 tions when sources for these fields can potentially be unavailable
1722 (even if they are always available at the moment) and future-proof in
1723 order not to break the extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
1724 Example
1726 Say you have some source dictionary meta that you've fetched as JSON
1727 with HTTP request and it has a key summary:
1728 meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
1730 Assume at this point meta's layout is:
1732 {
1734 ...
1735 "summary": "some fancy summary text",
1736 ...
1737 }
1738 Assume you want to extract summary and put it into the resulting info
1740 dict as description. Since description is an optional meta field you
1741 should be ready that this key may be missing from the meta dict, so
1742 that you should extract it like:
1743 description = meta.get('summary') # correct
1745 and not like:
1747 description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
1749 The latter will break extraction process with KeyError if summary dis‐
1751 appears from meta at some later time but with the former approach ex‐
1752 traction will just go ahead with description set to None which is per‐
1753 fectly fine (remember None is equivalent to the absence of data).
1754 Similarly, you should pass fatal=False when extracting optional data
1756 from a webpage with _search_regex, _html_search_regex or similar meth‐
1757 ods, for instance:
1758 description = self._search_regex(
1760 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1761 webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
1762 With fatal set to False if _search_regex fails to extract description
1764 it will emit a warning and continue extraction.
1765 You can also pass default=<some fallback value>, for example:
1767 description = self._search_regex(
1769 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1770 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1771 On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with de‐
1773 scription set to None. That is useful for metafields that may or may
1774 not be present.
1775 Provide fallbacks
1777 When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For exam‐
1778 ple if title is present in several places, try extracting from at least
1779 some of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the
1780 sources become unavailable.
1781 Example
1783 Say meta from the previous example has a title and you are about to ex‐
1784 tract it. Since title is a mandatory meta field you should end up with
1785 something like:
1786 title = meta['title']
1788 If title disappears from meta in future due to some changes on the
1790 hoster's side the extraction would fail since title is mandatory.
1791 That's expected.
1792 Assume that you have some another source you can extract title from,
1794 for example og:title HTML meta of a webpage. In this case you can pro‐
1795 vide a fallback scenario:
1796 title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
1798 This code will try to extract from meta first and if it fails it will
1800 try extracting og:title from a webpage.
1801 Regular expressions
1803 Don't capture groups you don't use
1804 Capturing group must be an indication that it's used somewhere in the
1805 code. Any group that is not used must be non capturing.
1806 Example
1808 Don't capture id attribute name here since you can't use it for any‐
1809 thing anyway.
1810 Correct:
1812 r'(?:id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
1814 Incorrect:
1816 r'(id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
1818 Make regular expressions relaxed and flexible
1820 When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy, relaxed and
1821 flexible, skipping insignificant parts that are more likely to change,
1822 allowing both single and double quotes for quoted values and so on.
1823 Example
1825 Say you need to extract title from the following HTML code:
1826 <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
1828 The code for that task should look similar to:
1830 title = self._search_regex(
1832 r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
1833 Or even better:
1835 title = self._search_regex(
1837 r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
1838 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1839 Note how you tolerate potential changes in the style attribute's value
1841 or switch from using double quotes to single for class attribute:
1842 The code definitely should not look like:
1844 title = self._search_regex(
1846 r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
1847 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1848 Long lines policy
1850 There is a soft limit to keep lines of code under 80 characters long.
1851 This means it should be respected if possible and if it does not make
1852 readability and code maintenance worse.
1853 For example, you should never split long string literals like URLs or
1855 some other often copied entities over multiple lines to fit this limit:
1856 Correct:
1858 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list=PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
1860 Incorrect:
1862 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list='
1864 'PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
1865 Inline values
1867 Extracting variables is acceptable for reducing code duplication and
1868 improving readability of complex expressions. However, you should
1869 avoid extracting variables used only once and moving them to opposite
1870 parts of the extractor file, which makes reading the linear flow diffi‐
1871 cult.
1872 Example
1874 Correct:
1875 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<title>([^<]+)</title>', webpage, 'title')
1877 Incorrect:
1879 TITLE_RE = r'<title>([^<]+)</title>'
1881 # ...some lines of code...
1882 title = self._html_search_regex(TITLE_RE, webpage, 'title')
1883 Collapse fallbacks
1885 Multiple fallback values can quickly become unwieldy. Collapse multi‐
1886 ple fallback values into a single expression via a list of patterns.
1887 Example
1889 Good:
1890 description = self._html_search_meta(
1892 ['og:description', 'description', 'twitter:description'],
1893 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1894 Unwieldy:
1896 description = (
1898 self._og_search_description(webpage, default=None)
1899 or self._html_search_meta('description', webpage, default=None)
1900 or self._html_search_meta('twitter:description', webpage, default=None))
1901 Methods supporting list of patterns are: _search_regex,
1903 _html_search_regex, _og_search_property, _html_search_meta.
1904 Trailing parentheses
1906 Always move trailing parentheses after the last argument.
1907 Example
1909 Correct:
1910 lambda x: x['ResultSet']['Result'][0]['VideoUrlSet']['VideoUrl'],
1912 list)
1913 Incorrect:
1915 lambda x: x['ResultSet']['Result'][0]['VideoUrlSet']['VideoUrl'],
1917 list,
1918 )
1919 Use convenience conversion and parsing functions
1921 Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from
1922 youtube_dl/utils.py (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/mas‐
1923 ter/youtube_dl/utils.py): int_or_none, float_or_none. Use them for
1924 string to number conversions as well.
1925 Use url_or_none for safe URL processing.
1927 Use try_get for safe metadata extraction from parsed JSON.
1929 Use unified_strdate for uniform upload_date or any YYYYMMDD meta field
1931 extraction, unified_timestamp for uniform timestamp extraction,
1932 parse_filesize for filesize extraction, parse_count for count meta
1933 fields extraction, parse_resolution, parse_duration for duration ex‐
1934 traction, parse_age_limit for age_limit extraction.
1935 Explore youtube_dl/utils.py (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1937 dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/utils.py) for more useful convenience func‐
1938 tions.
1939 More examples
1941 Safely extract optional description from parsed JSON
1942 description = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0]['summary'], compat_str)
1943 Safely extract more optional metadata
1945 video = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0], dict) or {}
1946 description = video.get('summary')
1947 duration = float_or_none(video.get('durationMs'), scale=1000)
1948 view_count = int_or_none(video.get('views'))
1949
1951 youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and
1952 thus should be callable from any programming language. If you en‐
1953 counter any problems parsing its output, feel free to create a report
1954 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/new).
1955 From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful
1957 fashion, like this:
1958 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1960 import youtube_dl
1961 ydl_opts = {}
1963 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1964 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1965 Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options
1967 available, have a look at youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py
1968 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
1969 dl/blob/3e4cedf9e8cd3157df2457df7274d0c842421945/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py#L137-L312).
1970 For a start, if you want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a logger
1971 object.
1972 Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors
1974 (and a short message after the download is finished), and down‐
1975 loads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
1976 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1978 import youtube_dl
1979 class MyLogger(object):
1982 def debug(self, msg):
1983 pass
1984 def warning(self, msg):
1986 pass
1987 def error(self, msg):
1989 print(msg)
1990 def my_hook(d):
1993 if d['status'] == 'finished':
1994 print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
1995 ydl_opts = {
1998 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
1999 'postprocessors': [{
2000 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
2001 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
2002 'preferredquality': '192',
2003 }],
2004 'logger': MyLogger(),
2005 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
2006 }
2007 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
2008 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
2009
2011 Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: <https://github.com/ytdl-
2012 org/youtube-dl/issues>. Unless you were prompted to or there is anoth‐
2013 er pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug report),
2014 please do not send bug reports via personal email. For discussions,
2015 join us in the IRC channel #youtube-dl (irc://chat.freen‐
2016 ode.net/#youtube-dl) on freenode (webchat (https://webchat.freen‐
2017 ode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=youtube-dl)).
2018 Please include the full output of youtube-dl when run with -v, i.e.
2020 add -v flag to your command line, copy the whole output and post it in
2021 the issue body wrapped in ``` for better formatting. It should look
2022 similar to this:
2023 $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
2025 [debug] System config: []
2026 [debug] User config: []
2027 [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
2028 [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
2029 [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
2030 [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
2031 [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
2032 [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
2033 [debug] Proxy map: {}
2034 ...
2035 Do not post screenshots of verbose logs; only plain text is acceptable.
2037 The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging in‐
2039 formation. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible
2040 and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
2041 Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common mis‐
2043 takes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
2044 Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
2046 We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in
2047 most cases we eventually get the required information after asking back
2048 multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many
2049 contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may
2050 misread some parts.
2051 So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you
2053 want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
2054 · What the problem is
2056 · How it could be fixed
2058 · How your proposed solution would look like
2060 If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly miss‐
2062 ing some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're
2063 often too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info
2064 makes misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get
2065 frustrated by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move
2066 forward on them is to ask for clarification over and over.
2067 For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the com‐
2069 plete output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag. The error
2070 message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe
2071 how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
2072 If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding
2074 --call-home may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error
2075 is ERROR: Unable to extract ... and you cannot reproduce it from multi‐
2076 ple countries, add --dump-pages (warning: this will yield a rather
2077 large output, redirect it to the file log.txt by adding >log.txt 2>&1
2078 to your command-line) or upload the .dump files you get when you add
2079 --write-pages somewhere (https://gist.github.com/).
2080 Site support requests must contain an example URL. An example URL is a
2082 URL you might want to download, like
2083 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc. There should be an obvi‐
2084 ous video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main
2085 page of a video service (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/) is not an ex‐
2086 ample URL.
2087 Are you using the latest version?
2089 Before reporting any issue, type youtube-dl -U. This should report
2090 that you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are al‐
2091 ready fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for
2092 feature requests as well.
2093 Is the issue already documented?
2095 Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying
2096 to open. Search at the top of the window or browse the GitHub Issues
2097 (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/search?type=Issues) of this
2098 repository. If there is an issue, feel free to write something along
2099 the lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01. Here
2100 is some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may be
2101 old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
2102 Why are existing options not enough?
2104 Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at the list
2105 of supported options (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/mas‐
2106 ter/README.md#options). Many feature requests are for features that
2107 actually exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in
2108 the issue report and detail how the existing similar options do not
2109 solve your problem.
2110 Is there enough context in your bug report?
2112 People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by
2113 breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already
2114 downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look
2115 whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However,
2116 what often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps:
2117 One simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
2118 We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original
2120 problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded
2121 video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the
2122 greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature
2123 request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should
2124 contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing
2125 feature would be useful.
2126 Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
2128 Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or
2129 should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open.
2130 While it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one
2131 ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot
2132 mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads
2133 to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth, un‐
2134 til someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
2135 In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to
2137 services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using
2138 the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user
2139 videos, White house podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue.
2140 Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature re‐
2141 quests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include outputs
2142 of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at hand.
2143 Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for a new
2144 video service.
2145 Is anyone going to need the feature?
2147 Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can person‐
2148 ally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like a
2149 good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by some‐
2150 one who requires them.
2151 Is your question about youtube-dl?
2153 It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely
2154 unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different, or even the re‐
2155 porter's own, application. Please make sure that you are actually us‐
2156 ing youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug
2157 to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the
2158 other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is
2159 related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
2160
2162 youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
2163 This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton
2165 (https://github.com/dbbolton) and is likewise released into the public
2166 domain.
2167 YOUTUBE-DL(1)