Download YouTube Videos in Linux Command Line https://itsfoss.

com/download-youtube-linux/

It's FOSS

Download YouTube Videos in Linux Command Line Using

youtube-dl
Last updated August 19, 2021 By Abhishek Prakash (https://itsfoss.com/author/abhishek/)

Brief: Easily download YouTube videos in Linux using youtube-dl command line tool. With this
tool, you can also choose video format and video quality such as 1080p or 4K.

There are various ways to download YouTube videos (https://itsfoss.com/download-youtube-

videos-ubuntu/). But when it comes to Linux, nothing beats youtube-dl. In this tutorial, I am
going to show the steps for using youtube-dl for downloading videos from YouTube and other
websites.

Install youtube-dl to download YouTube videos in Linux

terminal
youtube-dl (https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) is a Python-based command-line tool that allows
downloading videos from YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/itsfoss/), Dailymotion
(https://www.dailymotion.com/), Photobucket, Facebook, Yahoo, Metacafe, Depositfiles and few
more similar sites. It is written in pygtk and requires Python interpreter to run this program, itʼs
not platform restricted. It should run on any Unix, Windows or in Mac OS X based systems.

The youtube-dl tool supports resuming interrupted downloads. If youtube-dl is killed (for
example by Ctrl-C or due to loss of Internet connectivity) in the middle of the download, you can
simply re-run it with the same YouTube video URL. It will automatically resume the unfinished
download, as long as a partial download is present in the current directory. Which means you
donʼt need download managers in Linux (https://itsfoss.com/4-best-download-managers-for-
linux/) just for resuming downloads.

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youtube-dl features
This tiny tool has so many features that it wonʼt be an exaggeration to call it the best YouTube
downloader for Linux.

Download videos from not only YouTube but other popular video websites like
Dailymotion, Facebook etc
Allows downloading videos in several available video formats such as MP4, WebM etc.
You can also choose the quality of the video being downloaded. If the video is available in
4K, you can download it in 4K, 1080p, 720p etc
Automatical pause and resume of video downloads.
Allows to bypass YouTube geo-restrictions

Attention!

NOW
PLAYING

Downloading videos from websites could be against their policies. Itʼs up to you if you
choose to download videos.

How to install youtube-dl on Linux

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youtube-dl is a popular program and is available in the default repositories of most Linux
distributions, if not all. You can use the standard way of installing packages in your distribution
to install youtube-dl. Iʼll still show some commands for the sake of it.

If you are running Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, you can install it using this command:

sudo apt install youtube-dl

The version in Debian/Ubuntu is usually old and you might face errors while downloading
videos. However, I recommend installing it directly from its source repository.

For any Linux distribution, you can quickly install youtube-dl on your system through the
command line interface with:

sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O

/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

A�er fetching the file, you need to set a executable permission on the script to execute properly.

sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

Once installed, you can update it to the latest version using this command. This is helpful when
you have been using it for a few months:

youtube-dl -U

Using YouTube-dl for downloading videos:

To download a video file, simply run the following command. Where “VIDEO_URL” is the URL of

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the video that you want to download.

youtube-dl <video_url>

The video is saved in the directory from where you run the command.

Download YouTube videos in various formats and quality size

These days YouTube videos have di�erent resolutions, you first need to check available video
formats of a given YouTube video. For that run youtube-dl with “-F” option. It will show you a list
of available formats.

youtube-dl -F <video_url>

Its output will be like:

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Setting language
BlXaGWbFVKY: Downloading video webpage
BlXaGWbFVKY: Downloading video info webpage
BlXaGWbFVKY: Extracting video information
Available formats:
37 : mp4 [1080x1920]
46 : webm [1080x1920]
22 : mp4 [720x1280]
45 : webm [720x1280]
35 : flv [480x854]
44 : webm [480x854]
34 : flv [360x640]
18 : mp4 [360x640]
43 : webm [360x640]
5 : flv [240x400]
17 : mp4 [144x176]

Now among the available video formats, choose one that you like. For example, if you want to
download it in MP4 version and 1080 pixel, you should use:

youtube-dl -f 37<video_url>

Download subtitles of videos using youtube-dl

First, check if there are subtitles available for the video. To list all subs for a video, use the
command below:

youtube-dl --list-subs <video_url>

To download all subs, but not the video:

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youtube-dl --all-subs --skip-download <video_url>

Download entire YouTube playlist

To download a playlist, simply run the following command. Where “playlist_url” is the URL of
the playlist that you want to download.

youtube-dl -cit <playlist_url>

Download only audio from YouTube videos

If you just want to download the audio from a YouTube video (https://itsfoss.com/youtube-dl-
audio-only/), you can use the -x option to simply extract the audio file from the video.

youtube-dl -x <video_url>

The default file format is Ogg which you may not like. You can specify the file format of the audio
file in the following manner:

youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 <video_url>

And a lot more can be done with youtube-dl

youtube-dl is a versatile command line tool and provides a number of functionalities. No
wonder it is such a popular command line tool.

I have only shown some of the most common usages of this tool. But if you want to explore its
capabilities further, please check its manual (https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master
/README.md#readme).

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I hope this article helped you to download YouTube videos on Linux. If you have questions or
suggestions, please drop a comment below.

It's FOSS
@itsfoss 

If you can answer these

correctly, you are an
Informed Linux
User!

 START QUIZ

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Download YouTube Videos in Linux Command Line https://itsfoss.com/download-youtube-linux/

About Abhishek Prakash

Creator of It's FOSS. An ardent Linux user & open source promoter. Huge fan of
classic detective mysteries ranging from Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes to
Detective Columbo & Ellery Queen. Also a movie bu� with a so� corner for film noir.

153 comments Newest comments first

J
3 weeks ago

Works fine!

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Download YouTube Videos in Linux Command Line https://itsfoss.com/download-youtube-linux/

On fedora I just had to do this:

“`
sudo dnf install pandoc
cd ~
mkdir src
cd src
git clone https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl.git (https://github.com/ytdl-
org/youtube-dl.git)
cd youtube-dl/
make

Now run it like this:

mkdir ~/Videos/youtube
cd ~/Videos/youtube
~/src/youtube-dl/youtube-dl PUT_YOUTUBE_URL_HERE
“`

Vote: Share

Jimbo
3 weeks ago

Agreed, it no longer works :(

Vote: Share

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Download YouTube Videos in Linux Command Line https://itsfoss.com/download-youtube-linux/

Ryan M
1 month ago

As of now it returns this error:

ERROR: : YouTube said: Unable to extract video data

Vote: Share

Franklin Russell
2 months ago

This does not work. It used to but as of 12/2021 its well aaaa Terminal.

Vote: Share

Rob
4 months ago

Thanks, I worked great

Vote: Share

Abhishek Prakash

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Download YouTube Videos in Linux Command Line https://itsfoss.com/download-youtube-linux/

(https://itsfoss.com/)
4 months ago

You are welcome, Rob :)

Vote: Share

Add your comment...

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