Youtube Download

A quick tips on how to download stuff from Youtube, using yt-dlp.

Setup: run sudo snap install yt-dlp to get the downloader.

To download audio, run yt-dlp --extract-audio "URL".

Alternatively, run yt-dlp -f bestaudio -x "URL":

  • -f bestaudio picks the highest quality audio format
  • -x drops video
  • Not using --audio-format to avoid lossy-to-lossy re-encoding, keeping the original quality.

To list all available formats:

$ yt-dlp --list-formats "URL"

Then, to download specific combo of video and audio:

$ yt-dlp --format "401+140" "URL"

yt-dlp will download both formats then combine them with ffmpeg (ffmpeg must be installed).

More documentation:

Written on November 1, 2024