How to Use yt-dlp to Downloading YouTube Video

In a world filled with captivating content on YouTube, you might find yourself wanting to download videos for offline viewing or other purposes. While there are tools available for such tasks, it's crucial to approach video downloading responsibly and in compliance with YouTube's terms of service. In this guide, we'll introduce you to yt-dlp, an open-source command-line tool that allows you to download YouTube videos.

What is yt-dlp?


yt-dlp is a powerful and feature-rich command-line tool that serves as a fork of the well-known youtube-dl. It provides additional features and improvements, making it a popular choice for users looking to interact with YouTube content.

Installation

You should have pip installed on your system to use or install this tool. If you don't what pip is this used for Python packages or tools.

pip install -U yt-dlp  OR  pip3 install -U yt-dlp

Downloading a Video

Now it comes to downloading a video, well the above command works well on an Ubuntu machine. For Windows, you might have something else.

You can use the below command to download a video from youtube.

yt-dlp [video_url]

To save the video in a specific directory with a custom filename:

yt-dlp -o '~/Downloads/%(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID

Legal and Ethical Considerations

While yt-dlp is a useful tool, it's crucial to use it responsibly and ethically. Downloading videos without proper authorization is against the terms of service of most platforms, including YouTube.

So, make sure you don't do that. Thanks.