youtube-dl is a small open source command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and many other sites. The ‘other sites’ is quite impressive including Tumblr, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Vine, Flickr Instagram, Vimeo, Trilulilu, Syfy, RottenTomatoes, NBA, MySpace, MTV, Metacritic, KickStarter, GameSpot, Dropbox, Discovery, CollegeHumor, ComedyCentral, CNN, NBC, NBCNews, CBS, and Bloomberg.
The full list is available at rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html.
The application depends on the Python interpreter (2.6, 2.7, or 3.3+).
Key Features
- Support for an impressive number of sites.
- Fetch subtitles.
- Download all the available formats for a video stream with a single option.
- Support for Vimeo passwords.
- Authentication options.
- Multi-platform.
Website: ytdl-org.github.io
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Peter Sorotokin, Garth Conboy, Markus Gylling, Piotr Kula, Paul Norton, Jessica Hekman, George Bina, Bogdan Iordache, Bogdan Iordache, Romain Deltour
License: Public Domain
youtube-dl is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| YouTube Tools | |
|---|---|
| FreeTube | Privacy-based YouTube app |
| Media Downloader | Frontend for youtube-dl, gallery-dl, Lux, you-get, svtplay-dl, aria2c, ... |
| pipe-viewer | Lightweight YouTube client without requiring an API key |
| Piped | Uses NewPipe Extractor, a library for extracting |
| OmniGet | Download media and other files from a broad range of online sources |
| AudioTube | Qt-based music streamer |
| ClipGrab | Downloader for YouTube and other sites |
| Minitube | Application for watching YouTube without using Flash |
| Materialious | Fontend for YouTube and Invidious |
| youtube-local | Browser-based YouTube client |
| SMTube | Search, play and download YouTube videos |
| Pipeline | Watch YouTube and PeerTube videos |
| MellowPlayer | Multi-platform cloud music integration |
| ytdl-gui | Graphical interface for yt-dlp |
| Youwee | Built with Tauri and React |
| PlasmaTube | Designed to be integrated with KDE Plasma |
| PsTube | Flutter-based video client |
| Video Downloader | Tool which lets you download videos from YouTube and other websites |
| VacuumTube | Unofficial wrapper of YouTube Leanback |
| NeoDLP | Feature-rich video/audio downloader based on yt-dlp |
| Mixtapes | Modern, Linux-first YouTube Music player |
| Sunder | Built with Tauri v2 and Rust |
| SpMp | YouTube music client with a focus on customization |
| Pulsar | yt-dlp GUI |
| NouTube | YouTube and YouTube Music in a single app |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Console-Based YouTube Tools | |
|---|---|
| yt-dlp | Fork of youtube-dl offering new features |
| You-Get | Downloader that scrapes the web |
| Lux | Download library and CLI tool |
| yewtube | Terminal based YouTube player and downloader |
| YouTube TUI | Lightweight and user friendly TUI for browsing YouTube |
| Tizonia | Cloud music player for the Linux terminal |
| pipe-viewer | Lightweight YouTube client with CLI and GUI |
| yt-x | Browse YouTube from the terminal |
| pytubefix | Library and CLI for downloading YouTube videos |
| ytsurf | Clean and distraction-free |
| YTerMusic | Aims to be as fast and simple as possible |
| xytz | TUI frontend for yt-dlp |
| tuitube | TUI to download videos |
| youtube-dl | Download videos from YouTube and many other sites. Extremely versatile |
| ytcc | Keep track of your favorite playlists on YouTube |
| Rataplay | TUI to search, play and download videos |
| MPS-YouTube | Terminal based YouTube player and downloader |
| GoMusic | Download and stream music from YouTube |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |