Script for running youtube-dl with basic options using bash shell. Allows automatic download options, as well as manually choosing the formats. This project is a port of ThioJoe's project but for Linux bash terminal.
- Download options for automatic best quality or manually chosen video and audio formats to combine
- Download option for only audio or video
- Optional use of command line arguments to override hard-coded variables
- Support for downloading entire playlists
- Update the downloader program from within the script
-
This is NOT a standalone script. It requires the youtube-dl program, which should be put in the same directory as this script. Download YouTube-dl here: https://yt-dl.org/
-
Alternatively, you can use this script with a fork of youtube-dl called "yt-dlp", which has more features and may work better. It is found here: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
-
Some download methods will require ffmpeg to be installed: https://ffmpeg.org/
- YouTube-dl documentation: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md#readme
- Supported sites for Downloading: https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html
- Direct link to latest youtube-dl executable: https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl.exe
You may wish/need to change certain parameters in the script code, located in the section called "PARAMETERS YOU MAY NEED/WISH TO CHANGE". This includes the location of the ffmpeg file, the output directory (default is 'outputs' folder in current directory) and filename, and options. See YouTube-dl documentation for more parameters.
The script supports the following command line arguments:
-exe <string>: Set the name of the YouTube downloader executable (default: "yt-dlp.exe")-desktop: Place the 'Outputs' folder on the desktop instead of the current directory-options <string>: Manually set additional parameters for the YouTube downloader executable (default: "--no-mtime --add-metadata")-debug: Display potentially helpful info for debugging, including resulting variable values
If you come across weird errors, the first thing to try should be updating the youtube-dl program. You can do this using option # 7. YouTube-dl is updated pretty frequently, and they usually fix issues quickly when YouTube.com makes breaking changes.
If you encounter issues, you can use the -debug command line argument to display helpful information for troubleshooting.
@ThioJoe: Heavly inspired by this project by ThioJoe.