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Downloading YouTube Playlist in CLI using yt-dlp

Deepak Devanand's photo
Deepak Devanand
·

1 min read

yt-dlp is a handy CLI tool for downloading videos from YouTube, especially the playlists. We can download an entire playlist like so:

1. Get the playlist identifier from the URL

For example, the playlist identifier of Babbar's DSA course is the value of list query parameter of its YouTube URL https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDzeHZWIZsTryvtXdMr6rPh4IDexB5NIA

PLAYLIST_ID=PLDzeHZWIZsTryvtXdMr6rPh4IDexB5NIA
mkdir DSA-Course && cd $_

2. Run yt-dlp with --yes-playlist switch

yt-dlp "https://www.youtube.com/playlist\?list=$PLAYLIST_ID" \
--yes-playlist \
--format 'bestvideo*+bestaudio' \
--output "%(playlist_index)02d-%(title)s.%(ext)s"
  • -f bestvideo*+bestaudio ensures best possible quality video and audio format is selected.
    • -F or --list-formats will list all the available formats, from which we can select the custom format by specifying index (eg: -f '399+599')
  • -o %(playlist_index)02d-%(title)s.%(ext)s saves the videos with two-digit index prefix. For example, the second video in the playlist will be saved as "02-Lecture 2： Write Your First Program in C++.webm".
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