yt-dlp

2022-07-14
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Software >

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

A downloader for YouTube and many other places.

yt-dlp banner

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Table of Contents [hide]

Usage ∞

2022-06-30 – 2022.06.29 on Windows 10 this seemed to work:

yt-dlp.exe --audio-format  best --write-info-json --write-annotations  --write-all-thumbnails  --embed-thumbnail --all-subs  --embed-subs   --add-metadata   --output '%(uploader)s/%(upload_date)s - %(title)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s'  --format  299-dash+140-dash   --merge-output-format mp4 --write-comments "jNQXAC9IVRw"

This didn’t seem to work, and hasn’t been troubleshooted.

--output '%(uploader)s/%(upload_date)s - %(title)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s'

TODO ∞

Usage ∞

TODO – Solving HTTP Error 429 ∞

I can reproduce this when downloading a long list of subtitles [ 1 ] :

ERROR: Unable to download video subtitles for 'or': HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests

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Not working:

TODO

Getting cookies (on desktop) ∞

DO NOT USE AN EXTENSION FOR THIS

Get and use cookies for yt-dlp (using Python) ∞

2025-03-17 – for yt-dlp 2025.02.19 – with Python 3.9.2 on WSL2 on Windows 11 using cookies from Brave 1.76.74 Chromium: 134.0.6998.89 (Official Build) (64-bit)

  1. Open your web borwser
  2. Press F12 to open DevTools
  3. I recommend you Move your dock location to the bottom or a new window.
  4. At the top, pick the “Applications” tab
  5. On the left, find “Storage” and select “Cookies”
  6. Select the very first cookie – https://www.youtube.com
  7. On the right will be some new content. You may have to expand your DevTools panel to see it clearly.
  8. Select all of that text. You cannot control-a to do so, you must manually select from the top-left text and go down it all.
  9. Copy

  10. On WSL2

cd ~
nano youtube-cookies.txt

# paste your text
# save and quit nano

git clone https://github.com/hcisok/python-convert-chrome-cookies-to-netscape-format
python ~/python-convert-chrome-cookies-to-netscape-format/convert-cookies.py ~/youtube-cookies.txt > ~/youtube-cookies-netscape.txt
yt-dlp --cookies ~/youtube-cookies-netscape.txt 1jYdHa_bu2k

Using JavaScript (broken) ∞

For Chrome and variations like Brave and Microsoft Edge.

  1. On a new tab, visit https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dandv/convert-chrome-cookies-to-netscape-format/master/convert-cookies.js

  2. Copy this script
  3. On a new tab, visit https://www.youtube.com/
  4. Press F12 to open the DevTools panel
  5. In DevTools, Switch to the “Console” tab.
  6. Manually type allow pasting
  7. Paste the JavaScript text you copied

  8. More TODO…

TODO – Using cookies ∞

TODO

Getting cookies (on desktop) might be easier.

–cookies-from-browser brave:Profile\ name
–cookies-from-browser brave

Get the directory of your profile:
%LOCALAPPDATA%
brave://version/

e.g.

/mnt/c/Users/USERNAME/AppData/Local/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/User Data/PROFILE\ DIRECTORY

where

  • USERNAME is whatever you log in as

  • PROFILE\ DIRECTORY might simply be Default

FileNotFoundError: could not find brave cookies database in "/path/to/wherever"

doesn’t fucking work..

programmers can check out their cookies.py

TODO – Downloading age restricted videos ∞

TODO – Using cookies

Redact content in the .json file ∞

--parse-metadata "video::(?P<url>)"

--alias --minimal-info-json '--parse-metadata "video::(?P<formats>)" --parse-metadata "video::(?P<url>)" --parse-metadata "video::(?P<http_headers>)" --parse-metadata "video::(?P<automatic_captions>)" --parse-metadata "video::(?P<subtitles>)" --parse-metadata "video::(?P<thumbnails>)"'

Alternatives ∞

Footnotes


  1. or is just a language code, like how .en is for English. [ ↩ ]
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