Download YouTube Videos in Linux Command Line

Generally, we download videos from YouTube using the web browser. But now you can also download videos from YouTube using the command line.

The youtube-dl is an command line utility is developed by the the youtube-dl.org team. It is build on Python programming language, which is also required this script.

This tutorial will help you to install youtube-dl on your Linux system. Also provides you multiple useful examples for downloading audio and videos directly from Youtube.

Installing Youtube-DL

Use the following command to install a YouTube command-line downloader as per your Linux operating system.

The Recommended Way

To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, macOS, etc.), type:

sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl 
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl 

If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:

sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl 
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl 

From Repositories

1. Installing on Ubuntu, Debian and LinuxMint

   sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
   

2. CentOS/RHEL 7/6 and SL

   sudo yum install youtube-dl
   

3. CentOS/RHEL 8 and Fedora

   sudo dnf install youtube-dl
   

Download Audio & Videos with Youtube-dl

Now use the followings set of example commands to download Youtube videos with different-2 options and formats as per your requirements.

1. Download Video – Use this command to download videos directly on your system.

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McuF7g14hYw


[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading webpage
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Extracting video information
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading DASH manifest
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Destination: How to Download Java Archive using Command Line -McuF7g14hYw.mp4
[download] 100% of 3.79MiB in 00:09

2. Save Videos with Different Name – Use option -o followed by new video file name to save on your system disk.

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McuF7g14hYw -o Video.mp4 


[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading webpage
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Extracting video information
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading DASH manifest
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Destination: Video.mp4
[download] 100% of 3.79MiB in 00:07

3. Download Audio in MP3 Only – You can simply download audio of any video on your system in mp3 formats, like following commands.

youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 https://youtu.be/McuF7g14hYw -o audio.mp3

[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading webpage
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Extracting video information
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading DASH manifest
[youtube] McuF7g14hYw: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Destination: /home/sysadmin/Desktop/audio.mp3
[download] 100% of 4.16MiB in 00:11
[ffmpeg] Correcting container in "audio.mp3"
[ffmpeg] Post-process file audio.mp3 exists, skipping