yt-dlp-2025.11.12

Introduction to yt-dlp

The yt-dlp package provides a Python3 CLI utility to download audio and video files from thousands of websites, including YouTube. It can convert downloads into other formats using FFmpeg.

yt-dlp Dependencies

Required

Hatchling

Recommended

Optional

brotli (with Python3 bindings), certifi, Requests, and Urllib3

Installation of yt-dlp

Install yt-dlp by running the following commands:

pip3 wheel -w dist --no-build-isolation --no-deps --no-cache-dir $PWD

Now, as the root user:

pip3 install --no-index --find-links=dist --no-cache-dir --no-user yt_dlp

Configuring yt-dlp

YouTube has made it so JavaScript challenges need to be done in order to pull from its site. If you download YouTube videos using this package, download a JavaScript runtime/engine like Node.js. The following instructions assume you have it installed. Next, create a system configuration file, telling yt-dlp to use Node.js for JS challenges and automatically download the challenge scripts required, as the root user:

cat > /etc/yt-dlp.conf << EOF
--js-runtimes node --remote-components ejs:github
EOF

Now yt-dlp will use Node.js to solve JS challenges when downloading YouTube videos, automatically downloading scripts by yt-dlp to do so.

Contents

Installed Programs: yt-dlp
Installed Libraries: None
Installed Directories: /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages/yt_dlp and /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages/yt_dlp-2025.11.12.dist-info

Short Descriptions

yt-dlp

downloads and converts audio and video files