Media yt-dlp

Context: $ARGUMENTS

yt-dlp is an actively-maintained fork of youtube-dl. Always prefer it — upstream youtube-dl is effectively dormant and its YouTube extractors break monthly. yt-dlp ships a far larger extractor set (1000+ sites), smarter format selection, throttling work-arounds, SponsorBlock hooks, and native post-processors.

Quick start

• Grab best quality (any codec/container): yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba/b" URL → Step 3
• Best MP4 (web/Apple friendly): yt-dlp -f "bv*[ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[ext=mp4]" URL → Step 3
• Audio only MP3: yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 0 URL → Step 3
• Cap at 1080p: yt-dlp -f "bv*[height<=1080]+ba/b[height<=1080]" URL → Step 2
• Playlist / channel / live: → Step 3
• Subtitles, thumbnails, metadata: → Step 4

When to use