Today we will learn how to download YouTube videos as video or Mp3, using youtube-dl, as well as how to download full YouTube playlists.
Install
Step 1
Connect to your server as the admin user via SSH or open a command prompt.
ssh [email protected]
Step 2
We will download the latest youtube-dl to make sure we have the latest one
Note:
If in the future youtube-dl stops working repeat these command to update it to the latest version
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
Step 3
Downloading as Video
Pretty Simple just run the command on the url you want to download and youtube-dl will download the video in the best quality available, try to chose a video that offers HD quality for best results.
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yhyp-_hX2s
Downloading as Mp3
This command will extract the audio only and save it as Mp3
youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yhyp-_hX2s
Downloading Full Playlists
This is probably the most powerfull feature of youtube-dl, as it allows us to download multiple files with one command.
Note:
Make sure to get the playlist Full list URL not the individual video
example:
Full Playlist URL
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1yPx49iVsPbisAIcry9koh0d1RYEd8Wk
Downloading as video
To download the full playlist run this command
youtube-dl -cit https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1yPx49iVsPbisAIcry9koh0d1RYEd8Wk
Downloading as Mp3
To download the full playlist as Mp3 run this command
youtube-dl -cit --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1yPx49iVsPbisAIcry9koh0d1RYEd8Wk
That’s It if you have any questions or comments please post in the bottom of this post.