Easy Youtube-dl

Script for running youtube-dl with basic options using bash shell. Allows automatic download options, as well as manually choosing the formats. This project is a port of ThioJoe's project but for Linux bash terminal.

Features

• Download options for automatic best quality or manually chosen video and audio formats to combine
• Download option for only audio or video
• Optional use of command line arguments to override hard-coded variables
• Support for downloading entire playlists
• Update the downloader program from within the script

REQUIREMENTS

• This is NOT a standalone script. It requires the youtube-dl program, which should be put in the same directory as this script. Download YouTube-dl here: https://yt-dl.org/

• Alternatively, you can use this script with a fork of youtube-dl called "yt-dlp", which has more features and may work better. It is found here: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

• Some download methods will require ffmpeg to be installed: https://ffmpeg.org/

Screenshot Preview

youtube-dl Links

• YouTube-dl documentation: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md#readme
• Supported sites for Downloading: https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html
• Direct link to latest youtube-dl executable: https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl.exe

Script / Code Parameters

You may wish/need to change certain parameters in the script code, located in the section called "PARAMETERS YOU MAY NEED/WISH TO CHANGE". This includes the location of the ffmpeg file, the output directory (default is 'outputs' folder in current directory) and filename, and options. See YouTube-dl documentation for more parameters.

Command Line Arguments

The script supports the following command line arguments:

• -exe <string>: Set the name of the YouTube downloader executable (default: "yt-dlp.exe")
• -desktop: Place the 'Outputs' folder on the desktop instead of the current directory
• -options <string>: Manually set additional parameters for the YouTube downloader executable (default: "--no-mtime --add-metadata")
• -debug: Display potentially helpful info for debugging, including resulting variable values

Troubleshooting

If you come across weird errors, the first thing to try should be updating the youtube-dl program. You can do this using option # 7. YouTube-dl is updated pretty frequently, and they usually fix issues quickly when YouTube.com makes breaking changes.

If you encounter issues, you can use the -debug command line argument to display helpful information for troubleshooting.

Credits

• @ThioJoe : Heavly inspired by this project by ThioJoe.