YouTube Download

yt-dlp downloads videos from YouTube and many other sites. It merges separate video and audio streams with ffmpeg, so install that too.

Examples

yt-dlp \
  --embed-thumbnail \
  --merge-output-format mkv \
  --sponsorblock-mark all \
  -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' \
  -S 'res:1080' \
  -f 'bv+ba' \
  'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…'

yt-dlp \
  --embed-metadata \
  --embed-thumbnail \
  -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' \
  -f 'ba[ext=m4a]' \
  'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…'

Option	Effect
`-f 'bv+ba'`	Best video stream plus best audio stream.
`-S 'res:1080'`	Sorts formats to prefer up to 1080p; still picks something if 1080p is missing.
`-F`	Lists all available formats instead of downloading.
`--sponsorblock-mark all`	Marks sponsor segments as chapters; `--sponsorblock-remove sponsor` cuts them out.
`-o '%(title)s.%(ext)s'`	Output file name template.
`-x --audio-format mp3`	Extracts audio and converts it.
`-U`	Updates yt-dlp itself.

On an iPad with iSH

iSH runs Alpine Linux:

apk add ffmpeg python3 py3-brotli py3-mutagen py3-pycryptodomex py3-websockets
wget -O /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp