How to Download Youtube Videos :3

Note: This guide is targeted towards computers running Windows 10

In this guide, you will both learn how to download Youtube videos, and develop a basic understanding of how to use command-line programs. They can be scary to use at first, but I hope by the end of this guide you can see how simple to use they can be after learning the basics.

Step 1: Acquiring software

For this guide, we will be using a piece of software named yt-dlp.

Direct download for the Windows version of yt-dlp

yt-dlp is a piece of command-line software that can download video and audio from the internet. Its mainly used for downloading youtube videos, but also supports sites like niconico or bilibili. A full list of supported sites is available on github.

Optional: You can visit the github page of yt-dlp to download the program if the above download link doesn't work. On the github page, scroll down until you get to the table of contents of the README section, then click on the link labelled "installation." From there you can click on the button labeled "Windows x64" to download it

Step 2: Setting up folders

Create a new folder on your computer. It can live anywhere and be named anything, though a name without any spaces in it is preferrable. Copy the yt-dlp.exe file into this new folder.

This folder will basically be used as "scratch space" for running yt-dlp and for storing the downloaded files. For that reason, we'll be calling this our scratch folder.

yt-dlp.exe file shown inside of a new folder

Step 3: How to download your video

As an example, I'm going to show how to download this silly kitty youtube video :3

First, you'll want to open Windows Powershell in your new scratch folder. You can do this in one of two ways:

Option 1: With your new scratch folder open in file explorer, click the "File" button in the top left of the window, and then click "Open Windows Powershell"

Option 2: With your new scratch folder open in file explorer, hold Shift and then Right Click on an empty space inside the folder. Then, click on "Open Powershell window here." When you right click, your click must be on an empty space, and not a file.

This should open a powershell window in the current folder. Powershell is a tool that you can use to run command-line programs. Command-line programs are run by typing their name, and then typing all the parameters you want to give to them.

To download our video, we should copy and paste this command into Powershell, and then press enter:

./yt-dlp.exe https://youtu.be/XZ1klqk-WOE

A breakdown of what this command means:

./ is a series of characters that represents the inside of the current folder. In other words, it lets us target and run a .exe file inside the current folder.
yt-dlp.exe is the name of the program. Because we wrote ./ before it, it targets the program inside the current folder. You can choose to omit the .exe part, if you wish, as it is optional. Anything written after the name of the program will be given to it as a program parameter that it will use.
https://youtu.be/XZ1klqk-WOE is the only parameter we are giving to our program, which is the URL to which the video resides. This could be replaced with any URL!

In short, to download a video, you should first type the identifier of the program, ./yt-dlp.exe, and then after a space, paste in the URL of any youtube video.

Important: When pasting a URL, you'll want to make sure it's just the base minimum URL, with no extra data added on. For example, if a youtube URL is part of a playlist, then you'll end up downloading the whole playlist! In the case of youtube URLs, you'll want to remove first & symbol and everything after it.

In addition to this playlist issue, Powershell doesn't like it when you have & symbols in your command that aren't wrapped in quotes, and will give an error when this happens. In case you actually want to download an entire playlist, you'll have to wrap your URL in quotes to fix the error.

This command will give an error:

./yt-dlp.exe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWPNZ_agAZs&list=PLy22iKf8SNXg9YcbkS5dRtkz1Gd9Q_dqT&index=2

This command will download an entire playlist:

./yt-dlp.exe "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWPNZ_agAZs&list=PLy22iKf8SNXg9YcbkS5dRtkz1Gd9Q_dqT&index=2"

This command will download a single video:

./yt-dlp.exe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWPNZ_agAZs

Advanced: Extracting Audio

In order to extract audio from a video, you will need a copy of ffmpeg, which is a program that yt-dlp uses to convert videos to different formats.

Go to the ffmpeg release page that yt-dlp provides.
Go to the downloads section in the README file and click the appropriate download. (Probably Windows x64)
Open the zipped file, but do not unzip it.
Navigate into the ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl folder, and then into the bin folder.
Drag ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe into the scratch folder you made earlier.

At the end, your scratch folder should look something like this:

Aformentioned files inside our previous folder

Now, yt-dlp will automatically use these programs for advanced functions, like audio handling. You can access features like this using new flags that you can add to your command. Here is a list of the ones relevant to extracting audio:

-x stands for extract audio, and is the flag that marks that the program should save the audio and throw away the video. It has no parameters, so it doesn't require anything else to work. The resulting audio file's type will be the default audio codec for the video you have selected.
--audio-format FORMAT will change the type of file that the -x flag outputs. FORMAT should be replaced with the type of file you want.

This command extracts the default audio codec:

./yt-dlp.exe https://youtu.be/XZ1klqk-WOE -x

This command extracts the audio as an mp3:

./yt-dlp.exe https://youtu.be/XZ1klqk-WOE -x --audio-format mp3

Downloading ffmpeg also unlocks a few other useful flags, such as --remux-video FORMAT and --recode-video FORMAT. You may check the github page for information on these as well.

ffmpeg is a complete video and audio handling program in its own right, and you may find it useful if you work heavily with either. Googling "convert video in ffmpeg" or "resize video in ffmpeg" or anything similar should yeild good results if you need something done fast. For more details, see the official ffmpeg wiki or the full documentation.

If you plan to use ffmpeg this way in conjuction with yt-dlp, you may also want to know that pressing Tab in Powershell will autocomplete any file you have started to type in.

Advanced: Using yt-dlp anywhere

When using command-line software, it can be annoying to have to open a specific folder just to use the program, especially if you're going to want to copy those files elsewhere afterwards. To fix this, we're going to take advantage of the Windows Path variable to let us run yt-dlp anywhere on your computer.

First, you're going to want to create another new folder. It can be in any location and be named anything, but I'm going to use the example folder C:\MyPath in this guide. You should copy all your .exe files to it that you had in your previous scratch folder, and it should not contain anything else.

We're going to need to copy the exact file path of this new folder, and you can do that in one of two ways:

Option 1: Go to where you can see your newly created folder. Hold Shift and then Right Click on your folder. Then select "Copy as path."

Option 2: Go to where you can see your newly created folder. Highlight your folder by left clicking on it once. Then, click on the "Home" button at the top of the window, and then click "Copy Path."

Note: Both of these options require you to be in the place that contains the folder you're copying the path of. You cannot be inside the folder you just created. You also should not copy the path of any .exe file, only the path of your new folder.

Now that you have the folder path copied, you'll have to find the place where you tell Windows that you want to use that folder as a special Path Variable folder.

First, search for "environment variables" in your start menu. Click on the entry marked "Edit the system environment variables."

Then, click on the "Environment Variables" button on the bottom right.

In the window that pops up, find the variable named "Path" in either the User variables section or System variables section. It doesn't matter which one, the only difference is the "User variables" section will only affect your own account, and the "System variables" section will affect the account of everyone who uses your computer.

When you find the "Path" variable, select it and then click "Edit" in its corresponding box.

In this window, you should see a list of all file paths in your Path variable, assuming you have any. Click on the New button in the top right, and then paste in the folder path you copied earlier. Be sure to press enter after you paste the folder path, and then press OK in the bottom right. If you don't do both of these things, your changes will not be saved.

Now, after opening and closing Powershell, you will be able to use yt-dlp inside of any folder in your computer, and it will download the files in whatever folder you open Powershell in! You will have to slightly change your commands, though.

You must now leave out the ./ portion of the command, as that part was just to tell Powershell to run the program in the current folder. Now that the program is available anywhere, you don't need it anymore:

yt-dlp.exe https://youtu.be/XZ1klqk-WOE

And, as with before, you may choose to leave out the .exe portion as well:

yt-dlp https://youtu.be/XZ1klqk-WOE

Keep in mind your newly created path folder should not be used to download any videos, as it is only supposed to contain runnable programs.