Downloading YouTube Videos

Using an App

I prefer using Stacher7, which is a cross-platform GUI application built on top of yt-dlp, an open source project well known for allowing video and audio archiving.

Because Stacher7 is built on top of yt-dlp and ffmpeg packages, you may be prompted to install those command line packages.

Requirements

1. Ensure there's a check mark in the top right.

1. If there isn't a check, click on the bubble telling you to install yt-dlp, ffmpeg, or both. Follow the on-screen instructions. If you get errors downloading them from this menu, you can always check out how to install them manually (archived version of article).

How to Download a Video

1. Paste a URL into the field

2. Click "Best Av" or whatever button is next to the download button

1. Select the desired format

1. Click the download button! Wait a bit, and you'll have your file.

Using the Command Line

If you prefer to use Terminal, you can download and how to install yt-dlp and ffmpeg manually (archived version of article)

I use macOS, so I installed yt-dlp using the Homebrew package manager. It's also available for package managers on other operating systems (e.g. Chocolatey and apt). You can also use a direct download if you'd prefer to not use a package manager (idk why you would tho).

If you're using this method, I assume you can read the documentation over at Github and have used a command line utility before.

Here's two quick commands to get you started:

Download a Video

Download the best mp4 video available, or the best video if no mp4 available:

yt-dlp "video_url_here" -f "bv*[ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[ext=mp4] / bv*+ba/b"

Download Audio Only

Download the best audio file available, regardless of file format:

 yt-dlp "video_url_here" --extract-audio --audio-quality 0