Every command re-tested on yt-dlp 2026.07.28

yt-dlp commands that actually work

Advice about yt-dlp goes stale in months — YouTube changes something, the tool responds, and a command that was correct in March fails in August. Everything here is dated and verified against the release named above, so you can tell current from abandoned before you paste anything.

Build a command

What went wrong?

The six things people arrive here having just tried.

The one command worth knowing

If you remember nothing else from this site, remember this one. Best quality the site offers, merged into an mp4 that plays everywhere, named after the video rather than its id.

the sensible default

yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba/b" --merge-output-format mp4 --embed-metadata --embed-thumbnail -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "URL"

Twenty more like it on the cheat sheet , or build your own by clicking .

Browse by section

Errors 16 pages Every yt-dlp error worth a page of its own, grouped by what actually went wrong rather than by the words in the message. Install 8 pages Eight installation routes, each on its own page, because "run pip install" is not an answer on Windows and not the right answer anywhere. Guides 10 pages The options that decide what you actually end up with on disk, explained past the point where the README stops. Tools 3 pages Three things a static page cannot do: build the command for you, find the error you pasted, and search every flag at once.

Every error, by its exact message

Search results for these tend to be GitHub issue threads where the fix is in comment 47. These are the answers, written out.

Frequently asked

What is yt-dlp?

yt-dlp is a free command-line program that downloads video and audio from YouTube and around a thousand other sites. It is the actively maintained fork of youtube-dl, and it is public domain software — if you were asked to pay for it, you were not on the project's site.

Is yt-dlp safe?

The software itself is open source, widely audited and distributed from the project's own GitHub releases. The risk is not yt-dlp, it is where you download it from: sites offering a "yt-dlp installer" or a bundled GUI have shipped malware more than once. Install it from the official release page or a package manager, and it is as safe as any other command-line tool.

Is downloading with yt-dlp legal?

The tool is legal; what you point it at may not be. Downloading your own uploads, public-domain material or content you are licensed to keep is fine in most jurisdictions. Downloading copyrighted video you have no rights to is not, regardless of the tool used, and YouTube's terms of service prohibit downloading except through features they provide. That judgement is yours to make.

Why does a command from another site not work?

Usually because it was written for a version of yt-dlp that predates a change in how YouTube serves video. Advice in this niche has a half-life of months. Every page here carries the release it was tested against and the date it was last checked, so you can see at a glance whether it is current.

Do I need ffmpeg?

For anything above 720p on YouTube, yes. High-quality video and audio are served as separate streams and ffmpeg is what joins them. Without it yt-dlp falls back to whatever single combined file exists, which is usually 360p — the single most common reason people think yt-dlp is broken.