Youtube-dl is the most important and useful open-source command-line tool for Linux system to download videos from websites like Youtube, Dailymotion, Facebook, Google video, yahoo and many similar sites. It developed on python based library, so python is essential to install or available to use Youtube-dl software.

The Youtube-dl application supports many operating systems to download web video, including Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Youtube-dl also supports resuming features for video download, when the download gets interrupted, It will again start from resuming point.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to install youtube-dl and how to use it on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux.

$ sudo apt-get update –y
$ sudo apt-get upgrade –y

When your system gets updated, restart your system to apply all updated changes.

$ sudo apt-get install curl –y

After installing curl, download the youtube-dl into your system using curl command:

$ curl –L https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/bin/youtube-dl

Now, you should change the permission for this downloaded binary file using the following command:

$ sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/youtube-dl

Now, youtube-dl is installed and working on your system.

$ youtube-dl –h

Youtube-dl has the capabilities to support more video formats such as MP4, 3GP, WebM, and FLV. You can check all the available video format for any video by using below command:

$ youtube-dl –F  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooY7-eKAeA

You will get output like below where all the available format for this video is listed:

Output:
[info] Available formats for j_JgXJ-apXs:
format code  extension  resolution note
139          m4a        audio only DASH audio   56k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.5@ 48k (22050Hz), 756.44KiB
249          webm       audio only DASH audio   56k , opus @ 50k, 724.28KiB
250          webm       audio only DASH audio   69k , opus @ 70k, 902.75KiB
171          webm       audio only DASH audio  110k , vorbis@128k, 1.32MiB
251          webm       audio only DASH audio  122k , opus @160k, 1.57MiB
140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  146k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k (44100Hz), 1.97MiB
278          webm       256x144    144p   97k , webm container, vp9, 24fps, video only, 1.33MiB
160          mp4        256x144    DASH video  102k , avc1.4d400c, 24fps, video only, 731.53KiB
133          mp4        426x240    DASH video  174k , avc1.4d4015, 24fps, video only, 1.36MiB
242          webm       426x240    240p  221k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 1.74MiB
134          mp4        640x360    DASH video  369k , avc1.4d401e, 24fps, video only, 2.90MiB
243          webm       640x360    360p  500k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 4.15MiB
135          mp4        854x480    DASH video  746k , avc1.4d401e, 24fps, video only, 6.11MiB
244          webm       854x480    480p  844k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 7.27MiB
247          webm       1280x720   720p 1155k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 9.21MiB
136          mp4        1280x720   DASH video 1300k , avc1.4d401f, 24fps, video only, 9.66MiB
248          webm       1920x1080  1080p 1732k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 14.24MiB
137          mp4        1920x1080  DASH video 2217k , avc1.640028, 24fps, video only, 15.28MiB
17           3gp        176x144    small , mp4v.20.3, mp4a.40.2@ 24k
36           3gp        320x180    small , mp4v.20.3, mp4a.40.2
43           webm       640x360    medium , vp8.0, vorbis@128k
18           mp4        640x360    medium , avc1.42001E, mp4a.40.2@ 96k
22           mp4        1280x720   hd720 , avc1.64001F, mp4a.40.2@192k (best)

Now, you can choose the format to download the video using the flag –f like below:

$ youtube-dl –f 18  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooY7-eKAeA

The above command will download the video in MP4 format at 640×360 resolution:

[youtube] j_JgXJ-apXs: Downloading webpage
[youtube] j_JgXJ-apXs: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] j_JgXJ-apXs: Extracting video information
[youtube] j_JgXJ-apXs: Downloading MPD manifest
[download] Destination: Lucknow se Aaya Mera Dost (Become YouTuber) | Vlog.mp4
[download] 100% of 6.90MiB in 00:47

You can download youtube video in MP3 audio format also using the following command:

$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooY7-eKAeA –x  --audio-format mp3

You can also download the all video from specific youtube channel using channel’s url as show below:

$ youtube-dl –citw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHW4sIysWm_Q69t7RE-slQ

Youtube-dl is also working good with a proxy network, so if you are using the proxy network, you can use youtube-dl as shown below:

$ youtube-dl –proxy http://proxy-ip:port https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooY7-eKAeA

You can also download multiple videos using youtube-dl, you can create a text file with the list of video and use the following command:

$ youtube-dl –a video-list.txt

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
$ sudo apt-get update –y

Now, after updating the repository, you can install youtube-dlg by apt-get command, as shown below:

$ sudo apt-get install youtube-dlg –y

Now you can install youtube-dl or youtube-dlg any application in your system or server which will help you to download videos from various sites.