Easily and quickly download almost any streaming video, no matter what platform it is hosted on, for later viewing offline.
There are a thousand and one ways to download YouTube videos for viewing without internet connection. From online services to dedicated software, browser extensions or directly using VLC, easily retrieving videos hosted on streaming platforms has become an international sport. But there is a formidable efficiency tool to achieve this maneuver: youtube-dl.
This free and open source tool can be frightening at first. Devoid of graphical interface, it works only in command lines. However, its use is not very complex. Once its operation has been mastered, youtube-dl is undoubtedly the simplest and most efficient tool to retrieve videos published online.
Even better, despite its explicit name, youtube-dl is not limited to downloading videos from YouTube. The utility is indeed capable of retrieving almost all streaming videos, from the URL of the page that broadcasts them, regardless of their distribution platform.
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No doubt because it is formidably effective, the utility open source had drawn the wrath of American rights holders last year. Faced with this “stream ripper”, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) had asked Github to close the repository used by its developers to host the tool.
Fortunately for youtube-dl, the EFF had deemed the RIAA’s request to remove the tool unjustified, allowing the software to make its return to Github just a few weeks after being put on the sidelines.
For those who still doubt the legality of the thing, ripping an audio or video stream is legal. It falls within the exception of private copying, on condition of not breaking the DRM set up by the editors.
In the following lines, you will find out how to download streaming videos with youtube-dl on Windows, macOS and Linux.
On windows
1. Install youtube-dl
If you are using a Windows PC, first download and install Microsoft Visual C ++ 2010 Service Pack 1. This module is essential to make YouTube-dl work on Windows.
Then download the YouTube-DL utility to your machine. You should end up with a youtube-dl.exe file.
This file cannot be executed as is, but must be launched in the command prompt.
2. Open Command Prompt
To download a video, you must use theCommand prompt then go to the directory where the youtube-dl.exe file is stored.
Open the directory containing the youtube-dl.exe file, right click on the file and enter Properties.
Then copy the location of the file to the clipboard using the shortcut Ctrl + C.
Then open Command Prompt. To do this, use the Windows + R keyboard shortcut, then in the Run window type cmd and click OK.
To go to the folder where youtube-dl was saved, type cd and paste the contents of the clipboard using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + V.
You should get a line like the following:
C: Users YourPCName> cd C: Users YourPCName FolderName
Command Prompt is now open to the directory containing youtube-dl.exe, allowing you to run commands on it.
3. Download a video
To download a video, handling is very simple. Just type youtube-dl, add a space, and paste the URL of the video you want to grab.
Then press the Enter key on the keyboard to validate and start the video download.
Youtube-dl instantly starts downloading the video. It is automatically saved in the same directory as that of the youtube-dl.exe file.
On macOS and Linux
1. Install Youtube-dl
If you’re using macOS or Linux, open Terminal and enter the following command:
sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o / usr / local / bin / youtube-dl
sudo chmod a + rx / usr / local / bin / youtube-dl
The Terminal should then invite you to enter your account password to validate the installation of youtube-dl on your machine.
2. Download a video
To start downloading a video with youtube-dl, just type youtube-dl, add a space, paste the video URL with quotes before and after, and hit Enter on the keyboard.
The video download will then start instantly and indicate 100% when complete.
You will find the downloaded video files in the User directory of your machine.
Note that it is possible to start downloading several videos simultaneously. All you have to do is add the URLs of the videos one after the other separated by a space.
If you are using macOS or Linux, don’t forget to add quotes to add the URLs of each video to be retrieved otherwise you may in some cases get an error.