Download Videos and MP3s from YouTube

✅ Requirements

yt-dlp – Modern fork of youtube-dl
ffmpeg – Required for audio processing and conversion

Ensure both yt-dlp and ffmpeg are installed and accessible from your terminal. yt-dlp is a powerful tool with support for more sites, better performance, and additional features compared to older downloaders. ffmpeg is used to handle audio extraction and conversion.

🎥 Download a Video from YouTube

Use the following command to download a full video:


yt-dlp "<YouTube video URL>"

This downloads the best available quality by default.

🎵 Download an MP3 from YouTube

To extract audio in MP3 format from a YouTube video:


yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 "<YouTube video URL>"

Replace <YouTube video URL> with the actual URL of the video you want to download.

The resulting MP3 will be saved in your current working directory unless a different output path is specified using the -o flag.