Download YouTube Video

Kevin FOO
2 min readAug 13, 2021

How to install

macOS

To install run the below command. That is provided if you have Homebrew installed in your mac in the first place. If not, go to https://brew.sh/ and follow the instructions there to install it. Should be just a simple one liner copy and paste.

brew install youtube-dl

To update youtube-dl, use the below command

brew upgrade youtube-dl

Ubuntu

To install using Python3

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pip
pip3 install youtube-dl

To update youtube-dl if it is outdated

pip3 install -U youtube-dl

To install using snap

sudo apt update
sudo snap install youtube-dl

To update youtube-dl if it is outdated

sudo snap refresh youtube-dl

Do NOT use apt install to install youtube-dl. It is usually outdated and unable to download the YouTube video.

Windows

You will need Chocolatey to install youtube-dl. To install Chocolatey visit https://chocolatey.org/install . Remember to run your PowerShell in Administrator mode.

To install youtube-dl, run

choco install youtube-dl

To update, run

choco upgrade youtube-dl

How to download

Copy the URL of the YouTube video.

YouTube video with the most watch

Run the below command to download the YouTube video

youtube-dl <YouTube_video_URL>

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Kevin FOO

A software engineer, a rock climbing, inline skating enthusiast, a husband, a father.