Saving Online Media with yt-dlp

Oftentimes, you see a video on the internet and wish you could have it. If you are chronically online and want to archive or otherwise save content on the internet, there is a tool called yt-dlp. It supports a nauseating number of download sites, and it's free, multiplatform, and open source! The cons are that it isn't a web application (https://cobalt.tools/ works for many of those use cases) and that you have to manage the files yourself. But if that isn't an issue, you are ready to go! Also, download only content you have the right to or permission to access.

This is a terminal application, which means it won't run in Google Chrome, Firefox, or even as a graphical application. It means everything will be run in your device's command line and will be text-based. Instead of copying the media URL and pasting it into a text box, paste it into the command line. The way programs on the command line work (after installation) is that you type [command] and then arguments, which, simply put, are any information your command needs to do its job. yt-dlp, the application I will introduce, is one of the simplest to use for downloading media. It is typically yt-dlp [url of video].

Installation

Installing can be pretty straightforward if you have Python installed on your computer (you probably do). What you will need to do is open a command line so you can install via Python.

python3 -m pip install -U "yt-dlp[default]"

If you have macOS/Linux, you can use Homebrew brew install yt-dlp. If you don't have Python or a third-party package (software) manager, you can download a binary (a packaged/compiled piece of software), which you can add to the environment variables on your computer, but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Essentially, after running the needed install command, you are done.

Usage

In order to use the application, all you need to do is this:

# First command
cd Downloads

# Download video
yt-dlp https://archive.org/details/BigBuckBunny_124

yt-dlp is an actively supported and widely used open-source command-line tool for downloading videos from various websites. It is extremely easy to use and could be a good way to get started with the command line if you don't already use it. Remember to only download content you have the right/permission to do.