youtube-dl

youtube-dl is a free and open-source command-line utility that you can use to download YouTube videos as well as integrate this functionality into your own software applications. In addition to YouTube, it supports other downloading sources, like Google.

There are numerous options that can be configured using this program, and they focus on the network, video selection, download, filesystem, thumbnail images, verbosity / simulation, video format, subtitles, authentication, Adobe Pass, post-processing, and workarounds.

Besides some C++ runtime libraries, there are no software dependencies involved. Also, the Windows tool doesn't require installation so you can call youtube-dl's process from a console window and use -help to view all parameters.

The syntax is youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...] so the easiest way to download a YouTube link without worrying about any settings is by writing its URL after the process name. The downloaded videos are automatically saved in the same location as the application and have the name of the uploaded videos.

When it comes to general options, you can ask the tool to cancel further downloads if any errors occur while getting playlists ( --abort-on-error), display all supported extractors (--list-extractors), or list the videos in a playlist instead of downloading them (--flat-playlist).

Network options revolve around proxies (HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS) and forcing all connections via IPv4 or IPv6 (-4, --force-ipv4 or -6, --force-ipv6). As far as video selection commands are concerned, you can specify the start and end of the playlist ( --playlist-start NUMBER and --playlist-end NUMBER), download only specific videos from a playlist by indicating their order number (--playlist-items ITEM_SPEC), or get only clips with a matching title, in either regex or caseless sub-string format (--match-title REGEX).

You can also instruct the tool to write thumbnail images to disk (--write-thumbnail), activate quiet mode (-q or --quiet), supress HTTPS certificate validation (--no-check-certificate), download all available video formats (--all-formats), write subtitle files (--write-sub), and log in with a specific account ID and password (-u or --username USERNAME and -p or --password PASSWORD).

These are just part of the settings made available by youtube-dl. It downloaded videos quickly in our tests while remaining light on system resources usage. Thanks to its comprehensive set of options, youtube-dl should meet the requirements of users looking to download YouTube videos after configuring many advanced settings, or to implement this tool into their own products.