youtube-dl is a free and open-source software tool for downloading video and audio from YouTube and over 1,000 other video hosting websites. It supports diverse file formats, quality settings, and platforms including Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is released under the Unlicense software license.
As of September 2021, youtube-dl is one of the most starred projects on GitHub, with over 100,000 stars. According to libraries.io, 308 other packages and 1,430 repositories depend on it. Numerous forks of the project exist, among which the community-maintained fork yt-dlp is notable for active development and enhanced functionality. yt-dlp builds upon youtube-dl's core features by offering improvements such as faster multi-threaded downloads, more advanced format selection and subtitle embedding support. Due to its active maintenance and expanded capabilities, yt-dlp has been widely adopted and has replaced youtube-dl in several major Linux distributions, notably beginning with Ubuntu 22.04.
Both tools have faced legal challenges, including takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as well as controversies surrounding the downloading of copyrighted content. Nonetheless, they remain important software for users requiring reliable media downloads for purposes including education, archiving, journalism, and fair use.
