Downloading youtube video from commandline

youtube-dl is a python package that allows you to download videos from youtube. You can also use yt-dlp, that is an actively maintained fork of youtube-dl.

You can install it on Ubuntu with the command

apt install youtube-dl -y

On CentOS

yum install python-pip
pip install youtube-dl

To download a video, use

youtube-dl -f 18  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9oDMb7S6iw

To download only audio, use

youtube-dl -f 140 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9oDMb7S6iw

Replace youtube video URL with URL of the video you need to download.

To see all available formats for download, run

[root@server12 dn]# youtube-dl -F https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
[youtube] Confirming age
[youtube] VIDEO_ID: Downloading webpage
[youtube] VIDEO_ID: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] VIDEO_ID: Extracting video information
[youtube] VIDEO_ID: Downloading DASH manifest
[info] Available formats for VIDEO_ID:
format code extension resolution  note 
139         m4a       audio only  DASH audio   56k , audio@ 48k (22050Hz), 42.01MiB (worst)
140         m4a       audio only  DASH audio  136k , audio@128k (44100Hz), 111.80MiB
141         m4a       audio only  DASH audio  262k , audio@256k (44100Hz), 222.02MiB
160         mp4       256x144     DASH video  130k , video only, 89.70MiB
133         mp4       426x240     DASH video  274k , video only, 213.53MiB
134         mp4       640x360     DASH video  608k , video only, 259.05MiB
135         mp4       854x480     DASH video 1117k , video only, 559.52MiB
136         mp4       1280x720    DASH video 2244k , video only, 1.15GiB
17          3gp       176x144     
36          3gp       320x240     
5           flv       400x240     
43          webm      640x360     
18          mp4       640x360     
22          mp4       1280x720    (best)
[root@server12 dn]#