Document: WR-005                                                 P. Webb
                                                              2024.11.08

                        youtube-dl tips & tricks

Body

   Everyone knows `youtube-dl` doesn't really work these days. What
   **does** work is the successor, `yt-dlp`[1]. I install it
   via brew[2]:

   ```sh
   brew install yt-dlp
   ```

   Here's the contents of my `~/.config/yt-dlp/config` (it automatically
   titles videos I download):

   ```plain
   --format-sort "ext"
   -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
   ```

   Finally, here's what's in my `~/.zshrc` (I use zsh[3]):

   ```sh
   alias yt="yt-dlp"

   ig() {
     yt $1 -f mp4
   }
   ```

   Downloading YouTube videos is as easy as:

   ```sh
   yt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5zwYVh8i5w
   ```

   And Instagram videos:

   ```sh
   # this is an hour-long video and Instagram pauses playback if you dare multitask
   ig https://www.instagram.com/p/DCDRaRoxJYW/
   ```

References

   [1] <https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp>
   [2] <https://brew.sh>
   [3] <https://ohmyz.sh>