this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2026
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You should absolutely download your favourite youtube videos (criminallyvulgar.dev)
submitted 1 day ago by KatherinaReichelt@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You think typing yt-dlp URL is rough for users? I cannot think of a simpler command line command other than maybe ls.

[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

command line command

There you go. That alone makes it more complicated than Stacher7. All I know is I went to the yt-dlp homepage, started reading how to use it, then realized someone probably made it easier, did a quick Google search, and found Stacher7 which required no learning at all.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

not really though. it is more like this, simplified:

yt-dlp URL --output /path/with/all/the/funky/patameters.%(ext) --all-the-worlds-parameters-for-good-format-quality-subs-whateverelse

yes if you want to download a single video or two, the basic command works somewhat, but not usable if you want to download lots of videos from multiple channels

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 0 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

You’re making up cases that don’t need to exist. The basic command and its defaults works fine. It can download every video from every channel. Don’t need anything else.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago

when downloading lots of videos, you will have to take some compromises for it to be economical. like you probably dont need full quality, especially when its 4k or something insane like that. so you will want to use a very simple parameter like this:

-f "bestvideo[height<=?720]+bestaudio/best"

already memorized it, right?

or, what if you would accidentally redownload a video? you forgot you already downloaded a specific video, so you rerun it. maybe even its content has changed since then. or you are downloading a playlist or a whole channel, and you dont want to redownload existing ones all the time. what you do?

--no-overwrites
--archive-file filename
--force-write-archive

or if you dont want to download formats that might be a pain in the ass to play later:

--prefer-free-formats

but yeah, you can ignore all of this and be surprised later when you can't sustain your archive anymore. or use a gui tool that shows these settings in a prominent place so you can decide in time.

oh and don't forget links that your terminal could misinterpret as a standalone command to run, because it has an ampersand or something like in it. the average user is not experienced with the terminal to quote every URL