Free, open-source command-line downloader for video and audio
yt-dlp is a free, open-source command-line tool that downloads video and audio from thousands of websites with a single command. A fork of the venerable youtube-dl, it is maintained at a relentless pace: releases carry calendar dates (the current stable is 2026.10.26, published October 26, 2026) and the project has passed 200,000 GitHub stars. It ships under the Unlicense, which places it in the public domain.
There is no installer, no account and no setup wizard: one small file to drop in a folder, with standalone builds for Windows, macOS and Linux that need nothing else installed. Feed it a URL and it lists every available format, grabs the one you ask for, and can hand the result straight to FFmpeg to leave you with just the audio. Playlists and whole channels work the same way.
In our test we ran release 2026.10.21 on Linux against Big Buck Bunny, the Blender Foundation film that is free to download: metadata came back in about a second, the format list spanned a 45 MB 533x300 file up to a 317 MB 720p AVI, and the audio-extraction flag produced a tidy 115 kbps MP3 whose length matched the source to the second. The honest caveat from the same session: YouTube refused the download outright with a 'Sign in to confirm you're not a bot' wall. It is a tool, and what you point it at is your responsibility.
Featured in our discovery: yt-dlp: Download Videos with One Command
Standalone builds for Windows, macOS and Linux; drop the binary in a folder and run it, nothing else required.
Far beyond YouTube: Vimeo, the Internet Archive, social platforms and a long list of extractors kept current.
List every available quality and codec, then pick exactly the file you want.
One flag downloads the video and leaves a clean MP3; our test file matched the source length to the second.
Yes. It is released under the Unlicense, which places it in the public domain. No account, no ads, no paid tier.
No. Standalone builds for Windows, macOS and Linux run as-is. Python is only needed if you install yt-dlp as a package.