Hi, this short article only to mention that there is a wonderful application that exists for a years for the purpose to download YOUR or maybe some other movies from youtube. I don’t want to go in to legal aspect too much, what can be downloaded from youtube, what not as I am not an expert in that matter. I am describing just a tool and decision after what and when can be downloaded leaving to you. Please familiarize with all possible legal regulations in your country and youtube.

yt-dlp (github, yt-dlp) is a fork of youtube-dl project created for the very similar purpose. yt-dlp has a many, many option to download content, including automatic choose of the video quality of possibility to download many videos based on the text file list.

Installation

It is very simple. You can grab file from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp?tab=readme-ov-file#installation, from your distribution repository where it most likely be already prepared (not necessary in the newest version), from python repository or using brew (in case of MacOs).

Maybe the preferred way to keep yt-dlp in the newest version would be to use just simply pip command, where in case of Linux, command would be: python3 -m pip install -U yt-dlp

It is not a requirement, but it is good to install ffmpeg as well. For Linux I would recommend repository to use. In case of Windows, it can be downloaded from: https://github.com/GyanD/codexffmpeg/releases/tag/2025-01-08-git-251de1791e

Usage

Simple usage, just type yt-dlp URL – where URL can be url to the particular video or to the whole channel.

Other useful command:

yt-dlp --help  ## show help
yt-dlp --write-sub --write-auto-sub --sub-lang "en.*" --sub-lang "de.*" "https://..."  #download video with subtitles in en and de
#below will download also sub, but without deleting it when run for the next time
yt-dlp.exe --sleep-interval 5 --no-overwrite --write-sub --write-auto-sub --sub-lang "en.*" --sub-lang "de.*" "https://..."

Other interesting software is freetube, where keeping your privacy, it is possible to watch video online.