Make yt-dlp easy to use

From Pengwings
Revision as of 21:28, 12 February 2026 by Theleruby (talk | contribs)

Easy-ish to use short-term replacement for GRAB.BAT for Linux. Make yt-dlp command line less of a headache by aliasing it.

Install yt-dlp from your package manager e.g.

sudo rpm-ostree install yt-dlp

Add grab aliases:

mkdir ~/.bashrc.d
vim ~/.bashrc.d/grab
alias grab='printf "=====================================================\nLazy grab commands for Linux (yt-dlp)\n=====================================================\nTo grab single files:\n    grab-audio <url>\n    grab-video <url>\nTo grab playlists:\n    grab-audios <url>\n    grab-videos <url>\nFiles are downloaded into the working directory.\n"'
alias grab-audio='yt-dlp --format "bestaudio/best" --audio-format mp3 --extract-audio -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" --verbose'
alias grab-video='yt-dlp --format "bestvideo+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestvideo+bestaudio/best" --merge-output-format mp4 -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" --verbose'
alias grab-audios='grab-audio -a'
alias grab-videos='grab-video -a'

For help:

grab

Which prints:

=====================================================
Lazy grab commands for Linux (yt-dlp)
=====================================================
To grab single files:
    grab-audio <url>
    grab-video <url>
To grab playlists:
    grab-audios <playlist.txt>
    grab-videos <playlist.txt>
Files are downloaded into the working directory.

To grab audio:

grab-audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvAGUO27FNw

To grab video:

grab-video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HXT7fDkf9I

To grab a playlist of audio tracks:

grab-audios playlist.txt

To grab a playlist of video tracks:

grab-videos playlist.txt