` Downloader

Download multiple videos at once with one simple script

Works with Youtube and all other sites supported by yt-dlp.

Prerequisites

Download yt-dlp
- For Linux-based systems, apt is probably the easiest way
- For Windows, winget might be the easiest, although if you don’t have winget, just download the .exe and put it somewhere in your PATH (if you don’t know what that is, create a folder called yt-dlp in %APPDATA%, put the exe there, do Win + R, systempropertiesadvanced, Environment Variables, in System variables double click on Path, new, %APPDATA%\yt-dlp and OK all the way out), in that case use yt-dlp -U to update it later
- If you have it installed with pip, make sure to update it to the latest version that has ejs support by running pip install -U yt-dlp[default]
Download FFmpeg
- For Linux-based systems, it should already be installed, otherwise check this
- For Windows, either run winget install Gyan.FFmpeg or download this and follow the same instructions as above to add it to your PATH
Download Deno (required to support YouTube download with the latest yt-dlp versions)
- For Linux-based systems, run curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sh
- For Windows, either run winget install DenoLand.Deno or irm https://deno.land/install.ps1 | iex in Powershell

Usage

Download the script file bulk-youtube-download.bat (or bulk-youtube-download.sh for Linux/Mac) and put it somewhere you want
Create a text file called links.txt in the same folder as the script

Put your links in the links.txt file as a JSON array, for example :

json

[
  "https://youtu.be/7ssVNgOK_MM",
  "https://youtu.be/xyLWY2wXbho",
  "https://youtu.be/p0dw-276t7w",
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYVoZJXuhxk",
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwBc7B46X0",
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2csePLbahQ",
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m1EzV-i3WI",
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JdZsKzYWhI",
  "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLliBvQE3gg9doyZ2XgGOFMn4FHzdZquuZ",
  "https://www.youtube.com/@snaptic.3d/videos",
  "https://www.youtube.com/@snaptic.3d/shorts"
]

Note

Supported URL types :

Single videos
Playlists
Channel /videos pages
Mixed URLs together

Open a terminal/command prompt in the folder where you put the script and the links.txt file
Run the script :
- On Windows : .\bulk-youtube-download.bat
- On Linux/Mac : ./bulk-youtube-download.sh
Congrats, the videos are now in the downloads folder !

Default download options and how to change them

By default, the script uses the following options :

Format : best video + best audio, fallback to best if not available
Embed subtitles (if available)
Embed thumbnail
Embed metadata
Embed chapters (if available)
Playlist support in addition to single videos
Resume interrupted downloads
Parallel fragment downloading for faster downloads
Retry failed downloads automatically

Output folder : downloads (created if it doesn’t exist), filename format : Video Title [Video ID].ext, in a subfolder named after the playlist if the video is part of a playlist
Downloads are automatically organized like this :

text

downloads/
├── Video title [VideoID].mp4
└── Channel name/
    ├── 1 - Video title [VideoID].mp4
    └── 2 - Video title [VideoID].mp4
└── Playlist name/
    ├── 1 - Video title [VideoID].mp4
    └── 2 - Video title [VideoID].mp4

To change these options, just pass what you want after the script name, for example .\bulk-youtube-download.bat -f "bestvideo[height<=720]+bestaudio/best" --no-embed-subs -o "downloads/%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
A list of options can be found here.
Here are some options that might be worth using :

no-playlist if you want to skip playlist links
--cookies-from-browser chrome for private/age restricted videos
-s -F to see the available formats for each video without downloading
-f "format" to specify the format to download, see this
-o "downloads/output_template" : change the output folder and/or filename format, see this
⚠️ WARNING : on Windows, make sure to double the % signs in the output template (example : use %%(title)s instead of %(title)s). Also it’s best to keep the downloads/ part to avoid cluttering the script folder with all the downloaded videos
--sub-langs to specify which subtitles to download, use --list-subs before to see available languages
-x to extract audio only for videos that don’t provide separate audio and video streams
--force-keyframes-at-cuts --sponsorblock-remove sponsor,selfpromo to remove segments of the video, see this for available categories. The --force-keyframes-at-cuts option is recommended to have better results when cutting the video, although it takes longer to process

How to download all videos from a channel ?

Go on the Youtube channel, go on the Videos tab, reload the page and scroll down until no new video pops out (yes it can take some time)

Open the console (F12 -> Console) paste the following line and hit enter :

copy(Array.from(new Set(Array.from(document.links).filter((l) => l.href?.includes("watch?v=")).map((x) => x.href.split("&")[0]))))

Open the links.txt file, delete everything, paste (Ctrl + V) and save the file

Tip

if you see no link, run the following command instead :

copy(Array.from(new Set(Array.from(document.links).filter((l) => l.href?.includes(".be/")).map((x) => x.href.split("&")[0]))))

Demo

You have an error ?

The video may be geo-restricted
The video may be private
The video may be age-restricted and require cookies
Youtube is rate limiting you
Missing cookies (in some cases)
Outdated yt-dlp
If you have any special error message, open an issue here first to not bloat yt-dlp’s repo

Credits

Script created by myself (@EDM115)
Inspired by a request of Crystal
With improvements from @Abhijithsp