node-ytdl-core

Yet another youtube downloading module. Written with only Javascript and a node-friendly streaming interface.

Support

You can contact us for support on our chat server

Usage

const fs = require('fs');
const ytdl = require('ytdl-core');
// TypeScript: import ytdl from 'ytdl-core'; with --esModuleInterop
// TypeScript: import * as ytdl from 'ytdl-core'; with --allowSyntheticDefaultImports
// TypeScript: import ytdl = require('ytdl-core'); with neither of the above

ytdl('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A02s8omM_hI')
  .pipe(fs.createWriteStream('video.flv'));

API

ytdl(url, [options])

Attempts to download a video from the given url. Returns a readable stream. options can have the following keys

quality - Video quality to download. Can be an itag value, a list of itag values, or highest/lowest/highestaudio/lowestaudio/highestvideo/lowestvideo. highestaudio/lowestaudio/highestvideo/lowestvideo all prefer audio/video only respectively. Defaults to highest, which prefers formats with both video and audio.

A typical video's formats will be sorted in the following way using quality: 'highest'

itag container quality codecs                 bitrate  audio bitrate
18   mp4       360p    avc1.42001E, mp4a.40.2 696.66KB 96KB
137  mp4       1080p   avc1.640028            4.53MB
248  webm      1080p   vp9                    2.52MB
136  mp4       720p    avc1.4d4016            2.2MB
247  webm      720p    vp9                    1.44MB
135  mp4       480p    avc1.4d4014            1.1MB
134  mp4       360p    avc1.4d401e            593.26KB
140  mp4               mp4a.40.2                       128KB

format 18 at 360p will be chosen first since it's the highest quality format with both video and audio.

filter - Used to filter the list of formats to choose from. Can be audioandvideo to filter formats that contain both video and audio, video to filter for formats that contain video, or videoonly for formats that contain video and no additional audio track. Can also be audio or audioonly. You can give a filtering function that gets called with each format available. This function is given the format object as its first argument, and should return true if the format is preferable.
```
// Example with custom function.
ytdl(url, { filter: format => format.container === 'mp4' })
```
format - Primarily used to download specific video or audio streams. This can be a specific format object returned from getInfo.
- Supplying this option will ignore the filter and quality options since the format is explicitly provided.
range - A byte range in the form {start: INT, end: INT} that specifies part of the file to download, ie {start: 10355705, end: 12452856}.
- This downloads a portion of the file, and not a separately spliced video.
begin - What time in the video to begin. Supports formats 00:00:00.000, 0ms, 0s, 0m, 0h, or number of milliseconds. Example: 1:30, 05:10.123, 10m30s.
- For live videos, this also accepts a unix timestamp or Date object, and defaults to Date.now().
- This option is not very reliable for non-live videos, see #129, #219.
liveBuffer - How much time buffer to use for live videos in milliseconds. Default is 20000.
requestOptions - Anything to merge into the request options which miniget is called with, such as headers.
highWaterMark - How much of the video download to buffer into memory. See node's docs for more. Defaults to 512KB.
lang - The 2 character symbol of a language. Default is en.

Event: info

ytdl.videoInfo - Info.
ytdl.videoFormat - Video Format.

Emitted when the video's info hash is fetched, along with the chosen format metadata to download. format.url might be different if start was given.

Event: response

http.ServerResponse - Response.

Emitted when the video response has been found and has started downloading or after any successful reconnects. Can be used to get the size of the download.

Event: progress

number - Chunk byte length.
number - Total bytes or segments downloaded.
number - Total bytes or segments.

Emitted whenever a new chunk is received. Passes values describing the download progress.

Stream#destroy()

Call to abort and stop downloading a video.

ytdl.getBasicInfo(url, [options], [callback(err, info)])

Use this if you only want to get metainfo from a video. If callback isn't given, returns a promise.

ytdl.getInfo(url, [options], [callback(err, info)])

Gets metainfo from a video. Includes additional formats, and ready to download deciphered URL. This is what the ytdl() function uses internally. If callback isn't given, returns a promise.

ytdl.downloadFromInfo(info, options)

Once you have received metadata from a video with the ytdl.getInfo function, you may pass that information along with other options to this function.

ytdl.chooseFormat(formats, options)

Can be used if you'd like to choose a format yourself with the options above. Throws an Error if it fails to find any matching format.

// Example of choosing a video format.
ytdl.getInfo(videoID, (err, info) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  let format = ytdl.chooseFormat(info.formats, { quality: '134' });
  if (format) {
    console.log('Format found!');
  }
});

ytdl.filterFormats(formats, filter)

If you'd like to work with only some formats, you can use the filter option above.

// Example of filtering the formats to audio only.
ytdl.getInfo(videoID, (err, info) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  let audioFormats = ytdl.filterFormats(info.formats, 'audioonly');
  console.log('Formats with only audio: ' + audioFormats.length);
});

ytdl.validateID(id)

Returns true if the given string satisfies YouTube's ID format.

ytdl.validateURL(url)

Returns true if able to parse out a valid video ID.

ytdl.getURLVideoID(url)

Returns a video ID from a YouTube URL. Throws an Error if it fails to parse an ID.

ytdl.getVideoID(str)

Same as the above ytdl.getURLVideoID(), but can be called with the video ID directly, in which case it returns it. This is what ytdl uses internally. Throws an Error if it fails to parse an ID.

Limitations

ytdl cannot download videos that fall into the following

Regionally restricted (requires a proxy)
Private
Rentals

YouTube intentionally rate limits downloads, particularly audio only formats, likely to prevent bandwidth abuse. The download rate is still faster than a media player can play the video, even on 2x. See #294.

Generated download links are valid for 6 hours, for the same IP address.

Handling Separate Streams

Typically 1080p or better video does not have audio encoded with it. The audio must be downloaded separately and merged via an appropriate encoding library. ffmpeg is the most widely used tool, with many Node.js modules available. Use the format objects returned from ytdl.getInfo to download specific streams to combine to fit your needs. Look at example/ffmpeg.js for an example on doing this.

What if it stops working?

Youtube updates their website all the time, it's not that rare for this to stop working. If it doesn't work for you and you're using the latest version, feel free to open up an issue. Make sure to check if there isn't one already with the same error.

If you'd like to help fix the issue, look at the type of error first. The most common one is

Could not extract signature deciphering actions

Run the tests at test/irl-test.js just to make sure that this is actually an issue with ytdl-core.

mocha test/irl-test.js

These tests are not mocked, and they actually try to start downloading a few videos. If these fail, then it's time to debug.

For getting started with that, you can look at the extractActions() function in /lib/sig.js.

Install

npm install ytdl-core@latest

Or for Yarn users:

yarn add ytdl-core@latest

Make sure you're installing the latest version of ytdl-core to keep up with the latest fixes.

If you're using a bot or app that uses ytdl-core such as ytdl-core-discord or discord-player, it may be dependent on an older version. To update its ytdl-core version, you'll have to fork the project and update its package.json file, you can't simply change the version on your project's package.json, the app will still use its own older version of ytdl-core.

You can then submit a pull request to their project and point to your fork temporarily. You can also check their pull request and check if there's one open already, and point to that instead. To point to a github's repo's branch in your package.json, you can do

  "ytdl-core-discord": "amishshah/ytdl-core-discord#dependabot/npm_and_yarn/ytdl-core-2.0.1"

Related Projects

ytdl - A cli wrapper of this.
pully - Another cli wrapper of this aimed at high quality formats.
ytsr - YouTube video search results.
ytpl - YouTube playlist and channel resolver.

Tests

Tests are written with mocha

npm test

rezemble/node-ytdl-core