yt-download-cli

Interactive Node.js CLI for downloading YouTube videos. It uses yt-dlp for format discovery and downloading, and bundled ffmpeg-static for merging separate video/audio streams.

Install

For local development:

npm install
npm link

npm install downloads the correct yt-dlp binary into vendor/ through the package postinstall script.

After publishing to npm, install globally on another machine:

npm install -g @yolka/yt-media-cli

Usage

yt-download "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUb3JZYO994"

Or without linking:

npm start -- "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUb3JZYO994"

Choose one of the shown formats, for example mp4 360p - ready or mp4 1080p - ffmpeg merge, and the file will be saved to downloads/.

During download the CLI prints yt-dlp progress with percent, speed, and ETA. The yt-dlp subprocess timeout is disabled so long videos can finish normally.

Use another output folder:

yt-download "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUb3JZYO994" --output videos

Notes

ffmpeg-static is installed as an npm dependency, so you do not need to install ffmpeg separately for normal use.

The package downloads the official yt-dlp executable during install. The CLI passes your local Node.js executable to yt-dlp as a JavaScript runtime, which is required by current YouTube extraction logic.

YouTube often exposes higher qualities like 1080p or 4K as separate video-only streams. Those options appear in the menu as ffmpeg merge choices and are muxed with the best matching audio-only stream.

For post-live videos where YouTube exposes both plain ids and *-dash ids, the menu uses yt-dlp's *-dash formats because the plain video ids can download as empty files.

Publish

Check the package contents:

npm run pack:check

Log in and publish:

npm login
npm publish --access public

The package publishes under @yolka/yt-media-cli, while the installed binary command remains yt-download.