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pytube

pytube is a genuine, lightweight, dependency-free Python library (and command-line utility) for downloading YouTube videos.

Documentation

Detailed documentation about the usage of the library can be found at pytube.io. This is recommended for most cases. If you want to hastily download a single video, the quick start guide below might be what you’re looking for.

Description

YouTube is the most popular video-sharing platform in the world and as a hacker, you may encounter a situation where you want to script something to download videos. For this, I present to you: pytube.

pytube is a lightweight library written in Python. It has no third-party
dependencies and aims to be highly reliable.

pytube also makes pipelining easy, allowing you to specify callback functions for different download events, such as on progress or on complete.

Furthermore, pytube includes a command-line utility, allowing you to download videos right from the terminal.

Features

• Support for both progressive & DASH streams
• Support for downloading the complete playlist
• Easily register on_download_progress & on_download_complete callbacks
• Command-line interfaced included
• Caption track support
• Outputs caption tracks to .srt format (SubRip Subtitle)
• Ability to capture thumbnail URL
• Extensively documented source code
• No third-party dependencies

Quickstart

This guide covers the most basic usage of the library. For more detailed information, please refer to pytube.io.

Installation

Pytube requires an installation of Python 3.6 or greater, as well as pip. (Pip is typically bundled with Python installations.)

To install from PyPI with pip:

$ python -m pip install pytube

Sometimes, the PyPI release becomes slightly outdated. To install from the source with pip:

$ python -m pip install git+https://github.com/pytube/pytube

Using pytube in a Python script

To download a video using the library in a script, you’ll need to import the YouTube class from the library and pass an argument of the video URL. From there, you can access the streams and download them.

 >>> from pytube import YouTube
 >>> YouTube('https://youtu.be/2lAe1cqCOXo').streams.first().download()
 >>> yt = YouTube('http://youtube.com/watch?v=2lAe1cqCOXo')
 >>> yt.streams
  ... .filter(progressive=True, file_extension='mp4')
  ... .order_by('resolution')
  ... .desc()
  ... .first()
  ... .download()

Using the command-line interface

Using the CLI is remarkably straightforward as well. To download a video at the highest progressive quality, you can use the following command:

$ pytube https://youtube.com/watch?v=2lAe1cqCOXo

You can also do the same for a playlist:

$ pytube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS1QulWo1RIaJECMeUT4LFwJ-ghgoSH6n