A UPDATED kinda shitty guide to downloading youtube videos for windows

So i made a tutorial on how to download yt-dlp awhile ago but that tutorial was shit and sorry for the ppl that used it. Anyways heres an updated tutorial on how to download yt-dlp

This tutorial is under the assumption that you are on windows. If you are on mac then uhhhh tough luck? If you're on linux then you don't need this tutorial.

Hey this is a guide on how to download youtube videos without relying on sketchy "youtube to mp3" websites. Yt-dlp is basically superior in everyway, it downloads videos faster and has much more options like changing the format of your video and downloading playlists. The only drawback is that the program used is a terminal dependent program and not alot of people know how to use that and are kinda intimidated by it. so uhhhh if you dont know how to navigate that kinda shit then i'll try and help you in this tutorial :)

Installation

Disclaimer: This isnt the only way to download yt-dlp, its just the one of the ways that worked for me

First off, you need to download python - [heres a link to the downloads page] and click the button below “Download the latest version for Windows” and install python

Now you need to open up powershell. If you have windows you have powershell. Its basically just a command prompt.

Finally it is time to install yt-dlp. the installation instructions [are seen here] under the "with pip" but for convinience sake im going to copy and paste the instructions here

go into powershell, copy and paste:

On the wiki its the installation command is:

But that shit didnt work on my pc and the first one did so use whatever works idk

aaaand thats it! You have installed yt-dlp

Using yt-dlp

soooo you've installed it now how do you use it?

this verson of yt-dlp can be used in any folder, so you can just go to your desired export folder in powershell by using the cd command and use the yt-dlp command in there.

This would direct powershell to your default music folder, but you can direct it to literally ANY folder on your computer

now you can actually start downloading shit, there's a list of the commands in the yt-dlp folder titled "commands.txt" or if you can't find it then you can go to the github page or you can type in "yt-dlp -h" in the powershell terminal but the command basically goes like this:

yt-dlp [insert youtube url here] [insert other commands found in the commands.txt folder]

The -f at the end basically changes the format of the file, if you would have just typed in "yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG_Ue3t17l0" then the file would come out a .webm

UPDATE: This dosent happen anymore! It automatically makes it a mp4 now which is cool but im going to still keep it up if you want to know how to change it to any other file format like .MOV or something

or if you want to export a mp3 file then you type in

and if you've set it up correctly then you should've successfully downloaded a youtube video! the output should be in the same folder.

Anyways uhhh good luck