Download videos from Youtube and Vimeo with youtube-dl

Installing youtube-dl on Fedora

youtube-dl is a simple console based program that can download videos from Youtube, Vimeo and many other video- and radio- services online. The application is easy to use, you simply add the link (URL) to the video. Youtube-dl will find the video on that link and download it in the highest possible quality that is available.

Install

In Fedora 36 we use the command dnf to install youtube-dl in the terminal:

$ sudo dnf install youtube-dl

The man page is extensive and describes how the application works. You can also find information about how to set username and password for video services that requires it.

$ man youtube-dl

Youtube

To download videos from Youtube we can use the full link (URL) or just the video id, let’s download the video with the id BaW_jenozKc with the full link:

$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc

Or if we just want to use the video id, we type the following command:

$ youtube-dl BaW_jenozKc

Vimeo

If we want to download a video from Vimeo we use the full link (URL), example:

$ youtube-dl https://vimeo.com/56015672