A step-by-step tutorial on how to install YouTube-dl on Windows

Tue-Jan-2023
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To install YouTube-dl on Windows:

Step 1: Download Python YouTube-dl is a command-line tool written in Python, so you’ll need to have Python installed on your computer before you can install YouTube-dl. You can download the latest version of Python from the official Python website at https://www.python.org/downloads/.

Once you’ve downloaded the Python installer, double-click on it to start the installation process. The installation wizard will guide you through the steps necessary to install Python on your computer.

Step 2: Install YouTube-dl Once Python is installed, you can install YouTube-dl using the following steps:

  1. Open your web browser and go to the YouTube-dl website at https://youtube-dl.org/.
  2. Click on the “Download” button on the top menu to go to the downloads page.
  3. On the downloads page, scroll down until you see the “Windows exe” section. Click on the link for the latest version of YouTube-dl.
  4. Once the download is complete, locate the downloaded file and double-click on it to run it.
  5. The installation wizard will guide you through the steps necessary to install YouTube-dl on your computer. By default, YouTube-dl is installed in the “C:\Windows\System32” directory, but you can choose a different directory if you prefer.

Step 3: Test YouTube-dl Once YouTube-dl is installed, you can test it by opening a command prompt and running the “youtube-dl” command. To open a command prompt, press the Windows key + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog, then type “cmd” and press Enter.

In the command prompt, type “youtube-dl” followed by the URL of a YouTube video you want to download. For example, to download the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ, you would type:

javascript
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

YouTube-dl will start downloading the video and display progress information in the command prompt. Once the download is complete, the video will be saved to your current directory.

That’s it! You have successfully installed YouTube-dl on Windows and tested it by downloading a YouTube video. You can now use YouTube-dl to download videos from a variety of websites, not just YouTube. To learn more about how to use YouTube-dl, you can refer to the official documentation at https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl.