yt-dlp-2026.02.04

Introduction to yt-dlp

The yt-dlp package provides a Python3 CLI utility to download audio and video files from thousands of websites, including YouTube. It can convert downloads into other formats using FFmpeg.

yt-dlp Dependencies

Required

Hatchling

Recommended

Optional

brotli (with Python3 bindings), certifi, Requests, and Urllib3

Installation of yt-dlp

If you wish to download YouTube videos, apply a patch to add Node.js as a default JavaScript engine [4]:

patch -Np0 << EOF
--- yt_dlp/options.py
+++ yt_dlp/options.py
@@ -467 +467 @@
-        default=['deno'],
+        default=['deno', 'node'],
@@ -473 +473 @@
-            'Only "deno" is enabled by default. The highest priority runtime that is both enabled and '
+            'Only "deno" and "node" are enabled by default. The highest priority runtime that is both enabled and '
EOF

Install yt-dlp by running the following commands:

pip3 wheel -w dist --no-build-isolation --no-deps --no-cache-dir $PWD

Now, as the root user:

pip3 install --no-index --find-links=dist --no-cache-dir --no-user yt_dlp

Command Explanations

-w dist: Builds the appropriate wheel for this module in the directory dist.

--no-build-isolation: Tells pip3 to run the build in the system environment instead of creating a temporary build environment.

--no-deps: Prevents pip3 from building wheels for the project's dependencies.

--no-index: Ignores the package index (only looking at --find-links URLs instead).

--find-links dist: Looks for links to archives such as wheel (.whl) files in the directory dist.

--no-cache-dir: Disables the cache to prevent a warning when installing as the root user.

--no-user: Prevent mistakenly running the install command as a non-root user.

--upgrade: Upgrade the package to the newest available version. This option is used with the install command if a version of the package is already installed.

--force-reinstall: Reinstall the package even if it is up-to-date. This option is used with the install command if reinstalling the package or reverting to an earlier version of the package.

--no-deps: Do not install package dependencies. This option may be needed with the --upgrade or --force-reinstall options.

Contents

Installed Programs: yt-dlp
Installed Libraries: None
Installed Directories: /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages/yt_dlp and /usr/lib/python3.14/site-packages/yt_dlp-2026.02.04.dist-info

Short Descriptions

yt-dlp

downloads and converts audio and video files



[4] A JavaScript engine is used to solve JavaScript challenges, needed to download from YouTube. Node.js is a suitable one already packaged in BLFS.