On Windows 11, is it superior to use the command line interface (e.g., terminal) for interacting with yt-dlp? Or is a GUI like stacher.io sufficient for 99% of needs?
I’m also curious if it is better to use an Ubuntu WSL for yt-dlp CLI for a more streamlined terminal
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I never felt the need to use a GUI for it, it’s very easy to use.
To make the CLI even easier, just set up an alias in you bashrc file for it. I made it so I just need to type “yt” instead of “yt-dlp”. Small change, but helpful imo.
For the most common scenarios I personally find CLI very easy to use: I go to the destination folder, right-click “Open in Terminal” and then type
yt-dlp linkcopypastedhere. That’s all, multiple sites I used it with didn’t require any extra params. Maybe if you want to customize something, like make your own file naming convention, etc, GUI could be handy.Maybe if you want to customize something, like make your own file naming convention, etc, GUI could be handy.
Even then, it’s probably worth learning the CLI commands and setting up a config file with any desired settings. Once that’s setup, you’re back to
yt-dlp urlagain.do you use a WSL or powershell? windows terminal is inferior to linux terminal imo
I use PowerShell for damn near everything. But I’m pretty sure when you’re just typing yt-dlp, space, then pasting the url, then any terminal is as good as any other.
good point, i did not know that you could change the configuration file instead of adding all the -cookies and -mp3 tags to the yt-dlp url … command
the cli is very simple to use as @hisao mentioned here, for any specific options I find that llms like Claude are very helpful for giving me the commands I need. “a yt-dlp command to download 720p with no audio” for example will give you the correct command to paste in
FWIW I use the tartube gui in windows as it’ll dl full playlists, even monitor channels and update with new released episodes.
i have Total Commander open anyway and have a button on the button bar pointing to the yt-dlp.exe with the parameters below, the “?” makes it do a popup and I just insert the link at the end, it will create a new directory where you are located.
?–config-locations “locationofmy\yt-dlp.config” --output “%P%%(extractor_key)s/%%(uploader)s/%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s”
sorry to comment off-topic. But why would you use total commander? I know of maybe two people who use it and I don’t understand why. The UI is very outdated, the function keys are hard to press, and it forces two windows. I’m genuinely asking what are it’s upsides that anyone would choose to use it?
It has a superset of features compared to the Explorer - Meaning it can do all the things that the explorer can do plus more.
I’m simply used to the two window layout since the old ages of Norton Commander ( Yes, Norton used to create useful products back then.). For me it is about hotkeys for functions ( Select, Filter, Copy, paste, move, delete). A multi rename tool. A search for file contents. A copy queue.
I do not use it for everything, but sometimes it’s simply better when then standard windows tools.
I’d say the CLI is perfectly fine, I have a config in the same folder so all I have to do is input the URL. I just switch between output directories for episode vs playlist by ‘#’ commenting out the other.
