A Python CLI app for downloading YouTube Music songs with tags from YouTube Music.
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/aBjMEZ9tnq
While this project uses yt-dlp internally, it has the advantage of using YouTube Music's API to get the metadata for songs, which includes the proper high-resolution square cover, lyrics, track number, total tracks, etc.
- Python 3.8 or higher
- FFmpeg on your system PATH
- Up to date binaries can be obtained from the links below:
- (Optional) The cookies file of your YouTube Music browser session in Netscape format
- You can get your cookies by using one of the following extensions on your browser of choice at the YouTube Music website with your account signed in:
- Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/export-cookies-txt
- Chromium based browsers: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gdocmgbfkjnnpapoeobnolbbkoibbcif
- With cookies, you can download age-restricted content, private playlists and songs in premium formats if you have an active subscription. You will have to set the cookies file path using the command line arguments or the config file (see Configuration).
- YouTube cookies can expire very quickly. As a workaround, export your cookies in an incognito/anonymous window.
- You can get your cookies by using one of the following extensions on your browser of choice at the YouTube Music website with your account signed in:
Install the package gytmdl
using pip:
pip install gytmdl
gytmdl [OPTIONS] URLS...
- Download a song:
gytmdl "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3BFTio5296w"
- Download an album:
gytmdl "https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lvpL_Gr_aVEq-LaivwJaSK5EbFd4HeamM"
- Choose which albums or singles to download from an artist:
gytmdl "https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCwZEU0wAwIyZb4x5G_KJp2w"
Songs that are not part of an album (standard YouTube videos) are not supported. To make sure you get valid links, use YouTube Music for searching and enable filtering by songs, albums or artists.
- Arrow keys - Move selection
- Space - Toggle selection
- Ctrl + A - Select all
- Enter - Confirm selection
gytmdl can be configured by using the command line arguments or the config file.
The config file is created automatically when you run gytmdl for the first time at ~/.gytmdl/config.json
on Linux and %USERPROFILE%\.gytmdl\config.json
on Windows.
Config file values can be overridden using command line arguments.
Command line argument / Config file key | Description | Default value |
---|---|---|
--save-cover , -s / save_cover |
Save cover as a separate file. | false |
--overwrite / overwrite |
Overwrite existing files. | false |
--read-urls-as-txt , -r / - |
Interpret URLs as paths to text files containing URLs separated by newlines. | false |
--config-path / - |
Path to config file. | <home>/.gytmdl/config.json |
--log-level / log_level |
Log level. | INFO |
--no-exceptions / no_exceptions |
Don't print exceptions. | false |
--output-path , -o / output_path |
Path to output directory. | ./YouTube Music |
--temp-path / temp_path |
Path to temporary directory. | ./temp |
--cookies-path , -c / cookies_path |
Path to .txt cookies file. | null |
--ffmpeg-path / ffmpeg_path |
Path to FFmpeg binary. | ffmpeg |
--aria2c-path / aria2c_path |
Path to aria2c binary. | aria2c |
--download-mode / download_mode |
Download mode. | ytdlp |
--itag , -i / itag |
Itag (audio codec/quality). | 140 |
--cover-size / cover_size |
Cover size. | 1200 |
--cover-format / cover_format |
Cover format. | jpg |
--cover-quality / cover_quality |
Cover JPEG quality. | 94 |
--template-folder / template_folder |
Template of the album folders as a format string. | {album_artist}/{album} |
--template-file / template_file |
Template of the song files as a format string. | {track:02d} {title} |
--template-date / template_date |
Date tag template. | %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ |
--exclude-tags , -e / exclude_tags |
Comma-separated tags to exclude. | null |
--truncate / truncate |
Maximum length of the file/folder names. | null |
--no-config-file , -n / - |
Don't load the config file. | false |
The following variables can be used in the template folder/file and/or in the exclude_tags
list:
album
album_artist
artist
cover
date
lyrics
media_type
rating
title
track
track_total
url
The following free itags are available:
140
(AAC 128kbps)139
(AAC 48kbps)251
(Opus 128kbps)250
(Opus 64kbps)249
(Opus 48kbps)
The following premium itags are available if provided a cookies file with an active subscription:
141
(AAC 256kbps)774
(Opus 256kbps)
The following modes are available:
ytdlp
aria2c
- Faster than
ytdlp
- Can be obtained from here: https://github.com/aria2/aria2/releases
- Faster than
The following cover formats are available:
jpg
png
raw
- This format gets the raw cover without any processing.
- Note that when using this format, the cover image will not be embedded within the files. To address this, you can enable the
save_cover
option to save the cover as a separate file.