How to search and get YouTube videos using the yt-dlp command line tool.
You can either list the video id’s and title or instantly download the video.
Searching YouTube videos with yt-dlp is done using the ytsearch
flag. You can pass in the number of videos to process form the search by adding this value at the end ytseach:8
is for 8 videos.
You can also pass in all e.g ytsearchall:
Searching YouTube videos
This will list out 10 video id’s and the titles for the term “lebron james”:
yt-dlp ytsearch10:lebron james --get-id --get-title
Alternatively, you can download the videos directly without passing any –get-* flag values.
yt-dlp ytsearch4:lebron james
Or
yt-dlp ytsearch20:lebron james --max-downloads 5
To get desired media formats pass in the format flag first:
yt-dlp -f 'bv*+ba' ytsearch2:lebron james