bili-dl 0.1.5

Cross-platform Bilibili video/audio downloader built on yt-dlp + ffmpeg.

bili-dl

Cross-platform Bilibili downloader — a thin, fast wrapper around yt-dlp + ffmpeg.

Download Bilibili videos and audio at the best available quality (up to 1080p for non-premium accounts). Cross-platform, zero runtime dependencies, foobar2000-friendly audio output.

Features

• Cookie-safe — drop cookies_all.txt next to the tool, and only the .bilibili.com entries are extracted. Other-site cookies are never parsed, stored, or sent anywhere.
• Cookie-verified — probes Bilibili's nav API to confirm your session is actually logged in before downloading.
• foobar2000-friendly audio — every produced M4A goes through a zero-loss ffmpeg -c copy remux (moov-first + ISOM container). No re-encode, no quality loss, instant playback in picky players.
• Zero runtime deps — standard library only. If you have Python, pipx install bili-dl is all you need.

Install

bili-dl needs yt-dlp and ffmpeg on your PATH:

pip install -U yt-dlp       # or: winget / brew / pipx
# ffmpeg:
winget install ffmpeg        # Windows
brew install ffmpeg          # macOS
sudo apt install ffmpeg      # Debian/Ubuntu

Then:

pipx install bili-dl         # recommended
bili-dl -V                   # verify

Quick start

Cookies (one-time)

Bilibili requires a login cookie. Use any browser extension that exports cookies in Netscape format (Cookie-Editor, Get cookies.txt, etc.):

1. Log in to bilibili.com

2. Export cookies — the file should look like:

   # Netscape HTTP Cookie File
   .bilibili.com	TRUE	/	FALSE	0	SESSDATA	<session>
   .bilibili.com	TRUE	/	FALSE	0	bili_jct	<csrf>
   

3. Save the exported .txt file in the cookie directory (any filename works):

OS	Cookie directory
Windows	%APPDATA%\bili-dl
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/bili-dl
Linux	~/.config/bili-dl

Run bili-dl once — it auto-detects any .txt file containing Bilibili entries, extracts only those, and reuses them thereafter. Override with --cookie-dir.

Download

bili-dl                                       # interactive REPL
bili-dl https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV...   # one-shot (video + audio)
bili-dl -a https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV...  # audio only
bili-dl -v https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV...  # video only

OS	Videos	Audio
Windows	~/Videos/bilibili_videos	~/Music/bilibili_audio
macOS	~/Movies/bilibili_videos	~/Music/bilibili_audio
Linux	~/Downloads/bilibili_videos	~/Downloads/bilibili_audio

Override with --output-dir / --audio-dir.

CLI reference

Flag	Description
--all	video + audio, merged MP4 + extracted M4A (default)
-v, --video	video only (MP4)
-a, --audio	audio only (M4A, faststart ISOM)
-k, --insecure	skip TLS certificate verification
--proxy URL	proxy for yt-dlp
-V, --version	show version
-h, --help	show help

Privacy

• Only .bilibili.com cookie lines are kept; all others are discarded in memory — never written to disk or sent anywhere.
• Network requests go only to api.bilibili.com (login probe) and the URLs you provide (via yt-dlp). No telemetry, no analytics.
• cookies_bilibili.txt is created with a timestamped backup before any overwrite.

License

MIT. bili-dl is a wrapper; the actual downloading is done by yt-dlp (Unlicense) and ffmpeg (LGPL/GPL), which you must install separately.