mmcli-dl 0.1.0b1

A command-line YouTube downloader with built-in audio/video format conversion

mmcli

mmcli is a command-line YouTube downloader with built-in format conversion. Give it a video or playlist URL and it downloads the media, optionally converting it to the audio or video format you choose. Playlists are detected automatically and saved into a per-playlist folder. Requires Python 3.12+ and FFmpeg on your PATH.

Install

pip install mmcli-dl      # or: pipx install mmcli-dl / uv tool install mmcli-dl

The installed command is mmcli. FFmpeg must be on your PATH for format conversion.

Command

mmcli <url> [--resolution RES] [--format FMT] [--output-dir DIR]

Argument	Short	Description
url		YouTube video or playlist URL (required).
--resolution	-r	Video resolution, e.g. 720 or 720p. Ignored for audio formats. Default: highest available.
--format	-f	Output format. An audio format (mp3, m4a, wav, ...) downloads audio only; a video format (mp4, mkv, webm, ...) converts the container. Default: keep the downloaded video as-is.
--output-dir	-o	Directory to save into. Default: current directory.
--version	-v	Print the version and exit.

Examples:

mmcli "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."                       # best-quality video
mmcli "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..." --resolution 720      # video at 720p
mmcli "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..." --format mp3          # audio only, as mp3
mmcli "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..." --format mkv          # video, converted to mkv
mmcli "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=..." --format mp3    # whole playlist as mp3
mmcli "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..." --output-dir ~/Videos # choose the output directory

Supported --format values

An audio format downloads audio only; a video format downloads video and converts the container.

• Audio: mp3, wav, flac, aac, m4a, ogg, oga, opus, wma, alac, amr, ac3, dts, eac3
• Video: mp4, mkv, avi, mov, flv, webm, mpeg, mpg, ts, m2ts, ogv, 3gp, 3g2, vob, f4v, wmv, rm, rmvb