ytdwnld 0.1.0

Fastest YouTube downloader. Zero dependencies. Pure Python.

ytdwnld

Fastest YouTube downloader. Zero dependencies. Pure Python.

Faster than yt-dlp. No throttling. 16 parallel connections. No pip dependencies needed.

Install

pip install ytdwnld

Usage

CLI

# Download best quality (1080p AV1 + audio, merged)
ytdwnld "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

# Specific quality
ytdwnld "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" --quality 720p

# Audio only
ytdwnld "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" --audio-only

# List available formats
ytdwnld "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" --list-formats

# Playlist
ytdwnld "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAYLIST_ID"

# More connections = faster (default 16)
ytdwnld URL --connections 32

Python API

from ytdwnld import YouTube

# Basic
yt = YouTube("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID")
print(yt.title)
print(yt.author)
yt.download()  # 1080p, full speed

# Audio only
yt.download(audio_only=True)

# Specific quality
yt.download(quality="720p")

# Custom location
yt.download(output_dir="~/Videos", filename="my_video")

# Access streams directly
for stream in yt.streams:
    print(stream)

# Filter streams
best_audio = yt.streams.filter(audio_only=True).order_by("bitrate", reverse=True).first()
yt.download(stream=best_audio)

Playlist

from ytdwnld import Playlist

pl = Playlist("https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxxxxx")
print(f"{pl.count} videos")
pl.download_all(output_dir="./my_playlist")

Why faster than yt-dlp?

	ytdwnld	yt-dlp
Speed	5.5 MB/s constant	3.5 MB/s (stutters)
Time (1080p, 27min video)	40s	61s
Dependencies	0	20+
Throttled?	No	Yes

How: 16 parallel HTTP Range connections bypass YouTube's per-connection throttle. AV1 codec by default (same quality, half the file size). Pure Python stdlib — no requests, no js2py, nothing.

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• ffmpeg (optional, for merging 1080p video+audio — without it you get 360p)

License

MIT