How to download courses from Linkedin Learning with python

In this tutorial we will see how to download Linkedin learning courses with a simple cli tool. Just a quick setup and you will be able to download videos and courses.

Prerequisites

We will need Python3.

• Python 3

Now, what's next?

Open your terminal or command line and download a python package from PyPi called llvd which stands for Linkedin Learning Video Downloader

$ pip install llvd

If you have multiple versions of python installed in your system, use pip3 instead.

    $ llvd --help

If the above command does not fail, you can continue with the tutorial

To download a course:

• Log in to the Linkedin Learning app.

• Search for any course.
  

• Navigate to the course of your choice.

• Copy its slug.

• Open your terminal or command line.
• Copy the command given below and replace course-slug with your copied course slug and run it

    $ llvd -c "course-slug" -r 720

llvd creates separate folders for each course you download, groups all videos by chapters, and renames all downloaded videos with video names so that they will be ordered properly.

To download a course you have to specify its name (-c flag ).

How it looks like in action

Available features with this tool

• Cookie-based authentication
• Download a course and all its exercises
• Group videos by chapters
• Ability to download video subtitles(by specifying --caption flag)
• Ability to resume failed downloads
• Option to choose video format (360p, 540p, 720p) using -r flag

Cookie-based Authentication

• Click on the options in google chrome (top right with 3 vertical dots).

• After this, click on more tools followed by Developer Tools (you can also reach here by using the keyboard combination — ctrl+shift+I).

• Now once you’ve gained access to the developer tools, navigate to the Application tab, and copy the value of two cookies from there named li_at and JSESSIONID respectively.

• Create a cookies.txt file to a place you want to download your courses then paste in the values of li_at and JSESSIONID as shown below.
  

  li_at=xxxxx
  JSESSIONID="ajax:xxxxxx"

      $ llvd -c "course-slug" -r 720 --cookies

Download the course with subtitles

Use the --caption flag to download videos with subtitles

    $ llvd -c "course-slug" -r 720 --caption

or

    $ llvd -c "course-slug" -r 720 -ca

Wrapping up

If you liked this tutorial you might as well head over to Github and leave a star to this awesome open source project llvd

Thanks for reading 😊!

Comments

[ronnyn78]

Thanks is working now perfect

[Bruce]

Awesome

[ronnyn78]

sometimes it says This video is locked, you probably need a premium account

[Bruce]

That happens when you don't have a premium account and you are trying to download a paid course

[ronnyn78]

am using library card to access

[Bruce]

Linkedin has added a security layer where while using library card, they hide download links in their API.

[ronnyn78]

thanks for wonderfull tool i will pay for premium account and download everything i need to study

[Bruce]

You are welcome. you can even use a free trial account :)

[ronnyn78]

thanks

[luis-guilherme]

I have the same issue, I can access the full courses online on the browser (my linkedin account is linked to my corporate learning account). It downloads some videos but not all from the course.

[Parakram IIT (ISM) Dhanbad]

Any solution found @luisguilherme ?

[Shahid Hussain]

C:\Users\User1>llvd -c what-is-php-for-wordpress -r 720
Please enter your Linkedin email address: [e-mail]
Enter your Linkedin Password:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\llvd\app.py", line 106, in download_entire_course
course_name = r.json()['elements'][0]['title']
KeyError: 'elements'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python39\Scripts\llvd-script.py", line 33, in
sys.exit(load_entry_point('llvd==2.2.5', 'console_scripts', 'llvd')())
File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 829, in call
return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 782, in main
rv = self.invoke(ctx)
File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1066, in invoke
return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 610, in invoke
return callback(*args, **kwargs)
File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\llvd_init.py", line 60, in main
llvd.run()
File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\llvd\app.py", line 81, in run
self.download_entire_course()
File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\llvd\app.py", line 179, in download_entire_course
os.remove(f'{self.chapter_path}/{self.current_video_index:0=2d}-{clean_name(self.current_video_name)}.mp4')
TypeError: unsupported format string passed to NoneType.format_

C:\Users\User1>

[Bruce]

You are getting this error because you are using the wrong slug for the course

Instead of using what-is-php-for-wordpress you should use php-for-wordpress.
It is advised to navigate to a course you are trying to download, then copy the slug from there instead of the course name

I am guessing this the course you were trying to download (linkedin.com/learning/php-for-word...
)

[Bruce]

Make sure you also update to the latest version 2.2.6 with better error handling

Thanks for using the tool 😊

[minhducbg]

Working!!! On Windows.
For dummies like me

1. Install Python 3
2. Open CMD Type: cd "C:\Users\"Your_User_name" \AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Scripts" and hit Enter

Ex:
cd "C:\Users\Share Full Vn.DESKTOP-K6RVJFF\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Scripts"

// My Python ver is 3.9

3 - Type "pip install llvd" in CMD and wait
4 - Create a txt file with the exact name "cookies.txt" as above instruction
5 - Put that txt file in the folder "Scripts" above
6 - Type your custom code and hit Enter to download
EX:
If I want download this course: engineering-drawings-for-manufacturing

My code:
llvd -c "engineering-drawings-for-manufacturing" -r 720 --cookies

-c: name of the of the course with slug
-r 720: Videp 720p
-ca: Download the course with subtitles
--cookies: use cookies in "cookies.txt" to allow authentication to get the video download link of the course

The course will save in folder "Scripts" above

[mayurkadam24]

I Tried Following the above steps by it asks me my LinkedIn Learning Creds and my account is not a premium one. However, i have a Student Library card with which i'm logged in but don't have the Email account for that, How can i download in that case ?

[Bruce]

You could login with your library card in the browser then grab the cookies and use that with llvd..

Follow these instructions github.com/knowbee/llvd#cookie-bas...

[Meghanath Rugada]

I did this , but did not see your comment before doing it. could have saved so much time atleast 40 mins :)

[Ledigh@dt]

Good Morning!
Firstly, thanks for the program, your time, your efforts:
Very helpful tool :)

I’ve encountered issues concerning video quality resolutions. By default it’s 720p, but using, for example, this following link:
linkedin.com/learning/advanced-dru...
…the results are a mix of 540p and 720p, though all 540p still have their corresponding 720p versions available; I can even download them from the “Internet Download Manager” button through its browser extension.

I’ve also tried with another downloader… Same results!
Any ideas on how to fix it ?
Thanks ;)

[ronnyn78]

guys maybe am doing something wrong

C:\Users\user1\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python38-32\Scripts>llvd -c "cisco-C:\Users\user1\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python38-32\Scripts>llvd -c "cisco-certified-cyberops-associate-cert-prep-1" -r 720 --cookies

Using cookie info from cookies.txt
Your cookie is expired

[Meghanath Rugada]

It worked. i tried both password and cookie method. both worked. Mostly you are using an expired cookie or a wrong jsession id

[l4zehr]

I tried it and it worked. I don't have a premium linkedin account. I was able to download the 24 hours free course I'm learning. Thank youuu!!!

[MukhtaarAziz]

You can use a library card (eCard).

[l4zehr]

What is that?

[Bruce]

Glad the tool was helpful

[J Casey]

This was working fine for me, but all of the sudden when I put in the course it asks me for my email and I can enter that fine. Then it tells me to put in my password and I try to type it in but whenever I press any keys, nothing shows up on the screen and im unable to enter my password. Any thoughts? I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling and that didn't work.

[Gregory Anderson]

Brilliant! Thanks.

[Fabiyi Olaleye]

I appreciate your effort and thoughtfulness for building this amazing tool.

I did install the library tool and followed the instructions above to the best of my knowledge. However, I have something like this text below but I just can't input my password to proceed the download.

Enter your Linkedin Password:

Although, I could enter my LinkedIn email address. Mind you, I have a trial account on LinkedIn learning.
How do I proceed from here?

[oyeyemi]

Thanks so much.
Would i be able to download multiple parallel courses at the same time by opening multiple CMD.

[Bruce]

Yes

[baroko]

Hi,
I followed all steps but stuck at $ llvd --help (not work) and don't know where to put cookies.txt on Mac Os Big Sur, I'm new with mac os.
On Windows, everything worked fined except slow speed than real internet speed.
And btw, is there any command that help download only subtitle or only exercise file, all file are decent fast but exercise is too slow.
Thanks, you helped me study a lots!

[Bruce]

There is a a command for downloading subtitles, you just pass in the flag --subtitles

[Jan]

Your script is very helpful and it worked like a charm so far. Thank you! But recently something happened, perhaps on provider side, and I can’t download entire course anymore. The process interrupts, throwing the error, and tries to download again and enters to looping cycle as I understand. In result downloading ends with the errors and the contents is incomplete. What is the problem?

Error below:

...........
Current: 03-Diving into a Python Project/03-Getting what you need from lists with slices.mp4 @720p
Downloading video... : 100%|██████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 7.82M/7.82M [00:02<00:00, 2.67MB/s]
Downloading subtitles..

Current: 03-Diving into a Python Project/04-Looping and iteration.mp4 @720p
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\llvd\app.py", line 221, in download_entire_course
download_video(download_url, video_index, video_name, chapter_path, delay)
File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\llvd\downloader.py", line 31, in download_video
total=int(download_size),

TypeError: int() argument must be a string, a bytes-like object or a real number, not 'NoneType'

[legs965]

Absolutely nice work!

Using Firefox on Windows so i needed an extension to get the values of li_at and JSESSIONID.
Created cookies.txt and placed it.
Started llvd with --cookies.
Folder is created. Download starts. Everything works - except the language is not correct. They are all downloaded in chinese (I suppose)
Experimentally I added two additional entries in cookies.txt:
lil-lang=de_DE
lang="v=2&lang=de-de"
which are the actual Cookies-values.

Still Chinese-language.

What am I missing?

[Yaovi Ametepe]

Works like a charm

[nrthw]

What's the correct path for the cookies.txt file on MacOSX (where should it be put)? I keep getting "cookies.txt is not found or empty" error. Thanks!