How to download Youtube Music and Videos with Python

This article will discuss how to easily download music and videos from Youtube using the Python programming language. The reason why we will be using Python is that it is a lightweight, fast and easy tool to use for software development.

We will be using two libraries so as to achieve our aim argparse and pytube , it can be installed using the python package installer (pip).

Importing the libraries

import argparse
from pytube import YouTube

To parse the arguments supplied to the script, we'll use argparse, and to download YouTube videos, we'll use pytube.

Next, we must provide the folders in which the video and audio should be stored. I do this by using the following constants:

VIDEO_DOWNLOAD_DIR = "../Downloads/videos"
AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR = "..Downloads/audio"

Download function

Let's write a function that takes care of downloading the videos and audio in their respective folders separately.

For audio, we will filter the streams for audio-only content, choose the first one that is available, and download the audio-only stream to the AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR directory.

def YoutubeAudioDownload(video_url):
    video = YouTube(video_url)
    audio = video.streams.filter(only_audio = True).first()

    try:
        audio.download(AUDIO_DOWNLOAD_DIR)
    except:
        print("Failed to download audio")

    print("audio was downloaded successfully")

For the video, the function takes the URL of the YouTube video and downloads the best/highest resolution available to the VIDEO_DOWNLOAD_DIR directory.

def YoutubeVideoDownload(video_url):
    video = YouTube(video_url)
    video = video.streams.get_highest_resolution()

    try:
        video.download(VIDEO_DOWNLOAD_DIR)
    except:
        print("Unable to download video at this time!")

    print("Video downloaded!")

These two simple functions take the YouTube video and audio URL, download it in the greatest resolution possible, and then save it in their respective directory, but if there is an error, it prints out an error message.

Main function

The video URL is parsed using argparse in the main function, and an optional audio-only flag is also used. The video's audio will be downloaded if the flag is enabled; by default, both the video and audio are downloaded.

These two simple functions take the YouTube video and audio URL, download it in the greatest resolution possible, and then save it in their respective directory, but if there is an error, it prints out an error message.

Let's have a look at the code.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    ap.add_argument("-v", "--video", required = True, help = "Youtube video URL")
    ap.add_argument("-a", "--audio", required = False, help = "Audio only", action = argparse.BooleanOptionalAction)
    args = vars(ap.parse_args())

    if args["audio"]:
        YoutubeAudioDownload(args["video"])
    else:
        YoutubeVideoDownload(args["video"])

And we are done!

To test the code out if it actually works, type the following in the terminal.

# for audio
python main.py -a -v "[YouTube video URL]"

# for videos
python main.py -v "[YouTube video URL]"

The audio/video directory should have the necessary media downloaded.

Wrap up

In this article, we discussed how to easily download audio and video from Youtube, using the pytube library. We also used the argparse library to add arguments to the terminal so that we can download the media with shorthand and links to either the audio or video. I personally use this to download songs that I like, and it works perfectly.

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You can also check out my Youtube channel.

Happy coding! 😊

Comments

[Valentino Pereira]

Getting this error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 1348, in do_open
    h.request(req.get_method(), req.selector, req.data, headers,
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/http/client.py", line 1276, in request
    self._send_request(method, url, body, headers, encode_chunked)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/http/client.py", line 1322, in _send_request
    self.endheaders(body, encode_chunked=encode_chunked)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/http/client.py", line 1271, in endheaders
    self._send_output(message_body, encode_chunked=encode_chunked)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/http/client.py", line 1031, in _send_output
    self.send(msg)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/http/client.py", line 969, in send
    self.connect()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/http/client.py", line 1448, in connect
    self.sock = self._context.wrap_socket(self.sock,
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/ssl.py", line 512, in wrap_socket
    return self.sslsocket_class._create(
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/ssl.py", line 1070, in _create
    self.do_handshake()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/ssl.py", line 1341, in do_handshake
    self._sslobj.do_handshake()
ssl.SSLCertVerificationError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:997)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/valentinopereira/Documents/practice/youtube/index.py", line 17, in <module>
    download("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g")
  File "/Users/valentinopereira/Documents/practice/youtube/index.py", line 7, in download
    video = video.streams.get_highest_resolution()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pytube/__main__.py", line 295, in streams
    self.check_availability()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pytube/__main__.py", line 210, in check_availability
    status, messages = extract.playability_status(self.watch_html)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pytube/__main__.py", line 102, in watch_html
    self._watch_html = request.get(url=self.watch_url)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pytube/request.py", line 53, in get
    response = _execute_request(url, headers=extra_headers, timeout=timeout)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pytube/request.py", line 37, in _execute_request
    return urlopen(request, timeout=timeout)  # nosec
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 216, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 519, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 536, in _open
    result = self._call_chain(self.handle_open, protocol, protocol +
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 496, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 1391, in https_open
    return self.do_open(http.client.HTTPSConnection, req,
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 1351, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
urllib.error.URLError: <urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:997)>

I tried running it inside venv and even on my system python.

[Valentino Pereira]

Update: Fixed it by doing these timonweb.com/python/fixing-certifi... and restarting terminal

[Shittu Olumide]

Glad you fixed it!

[Dipankar Shaw]

It's working but not on my local IDE (vs code). I have to use replit to run it so it is not downloading the file to my device.
Is there any way to run this on vscode ?

[Shittu Olumide]

Hello, thanks for reading!
It actually works on my IDE (VSCode)

[Dipankar Shaw]

I don't know how but it is working.
Now I will make a tkinter gui to give this program an application like experience.
Do I have permission to use your code to make a gui ?

[Shittu Olumide]

Yeah sure, you can go ahead.
If you also need me to collaborate, we can work on it together.
It's good to know you want to use something of mine, which is yours now 😅

[Dipankar Shaw]

Already done, you can check it now
YTdownloader

[Shittu Olumide]

This looks nice! 👍
Checking it out now

[Dipankar Shaw]

please rate this app 😊

[Dipankar Shaw]

It is printing "Video downloaded!" but the folder where i want to install it is empty.
In case of Replit it actually create a folder of that name and add the file to it.

[Chris Greening]

I've had a good bit of fun messing around with pytube for various projects but it's been a while, I'll have to check it out again - thanks for the tutorial!

[Shittu Olumide]

You are welcome!

[Valentino Pereira]

The function calls in your main function are different than your definitions.

1. download_audio is meant to be YoutubeAudioDownload
2. download is meant to be YoutubeVideoDownload

[Shittu Olumide]

Opps, thanks for pointing this out!
I have edited the code 😃

[NerfWeb]

Thanks for sharing! really helpful!

[Shittu Olumide]

You are welcome 🤗

[SmartWizz]

I need exactly something like this in PHP, I have searched the web for any library but found non, Can anyone provide me with access to YouTube music API thanks.

Hopefully I find my way around it when I gets it