On 2026/1/18 16:31:55, Ed Cryer wrote:
What's the best one for Win10? Or, at least, one that works consistently?
Ed
If by consistently you mean keeps up with YouTube's attempts to thwart
it, then none will as downloaded - you have to keep them updated.
The one that I think is most frequently updated is yt-dlp; it's also
probably the most versatile. BUT it's command-line. If that puts you
off, fair enough - but, for most things (and certainly YouTube), it's
trivially easy to use: if you just want a download, then just invoking
it followed by the URL of what you want will do it: you type
y <paste>
in (a command prompt in) the folder you've stuck it in. (OK, I've
renamed my copy from yt-dlp.exe to just y.exe to save typing.) It only
needs further parameters if you want to do something special. [I
generally keep a command window open in my D:\videos\yt-dlp folder, so
it's just copy the URL (which you have to do for the GUI ones too),
alt-tab, y, Ctrl-V, enter.]
If by some chance it _doesn't_ work, then YouTube have probably stepped
on in the arms race, and it needs updating - you just type
y -U
and it'll update itself. (If it's already at its latest version it will
tell you so.)
If you want something with a GUI, see the other responses in the thread.
At least one - two, I think - of the offerings are actually just GUI
front-ends to yt-dlp; they still have to be kept up to date. Allegedly
at least one of them isn't as good at keeping its included yt-dlp up to
date as it might be, but I can't confirm that. Those who use them seem
happy with them.
[Actually, my "y" calls up a batch file that ChatGPT and I created,
which calls yt-dlp with enhancements to suit me.]
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