I chose yt-dlp to download Youtube video or music, Youtube-downloader is another tool but always give me empty file, so no turn.

yt-dlp is a command line tool, workable for Linux MacOS and Windows.

Notice: yt-dlp needs ffmpeg, so you need to install ffmpeg too.

Download video

yt-dlp "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

The trick here is you must wrap URLs in quotes.

Download audio only

yt-dlp -x "URL"

Just add one option to convert it to mp3

yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "URL"

I learned a lot from the following guide.

How to use yt-dlp in 2026