Introduction#

ytdlp-nodejs is a robust Node.js wrapper for yt-dlp, a highly versatile command-line video downloader. This package makes it easy to integrate video downloading, streaming, and metadata extraction capabilities into your Node.js applications.

Why ytdlp-nodejs?#

• Simplicity: Abstracts away the complexity of spawning child processes and parsing output.
• Type Safety: Fully typed with TypeScript, providing autocompletion and error checking.
• Flexibility: Supports all major yt-dlp features including custom formats, subtitles, and cookies.
• Reliability: Handles binary management automatically, ensuring you always have a working yt-dlp executable.
• Performance: Streams data directly using Node.js streams for efficiency.

Key Features#

• Fluent API: Chain methods like FFmpeg for intuitive, readable code.
• Download: Save videos and audio to disk with progress tracking.
• Stream: Pipe video/audio data directly to other streams (e.g., Express responses, file streams).
• Metadata: Fetch detailed video info, formats, and playlists as typed objects.
• CLI: Interactive terminal interface for quick manual downloads.
• Customization: Full access to raw yt-dlp arguments for advanced use cases.