3 Ways to Run YouTube-DL on Android in 2024[GUI]

YouTube-DL is an open-source command line media downloader program that allows you to download videos or audio from 1000+ websites including YouTube, Udemy, SoundCloud, Facebook, etc. 

Previously, I have written a post about how to install YouTube-DL on Windows. In this post, I will show you 3 ways to run YouTube-DL or yt-dlp on Android. Don’t be intimidated by the codes because you don’t have to know anything about coding to enjoy all its features. 

Install YouTube-DL on Android with Termux

If you prefer the terminal experience, you can run YouTube-DL with another free app Termux. You can install it from Google Play Store. By the way, there is a similar app for iOS and you can use it to install YouTube-DL on iOS as well.

Termux is a nice little terminal emulator for Android that enables you to do many of the things you could normally do in Windows command prompt, macOS Terminal, or Linux.  Sounds great? You can follow the steps below to install YouTube-DL on Android. 

Updates in 2023: youtube-dl is discontinued. You can use yt-dlp instead. You can simply replace “youtube-dl” with “yt-dlp” in the following process.

Step 1. Download and install Termux app from Google Play Store. It is completely free with no ads. 

Step 2. Launch Termux and type the command below to give Termux storage access permissions:

termux-setup-storage

A popup may appear to ask for permission to access your internal storage and press Allow.

Step 3. (optional) Type the command below to navigate to the Downloads folder, so you can find all downloaded media in that folder. 

cd ~/storage/downloads

Step 4. Type the following command to install Python:

pkg install python -y

Step 5. When the previous process is complete, type the following command to install youtube-dl:

pip install --upgrade yt-dlp

Step 6. Now, you can run the following command to download a video:

yt-dlp [video URL]

[Optional] If you want to download high-quality YouTube videos and convert video format, you can also install FFmpeg with the following command.

pkg instalkl -y ffmpeg

After installing FFmpeg, you can download videos or music in any format you prefer. For example, to download a YouTube video in MP3, run the command below:

yt-dlp -f bestaudio –extract-audio –audio-format mp3  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ALwBxaFfbI

YouTube-DL is capable of downloading private YouTube videos and age-restricted videos. You just need to add parameters for authentication. If you have enabled two-factor authentication, you should add “-2 [Two-factor authentication code]” in the following command.

yt-dlp --username [YouTube Account] --password [Account Password] [YouTube Video URL]

When the download process is done, you can open a file browser on your Android device to find downloaded files in the Downloads folder. If you haven’t done the Step 3, you can find the downloaded files in ” storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.termux/files/”.

Seal App – Yt-dlp GUI for Android

Seal is a video/audio downloader app for Android that is based on yt-dlp and designed with Material UI. It allows you to download videos and audio files from video platforms supported by yt-dlp and embed metadata and video thumbnail into extracted audio files. It has a user-friendly interface that allows you to search for videos and download them quickly. Seal is available on Github and F-Droid.

You can also enable the “Use Cookies” option to download private videos from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. In other words, you need to use cookies to download videos that require you login info or a password.

YouTube-DL GUI app for Android

If you want to download media from multiple sources but do not like the command line experience, you really should try this open-source app, DVD. It is pretty much the GUI version of YouTube-DL for Android. It is super easy to use and you can refer to the steps below. 

Step 1. Download the DVD app (YouTube-DL) APK from GitHub and install it. 

Step 2. Once Installed, you can just paste the link of the video that you want to download to the search box and tap the search icon. 

Step 3. The app will bring you all the available quality and formats for you and you can choose to download video or audio.

Once downloaded,  you can tap the Downloads button at the bottom to view all the downloaded files. If you want to run some custom commands, you can type your commands in the “youtube-dl” section. 

It has all the features that the original YouTube-DL has but comes with a concise interface. In Settings, you can also update YouTube-DL to enjoy new features of YouTube-DL once available. 

I have used it to download videos from Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Udemy, and many more. All worked great.  

Conclusion

That’s how you can install and run YouTube-DL on Android. No matter which method you choose to run YouTube-DL, it is definitely worth having. It is more powerful than most of the paid downloader app out there. You can also go to GitHub to learn more about YouTube-DL.