The youtube-dl tool makes it very easy to download both webm and mp4 files on Linux systems. You just need the tool and the right URLs.
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Who would have imagined that there’s a Linux tool available for downloading YouTube videos? Well, there is and it works for Linux as well as for other operating systems. So, if you need to watch some of the available videos even when your internet connection is flaky or you need to be offline for a while, this tool can be especially handy.
The tool for downloading videos is called youtube-dl. (The “dl” portion undoubtedly means “download”.) It’s very easy to use and drops webm or mp4 files onto your system. Both formats provide compressed, high-quality video files that you can watch whenever you like.
The youtube-dl tool is a Python-based command-line tool. On Linux, it requires Python (2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+). The command to install it on Ubuntu and related systems is:
$ sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
Once installed, you can use a command like this to download a video after selecting the URL from YouTube or some other source:
$ youtube-dl
