If you use the cmd line version of yt-dlp and get annoyed having to type shit then this is for you. I wrote a small batch script that when clicked it will open up a terminal and wait for user input ( the URL). Paste the url hit enter and you’re done.
Because most of you might be worried about downloading a batch script. I’ll just walk you through how to write it yourself and explain what the syntax is doing.
Step 1 - RIght click on your desktop and go to new txt document.
Step 2 - Copy and paste this into it;
@ECHO OFF
set /p URL="Paste the complete URL of the file or video you wish to download here: "
pushd %userprofile%\downloads
%localappdata%\Microsoft\windowsapps\yt-dlp.exe %URL%
pause
Step 3 - Go to File then Save As
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Just put it on your desktop for now so it’s easy to find. You can give it a custom Icon later if you want.
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You can name it whatever you want just put .bat at the end.
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Change the box below from “Text Documents (*.txt)” to “All Files (.)”
Step 4 - Go here and download yt-dlp.exe (assuming youre on windows) If you already have it then you dont need to download it again.
Step 5 - yt-dlp.exe needs to be in the windows apps folder. The fastest way for me to get you there is;
- Hold windows key then tap r
- Copy and paste this in the run box that opened up %localappdata%\microsoft\windowsapps\
- Hit enter. This should open up the windows apps folder. yt-dlp.exe needs to be in this folder
Now were done. Go to your favorite video host. lets say uhm xvideos. pick any video and copy its url. Click the bat file we made and saved to your desktop. Paste that URL and hit enter. Its going to save that to your downloads folder.
I’m open to any optimizations of this. I really hate all the yt-dlp UI’s theyre all shady as fuck or limit the end user to a degree it seems.
Explanation of batch (.bat) file syntax
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@ECHO OFF
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set /p URL="Paste the complete URL of the file you wish to download here: "
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pushd %userprofile%\downloads
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%localappdata%\Microsoft\windowsapps\yt-dlp.exe %URL%
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pause
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Line 1 - “@ECHO OFF” - Echo is used for displaying lines of text. We dont need to see a lot of what we wrote. Just whats in the quotes. You can technically delete this line if you want to see it working.
Line 2 - “set /p URL=”“” - This is going to be more complicated, i’ll try and use the easiest language or terms possible. The set /P switch/command allows you to set a variable to a line of input that the user enters. So we are creating a variable named URL then saying whatever the user inputs goes into this variable. For example, if my URL is www.google.com. I double click the bat file and i paste in “www.google.com” the computer takes that and puts it into the URL variable we created. So now URL is equal to www.google.com (URL == www.google.com)
Line 2 - part b - The stuff in the quotes is what the end user sees when opening the program. Its a prompt giving instruction on what to do. You could in theory write anything you want here. There are some characters or things that could screw this up though so be careful.
Line 3 - “pushd” - I’ll let microsoft explain this one. It’s a bit technical but, “Every time you use the pushd command, a single directory is stored for your use. However, you can store multiple directories by using the pushd command multiple times. The directories are stored sequentially in a virtual stack, so if you use the pushd command once, the directory in which you use the command is placed at the bottom of the stack. If you use the command again, the second directory is placed on top of the first one. The process repeats every time you use the pushd command.”
So in other words What it’s doing here is saying where to put the downloaded file. In this case the Downloads folder.
Line 4 - This is the location of yt-dlp.exe appended with the URL variable we created earlier. So if it was written out it would look like:
yt-dlp.exe www.google.com
Line 5 - “pause” this just keeps the terminal window open