How to install *latest* yt-dlp on Ubuntu Server 24.04.1 LTS?

[Bo Berglund]

> https://www.spacebar.news/how-to-install-yt-dlp/


Well it is really *much simpler* as follows to get the latest yt-dlp:

1) go to: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases
2) copy the link for the version you want (like yt-dlp-linux):
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/download/2025.01.26/yt-dlp_linux
3) move to a dir like $HOME/Projects
4) Run command wget <url-to-yt-dlp-linux> 
5) Next chmod +x yt-dlp-linux to make it executable
6) Finally symlink it into your $HOME/bin dir as yt-dlp

This is all that is needed, all the dependencies are compiled into this binary
so there is nothing that will mess it up outside of itself.

With this I still have problems with the protected files, but I think this is
because it needs some cached login or such to YouTube and since the server has
never been used for any GUI work let alone using a browser to play YouTube
videos, it is missing on my server.
At least this is what I am suspecting.

Anyhow this makes the latest version of yt-dlp easily available to me going
forward.
And it works for downloading the ordinary videos I am most often handling.


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden