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How can I download the video description of a YouTube video without downloading the video with youtube-dl?

Franck Dernoncourt
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1 Answers1

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You can use the following options:

  • --write-description

  • --skip-download

  • --youtube-skip-dash-manifest

Example

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o0r9unT4L4 --write-description --skip-download --youtube-skip-dash-manifest

Descriptions are downloaded as .description files, which are just normal text files.

Note that if a video description is blank, a 0-byte file will be produced.

References

youtube-dl - Only download descriptions - Issue #8593

youtube-dl - Official Documentation

Anaksunaman
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