Unofficial YouTube API client

Use this library to do things the real YouTube API does not let you do. DO NOT USE THIS FOR ANY ACCOUNT OTHER THAN YOUR OWN!

This library supports Python 3.6+.

Use a netrc file

Please note for the time being, logging in is not working. For more details, see this youtube-dl issue.

Every command can take a --username and --password argument.

You should consider using a netrc file for your login. Example at ~/.netrc:

machine youtube login LOGIN password YOUR_PASSWORD

You can specify a custom netrc file with the --netrc argument.

Usage

Command line

• youtube-clear-history - Clear your Watch History
• youtube-clear-search-history - Clear your Search History
• youtube-clear-watch-later - Clear your Watch Later queue
• youtube-print-history-ids - Print Watch History video IDs
• youtube-print-playlist-ids - Print video IDs from a specific playlist
• youtube-print-watch-later-ids - Print Watch Later video IDs
• youtube-remove-history-entries - Remove videos from your Watch History
• youtube-remove-videoid - Remove a video from a playlist
• youtube-remove-watch-later-videoid - Remove a video from your Watch Later queue
• youtube-toggle-search-history - Turn on/off Search History
• youtube-toggle-watch-history - Turn on/off Watch History

Every command takes a --debug argument.

You can use exported cookies in Netscape format with the --cookies COOKIES_FILE argument. By default, cookies are read from ~/.local/share/cookies/youtube.txt.

Some commands accept a -j/--json argument to print machine-readable output.

Download commands

• ytdl-history - Use youtube-dl to download your history
• ytdl-liked - Use youtube-dl to download your liked videos
• ytdl-playlist - Use youtube-dl to download a playlist
• ytdl-watch-later - Use youtube-dl to download your Watch Later playlist

For downloads to work, youtube-dl must be in PATH. To pass arguments to youtube-dl, specify -- before those arguments. Example with arguments to youtube-dl:

ytdl-history --output-dir ~/Downloads --delete-after -- --extract-audio --audio-format m4a --audio-quality 0

Each download command has a -D/--delete-after option, which makes the script delete the entry from the set of videos after a successful download.

In Python

from os.path import expanduser
from youtube_unofficial import YouTube

yt = YouTube(cookies_path=expanduser('~/my-cookies-file.txt'), logged_in=True)

# Clear watch history
yt.clear_watch_history()

# Remove a single video ID from Watch Later queue
yt.remove_video_id_from_playlist('WL', video_id)

# Clear entire Watch Later queue
yt.clear_watch_later()

Contributing

For a new feature to be accepted, it must be something that cannot be achieved with Google’s official API.

Code must run through mypy and pylint based on the project settings.