Twitch Downloader

CLI tool for downloading videos from twitch.tv

Inspired by youtube-dl but improves upon it by using multiple concurrent connections to make the download faster.

Resources

• Homepage: https://github.com/ihabunek/twitch-dl
• Issues: https://github.com/ihabunek/twitch-dl/issues
• Python package: https://pypi.org/project/twitch-dl/

Requirements

• Python 3.5+
• ffmpeg, installed and on the system path

Installation

Download standalone archive

Go to the latest release and download the twitch-dl.<version>.pyz archive.

Run the archive by either:

a) passing it to python:

python3 twitch-dl.1.13.0.pyz --help

b) making it executable and invoking it directly (linux specific):

chmod +x twitch-dl.1.13.0.pyz
./twitch-dl.1.13.0.pyz --help

Feel free to rename the archive to something more managable, like twitch-dl.

To upgrade to a newer version, repeat the process with the newer release.

From PYPI using pipx

pipx is a tool which installs python apps into isolated environments, which prevents all kinds of problems later so it's the suggested way to install twitch-dl from PYPI.

Install pipx as described in pipx install docs.

Install twitch-dl:

pipx install twitch-dl

Check installation worked:

twitch-dl --help

If twitch-dl executable is not found, check that the pipx binary location (by default ~/.local/bin) is in your PATH.

To upgrade twitch-dl to the latest version:

pipx install twitch-dl

Usage

This section does an overview of available features.

To see a list of available commands run:

twitch-dl --help

And to see description and all arguments for a given command run:

twitch-dl <command> --help

Print clip or video info

Videos can be referenced by URL or ID:

twitch-dl info 863849735
twitch-dl info https://www.twitch.tv/videos/863849735

Clips by slug or ID:

twitch-dl info BusyBlushingCattleItsBoshyTime
twitch-dl info https://www.twitch.tv/bananasaurus_rex/clip/BusyBlushingCattleItsBoshyTime

Shows info about the video or clip as well as download URLs for clips and playlist URLs for videos.

Listing videos

List recent channel videos (10 by default):

twitch-dl videos bananasaurus_rex

Limit to videos of one or more games:

twitch-dl videos --game "doom eternal" --game "cave story" bananasaurus_rex

List all channel videos at once:

twitch-dl videos bananasaurus_rex --all

List all channel videos in pages of 10:

twitch-dl videos bananasaurus_rex --pager

Page size can be adjusted by passing number of items per page:

twitch-dl videos bananasaurus_rex --pager 5

Returns all videos as a JSON list. Useful for scripting.

twitch-dl videos bananasaurus_rex --json --all

Downloading videos

Download a video by ID or URL:

twitch-dl download 221837124
twitch-dl download https://www.twitch.tv/videos/221837124

Specify video quality to download:

twitch-dl download -q 720p 221837124

Setting quality to source will download the best available quality:

twitch-dl download -q source 221837124

Setting quality to audio_only will download only audio:

twitch-dl download -q audio_only 221837124

Overriding file name

The target filename can be defined by passing the --output option followed by the desired file name, e.g. --output strim.mkv.

The filename uses Python format string syntax and may contain placeholders in curly braces which will be replaced with relevant information tied to the downloaded video.

The supported placeholders are:

Placeholder	Description	Example
{id}	Video ID	1255522958
{title}	Video title	Dark Souls 3 First playthrough
{title_slug}	Slugified video title	dark_souls_3_first_playthrough
{datetime}	Video date and time	2022-01-07T04:00:27Z
{date}	Video date	2022-01-07
{time}	Video time	04:00:27Z
{channel}	Channel name	KatLink
{channel_login}	Channel login	katlink
{format}	File extension, see --format	mkv
{game}	Game name	Dark Souls III
{game_slug}	Slugified game name	dark_souls_iii
{slug}	Clip slug (clips only)	AbrasivePlacidCatDxAbomb

A couple of examples:

Pattern: "{date}_{id}_{channel_login}_{title_slug}.{format}"
Expands to: 2022-01-07_1255522958_katlink_dark_souls_3_first_playthrough.mkv
This is the default.

Pattern: "{channel} - {game} - {title}.{format}"
Expands to: KatLink - Dark Souls III - Dark Souls 3 First playthrough.mkv

Listing clips

List clips for the given period:

twitch-dl clips bananasaurus_rex --period last_week

Supported periods are: last_day, last_week, last_month, all_time.

For listing a large number of clips, it's nice to page them:

twitch-dl clips bananasaurus_rex --period all_time --limit 10 --pager

This will show 10 clips at a time and ask to continue.

Downloading clips

Download a clip by slug or URL:

twitch-dl download VenomousTameWormHumbleLife
twitch-dl download https://www.twitch.tv/bananasaurus_rex/clip/VenomousTameWormHumbleLife

Specify clip quality to download:

twitch-dl download -q 720 VenomousTameWormHumbleLife

Note that twitch names for clip qualities have no trailing "p".

Batch downloading clips

It's possible to download all clips for a given period:

twitch-dl clips bananasaurus_rex --period last_week --download

Clips are downloaded in source quality.

A note about clips

Currently it doesn't seem to be possible to get a list of clips ordered by time of creation, only by view count. Clips with the same view count seem to be returned in random order. This can break paging resulting in duplicate clips listed or clips missed.

When batch downloading a large number of clips (over 100), it's possible that some will be missed.

Temporary files

By default, twitch-dl will download VODs to your systems temp dir (e.g. /tmp/ on Linux). To change the location where the files are downloaded you can set the TMP environment variable, e.g.

TMP=/my/tmp/path/ twitch-dl download 221837124

Man page

Building the man page for twitch-dl requires scdoc.

The source is in twitch-dl.1.scd, and you can build it by running:

make man

License

Copyright 2018-2022 Ivan Habunek ivan@habunek.com

Licensed under the GPLv3: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html