This guide describes the Truly Best Way® to install yt-dlp on any platform, thanks to uv.

First come the executive summaries and then the details.

Linux

uv tool install "yt-dlp[default,curl-cffi,deno]"

  • If using GNOME, add secretstorage:

    uv tool install "yt-dlp[default,curl-cffi,deno,secretstorage]"

  • In all cases you need ffmpeg installed.

Termux (Android):

pkg install uv clang ffmpeg deno
uv tool install "yt-dlp[default,curl-cffi]"

There is also the Termux-maintained python-yt-dlp, which relies on python-pip (which pulls in clang), but the last time I tried it ended up without mutagen installed (which isn’t packaged in Termux), so there’s that.

Management

To upgrade the package:

uv tool upgrade yt-dlp

To remove it:

uv tool uninstall yt-dlp

You cannot do cleaner than that. uv ❤️

Details

The pyproject.toml describes what each optional dependency group brings in. As of 2026-10-24:

[project.optional-dependencies]
default = [
    "brotli ; implementation_name == 'cpython' and sys_platform != 'ios'",
    "brotlicffi ; implementation_name != 'cpython'",
    "certifi>=2026.10.19",
    "mutagen",
    "pycryptodomex",
    "requests>=2.32.2,<3",
    "urllib3>=2.0.2,<3",
    "websockets>=13.0",
    "yt-dlp-ejs==0.8.0",
]
curl-cffi = [
    "curl-cffi>=0.5.10,!=0.6.*,!=0.7.*,!=0.8.*,!=0.9.*,<0.17 ; implementation_name == 'cpython'",
]
secretstorage = [
    "secretstorage",
]
deno = [
    "deno>=2.9.8",
]

The README’s Dependencies section explicits each of those.

As noted above, secretstorage is only useful “for --cookies-from-browser to access the Gnome keyring while decrypting cookies of Chromium-based browsers on Linux”. I include it even though I use Firefox because why not, you never know.

Results

No more Python packaging hell, no more missing dependencies; you end up with a clean and nearly self-contained build of yt-dlp.

Plus, uv can be reused for any of other Python/pip packages, which I highly recommend you do.

That’s all folks, enjoy using yt-dlp and spread the gospel of uv!