This is a script to make bulk-downloading YouTube channels a lot easier than usual, without sacrificing any sort of simplicity. It stores channels in a very structured way, separating shorts, streams, and videos into different directories-alongside downloading avatars as well if that’s up your alley.
$ ./sqrl-dl --help
Usage: sqrl-dl [OPTION]... [CHANNEL]...
Download YouTube channels.
With no CHANNEL(s), sqrl-dl will read from ~/Videos/YouTube/channels.txt,
or from the file named channels.txt in the current working directory.
-a, --avatar Download avatar this session. (true by default)
--no-avatar Don't download avatar this session.
-v, --videos Download videos this session. (true by default)
--no-videos Don't download videos this session.
-l, --streams Download streams this session. (true by default)
--no-streams Don't download streams this session.
-s, --shorts Download shorts this session. (true by default)
--no-shorts Don't download shorts this session.
--oldest-first Download older videos first (true by default)
--debug Log debug information.
-i, --index One digit (i.e, 3), or two digits seperated
by a hyphen (i.e, 3-7) corrosponding to lines
in channels.txt, which will be downloaded within
the provided range.
-h, --help See this message and exit.
-v, --version output version information and exit
This is a collection of all the videos You’ve downloaded thus far-used to make sure you don’t end up accidently downloading the same file multiple times over during each download. yt-dlp uses this internally, so don’t touch it unless you know what you’re doing.
channels.txt is the actual list of channels the script goes out to download.
In it’s simplest form, channels.txt is just a collection of channel URLs with some extra steps:
https://www.youtube.com/@BringusStudios https://www.youtube.com/@Caddicarus https://www.youtube.com/@Defunctland https://www.youtube.com/@MonkeyNess
However, things can be done to make it somewhat more compact, and specific. To start things off, just including the handle/ID of the channel is useful enough. (Do note that including an @ is mandatory if you want the handle to be resolved properly.)
@BringusStudios @Defunctland
Additionally, the exact type of content you want to search from the channel can be specified like so, separated from the channel by a space, and grouped together with a comma:
@BringusStudios a,v,s,l @Defunctland v,A,S,L
The key to these are as follows:
a,v,s,l: Download avatar, videos, shorts, and livestreams. (Default behavior)v,A,S,L: Download only videos, excluding the avatar, shorts, and livestreams.
Basically, lowercase letters mean you want to keep it, and uppercase does the opposite.
0BSD.