on debian 13.1 I just updated yt-dlp to stable@2025.11.12 but I still cannot download videos. What am I doing wrong?

debian 13.1, yt-dlp stable@2025.11.12 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp, updated with yt-dlp -U

I also installed deno on the terminal with curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sh

however, nothing happens if I execute yt-dlp, like: yt-dlp --all-subs --no-warnings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bhuN9nqEb4 returns nothing.

All my terminal shows after executing a command like the one pasted I get:

>

that's it, a > and nothing else.

Am I doing something wrong?

12 points · 5 comments · view on lemmy.world

5 Comments

xmanmonk@lemmy.sdf.org · 14 pts · 272d (1 reply)

That prompt typically means the command line is expecting more. Try putting the url in quotes. That may fix it.

Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show · 7 pts · 272d

The reason this might work is that some shells, like zsh, interpretes the questionmark in the URL as a function of some sort, making the URL invalid to yt-dlp.

anon5621@lemmy.ml · 13 pts · 273d

Remove --no-warning and see log? :D

CoyoteFacts@piefed.ca · 5 pts · 273d

Semi-related for people whose distros don't package deno, I installed deno in a distrobox and exported it with distrobox-export and yt-dlp picked it up just fine from my $PATH. Before I did so, running yt-dlp gave the following error:

WARNING: [youtube] No supported JavaScript runtime could be found. YouTube extraction without a JS runtime has been deprecated, and some formats may be missing. See  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS  for details on installing one. To silence this warning, you can use  --extractor-args "youtube:player_client=default"

gooeyglob@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 271d

Put single quotes around the URL.

? and & are special characters, and the shell will think you meant something unintended if you dont protect them.