Another great thing about youtube-dl is its integration in mpv[1]. On Windows as long as you have both mpv.exe[2] and youtube-dl.exe in the same folder you can

Another great thing about youtube-dl is its integration in mpv[1]. On Windows as long as you have both mpv.exe[2] and youtube-dl.exe in the same folder you can use it to play pretty much whatever youtube-dl supports. This should also work on *nix/Mac as well just check your distro's repo's or wherever you look for stuff like that on Mac (can you tell I've not used Mac stuff ever). I rather like using it for things like twitch streams since I can bypass having to use Flash and get a higher quality renderer in the process (with things like high quality scaling[3] and debanding[4]). And it goes without saying that it's nice for youtube stuff as well because of the aforementioned benefits. Basically it makes stuff look even better than if you watched it the browser, and I like that. [1] https://mpv.io/ https://mpv.io/ [2] https://mpv.srsfckn.biz/ https://mpv.srsfckn.biz/ (official Windows builds) [3] https://mpv.io/manual/master/#video-output-drivers-opengl https://mpv.io/manual/master/#video-output-drivers-opengl mpv supports ewa_lanczossharp (aka jinc) for scaling among others [4] Also a huge fan of the debanding which can be left on all the time