For videos, this should work... added to your .bashrc file, which then needs to be reloaded (only once) by typing source .bashrc in your home directory from the

For videos, this should work... added to your .bashrc file, which then needs to be reloaded (only once) by typing source .bashrc in your home directory from the command line: alias yt='youtube-dl --recode-video mp4' On my system I have a funky python setup so I need to use this instead: alias yt='unset PYTHONPATH; youtube-dl --recode-video mp4' I don't see the need for interactivity because the only format I ever want is mp4. For audio, I would just do a separate alias with a different name. For example (edit: tested): alias yta='youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3' Invoke each with the URL. For example: Video: yt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E Audio: yta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKS8KsTC4IU If a youtube URL has extra parameters separated by &, delete those before invoking. For example the URL below, which has extra parameters because it came from a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQuX1sOYk4&list=PLYq_mcte9NvDA2Xi5Qjl1DrH5LuDKDlAI should be changed to this before using it to attempt a download: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQuX1sOYk4 Or you can use the full original URL but you need to protect it from interpretation by UNIX by surrounding it with single quotes when invoking. yta 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQuX1sOYk4&list=PLYq_mcte9NvDA2Xi5Qjl1DrH5LuDKDlAI'