[amelius]

I use this tool a couple of times every week. I love this tool!

And I must say I'm impressed by its ease of use (basically zero installation effort), and also by the frequent updates.

(I wonder why those frequent updates are necessary, though. Are you under the impression that google is actively working against tools which attempt to download material from youtube?)

[phihag_]

Hi, I'm the current lead developer. We update extremely frequently because our release model is different from other software; there is usually little fear of regressions (fingers crossed), and lots of tiny features (i.e. small fixes or support for new sites) that are immediately useful for our users. We've had the experience that almost all users prefer it that way, so we try to enable every reporter to get the newest version by simply updating instead of having to check out the git repository.

As @fillipo said above, there is little if any pushback from video sites. Most of the time, they update their interface (we've gotten better in anticipating minor changes) and something breaks. The recent string of YouTube breaks (for some videos, mostly music videos - general video is unaffected) is caused by the complexity of their new player system, which forces us to behave more and more like a full-fledged webbrowser. But I think we usually manage to get out a fix and a new release within a couple of hours, so after a small youtube-dl -U (Caveats do apply[0]) you should be all set again. Sorry!

[0] https://yt-dl.org/update

[e12e]

I'm really grateful for this tool: both to the creator, and those that keep making sure it works. I have a swath of my life tied up in a couple of youtube playlists, and every now and then videos disappear (presumably due to DMCA-requests) -- and it's always annoying. With youtube-dl, I can simply download my lists, and then I can be confident that whatever obscure (or not) tune or cover version I found some years ago, will be in my archives (I've yet to automate this -- but my goal isn't really to archive all the things -- I generally add few songs at a time).

Anyway, if you didn't write this tool (and update it) -- I'd have to do it myself. And I'd rather not do anything myself ;-)

[rg3]

The current team should have more information, but I think most updates are due to other sites breaking and new sites being added that due to YouTube or bug fixes. I don't think YouTube is actively working against tools like youtube-dl, at all.