Look for youtube music downloading suggestion in 2026?

gallery-dl, a powerful, command-line based youtube music downloader that excels at fetching images, videos, and galleries from a vast array of websites. It provides superior performance for image-heavy sites and certain niche platforms due to its modular architecture and efficient parallel downloading. It's particularly valued in art and archival communities for its ability to recursively download entire galleries with metadata preservation.

Step 1: Install Python 3.8+ from python.org (check "Add to PATH" during installation)

Step 2: Open Command Prompt or PowerShell as Administrator

Step 3: Run: pip install gallery-dl

Step 4:  Verify with: gallery-dl --version

Step 5: Youtube music download for a single video (best quality):

gallery-dl "VIDEO_ID"

Youtube music download for a playlist:

gallery-dl "PLAYLIST_ID"

Youtube music download for mp3 only audio:

gallery-dl --filter "extension ~ 'm4a'" "URL"
# Or download best audio
gallery-dl --filter "format_id ~ '^140$|^251$|^250$'" "URL"

However, you have to spend sometime learning how to use this command-line based youtube music downloader. In fact, many GUI apps are based on this took.