yt-dlp-mcp

An MCP server implementation that integrates with yt-dlp, providing video and audio content download capabilities (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Tiktok, etc.) for LLMs.

Features

Subtitles: Download subtitles in SRT format for LLMs to read
Video Download: Save videos to your Downloads folder with resolution control
Audio Download: Save audios to your Downloads folder
Privacy-Focused: Direct download without tracking
MCP Integration: Works with Dive and other MCP-compatible LLMs

Installation

Prerequisites

Install yt-dlp based on your operating system:

# Windows
winget install yt-dlp

# macOS
brew install yt-dlp

# Linux
pip install yt-dlp

With Dive Desktop

Click "+ Add MCP Server" in Dive Desktop
Copy and paste this configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "yt-dlp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@kevinwatt/yt-dlp-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Click "Save" to install the MCP server

Tool Documentation

list_subtitle_languages
- List all available subtitle languages and their formats for a video (including auto-generated captions)
- Inputs:
  - url (string, required): URL of the video
download_video_subtitles
- Download video subtitles in any available format. Supports both regular and auto-generated subtitles
- Inputs:
  - url (string, required): URL of the video
  - language (string, optional): Language code (e.g., 'en', 'zh-Hant', 'ja'). Defaults to 'en'
download_video
- Download video to user's Downloads folder
- Inputs:
  - url (string, required): URL of the video
  - resolution (string, optional): Video resolution ('480p', '720p', '1080p', 'best'). Defaults to '720p'
download_audio
- Download audio in best available quality (usually m4a/mp3 format) to user's Downloads folder
- Inputs:
  - url (string, required): URL of the video
download_transcript
- Download and clean video subtitles to produce a plain text transcript without timestamps or formatting
- Inputs:
  - url (string, required): URL of the video
  - language (string, optional): Language code (e.g., 'en', 'zh-Hant', 'ja'). Defaults to 'en'

Usage Examples

Ask your LLM to:

"List available subtitles for this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."
"Download a video from facebook: https://facebook.com/..."
"Download Chinese subtitles from this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."
"Download this video in 1080p: https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."
"Download audio from this YouTube video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."
"Get a clean transcript of this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."
"Download Spanish transcript from this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."

Manual Start

If needed, start the server manually:

npx @kevinwatt/yt-dlp-mcp

Requirements

Node.js 20+
yt-dlp in system PATH
MCP-compatible LLM service

License

MIT

Author

Dewei Yen

YT-DLP