How to Download a YouTube Playlist (Complete Guide)
Save an entire YouTube playlist to your computer for offline viewing. We cover three methods — from simple desktop apps to command-line tools.
You’ve curated a playlist of 50 tutorials, or found someone else’s perfect study playlist, and you want all of it on your hard drive. Here’s how to download a YouTube playlist — the whole thing, not one video at a time.
Method 1: TubeArchiver (fastest setup)
- Copy the playlist URL from YouTube (it looks like
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...) - Open TubeArchiver and paste the URL
- Select your quality (up to 8K) and click download
Every video in the playlist downloads automatically. Files are organized into a folder by channel name, and the app tracks what you’ve already downloaded. Come back next week after new videos are added to the playlist and TubeArchiver only downloads the new ones.
The free tier handles 10 videos per day at 720p. For larger playlists at higher quality, paid plans start at €19/year.
Method 2: yt-dlp (command line)
Paste this into your terminal:
yt-dlp -f "bestvideo+bestaudio" -o "%(playlist_title)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL..."This downloads every video at the best quality and names files with their playlist position (e.g., 01 - Introduction.mp4). Useful flags:
--playlist-start 5— skip the first 4 videos--playlist-end 20— only download videos 1 through 20--download-archive archive.txt— skip already-downloaded videos on re-runs
Requires Python 3.10+, ffmpeg, and a JavaScript runtime (Deno) in 2026.
Method 3: 4K Video Downloader Plus
4K Video Downloader Plus can download playlists by pasting the URL. The free version limits you to 10 videos per playlist per day. The paid version ($25 one-time) removes this restriction.
It works well for one-off playlist downloads. It won’t track duplicates across sessions, so re-downloading a playlist means re-downloading everything.
Common issues
- “Video unavailable” errors — some videos in a playlist may be private, deleted, or region-locked. All three methods will skip these and continue with the rest.
- Playlist order — yt-dlp preserves playlist order with
%(playlist_index)s. TubeArchiver downloads in playlist order by default. - Large playlists (500+ videos) — these work fine but take time. Both TubeArchiver and yt-dlp support resuming if the download is interrupted.
- Mix playlists / auto-generated playlists — YouTube’s auto-generated “Mix” playlists are dynamic and change each time you load them. These are difficult to download reliably with any tool.
Which method is best?
For most people, TubeArchiver is the simplest — paste the URL, pick quality, and wait. Power users who want precise control over format and naming will prefer yt-dlp. 4K Video Downloader Plus is a solid option if you already own a license, though it lacks duplicate tracking across sessions. For a full breakdown, see our TubeArchiver vs yt-dlp comparison.
Need to download an entire channel instead? See how to download a YouTube channel. Or check our roundup of the best YouTube downloaders in 2026 for more options.