How can I download the video description of a YouTube video without downloading the video with youtube-dl?

Question

How can I download the video description of a YouTube video without downloading the video with youtube-dl?

Solution

You can use the following options:

• --write-description

• --skip-download

• --youtube-skip-dash-manifest

Example

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o0r9unT4L4 --write-description --skip-download --youtube-skip-dash-manifest

Descriptions are downloaded as .description files, which are just normal text files.

---

Note that if a video description is blank, a 0-byte file will be produced.

---

References

youtube-dl - Only download descriptions - Issue #8593

youtube-dl - Official Documentation