"I have been downloading various videos from YT with youtube-dl with the little issue for quite a while now. Recently however the dl speeds have dropped from 2-3Mb to 70Kb. It takes longer to download the video than actually watch it. I'm behind a VPN so I've tried different exit points and even turned it off without any success. Has anyone else encountered this recently? " - Posted by u/PeterHickman on Reddit.

YouTube-DL is such a powerful download manager for video/audio files and it costs nothing to download this tool on https://youtube-dl.org/. In this post, we’d like to fix YouTube-DL slow issue, as well as other problems you might encounter while using YouTube-DL, check them out if needed!

Part 1: What is YouTube-DL

YouTube-dl is a Python-based command-line tool to help users download videos or audios from a wide range of video-sharing sites for free. YouTube-dl has accumulated 100k+ Stars on GitHub since its establishment in 2006 and it has become one of the most starred projects on GitHub.

Part 2: How to use YouTube-DL

This part will cover the detailed guide on installing YouTube-dl on Windows as well as the usage of YouTube-dl.

1. How to install YouTube-DL?

Step 1: Head for the YouTube-dl official site - https://youtube-dl.org/, click the “Download instructions” button in green.

youtube-dl slow

Step 2: YouTube-dl requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Service Pack, install this mentioned package if you haven’t it on your Windows PC.

youtube-dl slow

Step 3: Download and install YouTube-dl.exe. Hit the “Windows exe” option and kick off the download process.

youtube-dl slow

Step 4: Open your browser's "Downloads" page (let’s take Chrome as an example), click "Show in folder", and copy the file path of YouTube-dl in the folder.

youtube-dl slow

Step 5: Type cmd in the Windows search box and call out Command Prompt panel. Paste the path of YouTube-dl.exe in the Command Prompt.

After that, run the command line - youtube-dl --version to check whether the installation has been completed or not. Once it shows the version like 2021.12.17 on the panel, it means you’ve already installed this .exe successfully.

youtube-dl slow

2. how to use YouTube-DL

Feel free to download video/playlist/subtitles/video information using YouTube-DL. There are some command lines for a specific task.

  • Download video: youtube-dl url_to_video
  • For instance “youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAnZTVF_10”

  • Download subtitle: youtube-dl --write-sub url_to_video
  • For instance “youtube-dl --write-sub https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAnZTVF_10”

  • Download a playlist: youtube-dl url_to_playlist
  • For instance “youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=xxx”

  • Download youtube-dl audio only: youtube-dl -f format_code url_to_video
  • For instance “youtube-dl -f mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAnZTVF_10”

Part 3: Solutions to fix YouTube-dl slow issue

Here are several likely methods to fix the Youtube-dl slow problem, all of which are shared by users on the internet.

  • 1. Switch YouTube-DL to yt-dlp
  • 2. Reboot the computer
  • 3. Clear cache
  • 4. Alter to a powerful video downloader application

Fix youtube-dl slow problem solution 1. Switch YouTube-dl to yt-dlp

yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork based on the now inactive youtube-dlc. This project comes with new features and patches while also staying up-to-date. yt-dlp provides several new functions, including Format shorting, Youtube improvements, Split video by chapters, New and fixed extractors, and more.

Fix youtube-dl slow problem solution 2. Reboot the computer

A simple reboot might help. According to a user’s experience on Linuxmint forum, rebooting usually solves that. You might as well take a try and check whether it can fix this problem.

Fix youtube-dl slow problem solution 3. Clear cache

Clearing the cache data helps to increase the loading time of web pages and increases the performance of your computer. Given that, it’s quite necessary to clear the cache on your browser and it might boost your speeds for your downloading task.

Fix youtube-dl slow problem solution 4. Alter to a powerful video downloader application

Aside from the said, a stable video downloader application, alongside with streams video downloading support, is capable of grabbing video from most video-sharing websites. CleverGet Video Downloader is designed to download video from up to 1000+ sites, regardless of restrictions.

Part 4: Surefire way to download video from YouTube & bypass Youtube-dl slow issue

As we’ve mentioned in part 3, a reliable video downloader program is quite essential when it comes to the downloading task. Therefore in this segment, we’d like to introduce a practical tool for reference.

CleverGet Video Downloader, a comprehensive online movie downloader that could not only download online videos, but also free movies, paid movies and even live streams, could help you easily complete online free movie download tasks in simple clicks. With it, you could easily download free movies from various free movie or video websites like YouTube, Twitter, Tubi, Facebook live, and various other free movie sites.

  • CleverGet
  • CleverGet Video Downloader

    Download Movie Video With 320 Kbps audio.
    Easily Download Live Streams Without Quality Loss.
    Video Info Extractor.
    Supports Playlist Downloading.
    Support Multi-tasking & Video Info Extractor Inside.
    Ease-of-Use UI.

A step-by-step guide on how to download video straightly from websites:

Step 1: Adjust the general settings for downloading videos/movies

From the list presented, select the ideal video with parameters that suite your needs (such as quality and format).

Crunchyroll

Step 2: Visit the target site

Search for the videos/movies you would like to download. Copy and paste the address from your address bar.

download youtube video

Step 3: Launch this video downloader

Paste the link into the address bar of CleverGet, which should automatically detects downloadable videos and present all of them. After that, click to download the video.

download youtube video

Note: Make sure you have downloaded YouTube video for personal watching only. Don’t break your local law or regulations. Meanwhile, CleverGet offers free trial version and registered version. The free trial version enables you to download 3 videos for totally free before you decide to purchase it.