How to download YouTube-videos with subtitles using youtube-dl

It wasn’t obvious how this feature with youtube-dl worked, so I thought I would document it here. If you want to download a video from YouTube with embedded subtitles into the video, you can use this command:

$ youtube-dl --write-auto-sub <URL>

It will default to English, but you can specify another language with the flag --sub-lang:

$ youtube-dl --sub-lang sv --write-auto-sub <URL>

You can list all available subtitles with:

$ youtube-dl --list-subs <URL>

It’s also possible to skip the video and only download the subtitle if you add the flag --skip-download:

$ youtube-dl --sub-lang sv --write-auto-sub --skip-download <URL>

For more information consult the manual: man youtube-dl.