ytdl command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix ytdl command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

ytdl: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: ytdl: command not found

In Ubuntu ytdl is provided by python3-pafy package.

python3-pafy is:

Pafy is a Python library for interacting with YouTube from within your Python programs. Its main features include:

Retrieve metadata such as viewcount, duration, rating, author, thumbnail, keywords
Download video or audio at requested resolution / bitrate / format / filesize
Command line tool (ytdl) for downloading directly from the command line
Retrieve the URL to stream the video in a player such as vlc or mplayer
Works with age-restricted videos and non-embeddable videos
Small, standalone, single importable module file (pafy.py)
Select highest quality stream for download or streaming
Download video only (no audio) in m4v or webm format
Download audio only (no video) in ogg or m4a format
Retrieve playlists and playlist metadata

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install python3-pafy

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install python3-pafy.

sudo apt -y install python3-pafy

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install python3-pafy

In this tutorial we learn how to fix ytdl command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.