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What can --download-archive be used for?

See original GitHub issue

Checklist

I’m asking a question and not reporting a bug/feature request
I’ve looked through the README
I’ve read the guidelines for opening an issue
I’ve searched the bugtracker for similar questions including closed ones

Question

In this reply Pukkandan directs me to use the --download-archive option. But I don’t understand what this archive file is and how this would work in the particular case discussed in that thread.

I hope I can receive some education here!

Verbose log

No response

Issue Analytics

State:
Created 2 years ago
Comments:10 (7 by maintainers)

Top GitHub Comments

3reactions

FT129commented, Feb 13, 2022

If you download all your stuff to the same folder and you’re not sure if you’ve already downloaded a particular file, running yt-dlp with the --download-archive option every time will make sure it doesn’t download the same file again. It’s also good when you’re downloading a bunch of files at the same time and your download stops or your network drops for some reason, and some of the files have already been downloaded but you’re not sure which. You can run them again without worrying about accidentally downloading them again. I use this option along with a script that scraps full seasons of tv shows (free and legal) and downloads them. Occasionally the download breaks because of expired cookies or network issues and this really comes in handy because I can simply re-run them again without manually checking which downloads are complete and which are pending.

1reaction

pukkandancommented, Feb 13, 2022

There is a --force-write-archive option that writes the archive even in --simulate