Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing JDownloader 2 vs youtube-dl, the Slant community recommends youtube-dl for most people. In the question“What are the best YouTube downloaders?” youtube-dl is ranked 1st while JDownloader 2 is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose youtube-dl is:
It's released to the public domain. Modify at will.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Click and Load
Jdownloader can crawl all links and find downloadable content based on those links, very helpful to download entire website content, video playlist, or hidden content too.
Pro Advanced packaging system
You can pack files into packages for better file management.
Pro Open-source
There is no limitation.
Pro Supports multiple parallel streams
It means you can download any stream source such as youtube or similar video site with options to choose its quality and filetype.
Pro Captcha recognition
You can input captcha on some free file hosting sites directly on Jdownloader.
Pro Auto-extracts archives
No need to manually extract your downloaded archives, while Jdownloader can automatically extract them for you.
Pro Auto-saves to configured folder
Automatically save files with certain filenames to certain preconfigured folders.
Pro Batch import links
Helps to batch download files.
Pro Cross-platform
Because JDownloader runs on Java, any platform that can run Java, can run JDownloader.
Pro Open-source
It's released to the public domain. Modify at will.
Pro Cross-platform
Works on Windows, Mac OS X and other Unix systems like Linux for example.
Pro Ability to download different formats and meta-info
Pro Frequently updated
The developers keep up with YouTube-s meta changes. If the download of a video fails, just update to a new version and it should work.
Pro Works in other places too
Can download from different sources, not just YouTube. Link for supported sites can be found here.
Pro Command-line, and light weight
Cons
Con Regular installation tries to install Adware along with program
Oughta look for the ad-ware free installer. Dubious.
Con Not safe
It seems like VirusTotal has detected something with a scan. : https://www.virustotal.com/es-ar/file/c3467621d7f2479bac6fba7afae7b32bc5f3b25f61c562543ab498cdd9c5e33c/analysis/1550301403/ .
Con Apparently not fully open source
Con ULTRA extreme file fragmentation
There is no file size allocation protocol to prevent file fragmentation. And declared that there is no plan to fix it.
Con Has ads
Which is on by default but can be disabled in advanced setting.
Con Captcha solving requires Browser extension which spies on you
Con Resource intensive
It is a Java application so you will always having the JavaVM(Java virtual machine) running alongside.
Con No GUI
Command Line driven only. That's what makes it powerful, but less accessible.
Con Was taken down from Github
The RIAA sent a DMCA takedown notice to Github to remove youtube-dl., stating that this is illegal software. Takedown notice has been dissolved since.
Con Slow on Windows
