Channels and playlists

The channel and playlist commands stream the content tabs you browse on the site, following YouTube's continuation tokens to page through them. Output is a table on a terminal and JSONL when piped; override with -o. See Output formats and the CLI reference.

Channels

channel accepts an @handle, a UC... channel id, or any channel URL:

ytb channel @MrBeast
ytb channel UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA
ytb channel "https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast"

With no tab flag it prints the channel record: name, id, handle, subscriber count, description, banner and avatar thumbnails, and the like.

Content tabs

The tab flags switch it from the record to streaming that tab's items via /browse continuation:

ytb channel @MrBeast --videos      # the uploads tab
ytb channel @MrBeast --shorts      # the Shorts tab
ytb channel @MrBeast --streams     # past live streams
ytb channel @MrBeast --playlists   # the channel's playlists

The grid that /browse returns omits some fields (view counts, full descriptions). Add --enrich to fan out one /player call per video and fill them in:

ytb channel @MrBeast --videos --enrich -j 8

Paging and limits

-n/--limit caps the rows emitted and --max-pages caps continuation pages fetched (both 0 mean unlimited). --all removes the default page cap and streams the whole tab:

ytb channel @MrBeast --videos -n 200
ytb channel @MrBeast --videos --all -o jsonl > mrbeast.jsonl

Narrow the columns with --fields (lowercase column names):

ytb channel @MrBeast --videos --fields title,views,published

Playlists

playlist takes a playlist id or URL. With no flag it prints the playlist header (title, owner, item count, description):

ytb playlist PLFgquLnL59alCl_2TQvOiD5Vgm1hCaGSI

Add --videos to stream the items, each with its position and the basic video fields, paging by continuation up to -n/--max-pages:

ytb playlist PLFgquLnL59alCl_2TQvOiD5Vgm1hCaGSI --videos -n 100

Resolving items to full metadata

Emit just the ids with -o id and pipe them into video - to resolve each item to its full record:

ytb playlist PLFgquLnL59alCl_2TQvOiD5Vgm1hCaGSI --videos -o id | ytb video -

Persisting

Add --db <path> to either command and ytb writes the channel, playlists, videos, and their relationships into a local SQLite store as it streams. See The store.