Streamlink is a command-line application, which means that the commands described here should be typed into a terminal. On Windows, you have to open either the Command Prompt, PowerShell or Windows Terminal, on macOS open the Terminal app, and if you're on Linux or BSD you probably already know the drill.
The way Streamlink works is that it's only a means to extract and transport the streams, and the playback is done by an external video player. Streamlink works best with VLC or mpv, which are also cross-platform, but other players may be compatible too, see the :ref:`Players <players:Players>` page for a complete overview.
Now to get into actually using Streamlink, let's say you want to watch the stream located on twitch.tv/day9tv, you start off by telling Streamlink where to attempt to extract streams from. This is done by giving the URL to the command :command:`streamlink` as the first argument:
$ streamlink twitch.tv/day9tv
[cli][info] Found matching plugin twitch for URL twitch.tv/day9tv
Available streams: audio, high, low, medium, mobile (worst), source (best)Note
You don't need to include the protocol when dealing with HTTP(s) URLs,
e.g. just twitch.tv/day9tv is enough and quicker to type.
This command will tell Streamlink to attempt to extract streams from the URL specified, and if it's successful, print out a list of available streams to choose from.
In some cases (Supported streaming protocols) local files are supported
using the file:// protocol, for example a local HLS playlist can be played.
Relative file paths and absolute paths are supported. All path separators are /,
even on Windows.
$ streamlink hls://file://C:/hls/playlist.m3u8
[cli][info] Found matching plugin stream for URL hls://file://C:/hls/playlist.m3u8
Available streams: 180p (worst), 272p, 408p, 554p, 818p, 1744p (best)To select a stream and start playback, simply add the stream name as a second argument to the :command:`streamlink` command:
$ streamlink twitch.tv/day9tv 1080p60
[cli][info] Found matching plugin twitch for URL twitch.tv/day9tv
[cli][info] Opening stream: 1080p60 (hls)
[cli][info] Starting player: vlcThe stream you chose should now be playing in the player. It's a common use case
to just want to start the highest quality stream and not be bothered with what it's
named. To do this, just specify best as the stream name and Streamlink will
attempt to rank the streams and open the one of highest quality. You can also
specify worst to get the lowest quality.
Now that you have a basic grasp of how Streamlink works, you may want to look into customizing it to your own needs, such as:
- Creating a :ref:`configuration file <cli:Configuration file>` of options you want to use
- Setting up your player to :ref:`cache some data <issues:Streams are buffering/lagging>` before playing the stream to help avoiding buffering issues
Writing the command-line options every time is inconvenient, that's why Streamlink is capable of reading options from a configuration file instead.
Streamlink will look for config files in different locations depending on your platform:
| Platform | Location |
|---|---|
| Unix-like (POSIX) |
|
| Windows | %APPDATA%\streamlink\streamlinkrc |
You can also specify the location yourself using the :option:`--config` option.
Note
- $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is
~/.configif it has not been overridden - %APPDATA% is usually
<your user directory>\AppData
Note
On Windows, there is a default config created by the installer, but on any other platform you must create the file yourself.
The config file is a simple text file and should contain one :ref:`command-line option <cli:Command-line usage>` (omitting the dashes) per line in the format:
option=value
or for an option without value:
option
Note
Any quotes used will be part of the value, so only use them when the value needs them, e.g. when specifying a player with a path which contains spaces.
# Player options
player=mpv --cache 2048
player-no-closeNote
Full player paths are supported via configuration file options such as
player="C:\mpv-x86_64\mpv"
You may want to use specific options for some plugins only. This can be accomplished by placing those settings inside a plugin specific config file. Options inside these config files will override the main config file when a URL matching the plugin is used.
Streamlink expects this config to be named like the main config but
with .<plugin name> attached to the end.
| Platform | Location |
|---|---|
| Unix-like (POSIX) |
|
| Windows | %APPDATA%\streamlink\streamlinkrc.youtube |
Have a look at the :ref:`list of plugins <plugin_matrix:Plugins>`, or check the :option:`--plugins` option to see the name of each built-in plugin.
Streamlink will attempt to load standalone plugins from these directories:
| Platform | Location |
|---|---|
| Unix-like (POSIX) | $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/streamlink/plugins |
| Windows | %APPDATA%\streamlink\plugins |
Note
If a plugin is added with the same name as a built-in plugin, then the added plugin will take precedence. This is useful if you want to upgrade plugins independently of the Streamlink version.
Warning
If one of the sideloaded plugins fails to load, eg. due to a
SyntaxError being raised by the parser, this exception will
not get caught by Streamlink and the execution will stop, even if
the input stream URL does not match the faulty plugin.
Crunchyroll requires authenticating with a premium account to access some of their content. To do so, the plugin provides a couple of options to input your information, :option:`--crunchyroll-username` and :option:`--crunchyroll-password`.
You can login like this:
$ streamlink --crunchyroll-username=xxxx --crunchyroll-password=xxx https://crunchyroll.com/a-crunchyroll-episode-linkNote
If you omit the password, streamlink will ask for it.
Once logged in, the plugin makes sure to save the session credentials to avoid asking your username and password again.
Nevertheless, these credentials are valid for a limited amount of time, so it might be a good idea to save your username and password in your :ref:`configuration file <cli:Configuration file>` anyway.
Warning
The API this plugin uses isn't supposed to be available on desktop computers. The plugin tries to blend in as a valid device using custom headers and following the API's usual flow (e.g. reusing credentials), but this does not assure that your account will be safe from being spotted for unusual behavior.
To be able to stream region locked content, you can use Streamlink's proxy options, which are described in the :ref:`Proxy Support <cli:Proxy Support>` section.
When doing this, it's possible that access to the stream will still be denied; this can happen because the session and credentials used by the plugin were obtained while being logged from your own region, and the server still assumes you're in that region.
For cases like this, the plugin provides the :option:`--crunchyroll-purge-credentials` option, which removes your saved session and credentials and tries to log in again using your username and password.
Like Crunchyroll, the FunimationNow plugin requires authenticating with a premium account to access some
content: :option:`--funimation-email`, :option:`--funimation-password`. In addition, this plugin requires
the incap_ses cookie to be sent with each HTTP request (see issue #2088). This unique session cookie
can be found in your browser and sent via the :option:`--http-cookie` option.
$ streamlink --funimation-email='xxx' --funimation-password='xxx' --http-cookie 'incap_ses_xxx=xxxx=' https://funimation.com/shows/show/an-episode-linkNote
There are multiple ways to retrieve the required cookie. For more information on browser cookies, please consult the following:
There are many types of streaming protocols used by services today and Streamlink supports most of them. It's possible to tell Streamlink to access a streaming protocol directly instead of relying on a plugin to extract the streams from a URL for you.
A protocol can be accessed directly by specifying it in the URL format:
protocol://path [key=value]
Accessing a stream that requires extra parameters to be passed along (e.g. RTMP):
$ streamlink "rtmp://streaming.server.net/playpath live=1 swfVfy=http://server.net/flashplayer.swf"When passing parameters to the built-in stream plugins, the values will either
be treated as plain strings, as is the case in the example above for swfVry,
or they will be interpreted as Python literals. For example, you can pass a
Python dict or Python list as one of the parameters.
$ streamlink "rtmp://streaming.server.net/playpath conn=['B:1', 'S:authMe', 'O:1', 'NN:code:1.23', 'NS:flag:ok', 'O:0']"
$ streamlink "hls://streaming.server.net/playpath params={'token': 'magicToken'}"In the examples above, conn will be passed as a Python list:
['B:1', 'S:authMe', 'O:1', 'NN:code:1.23', 'NS:flag:ok', 'O:0']and params will be passed as a Python dict:
{'token': 'magicToken'}Most streaming protocols only require you to pass a simple URL. This is an Adobe HDS stream:
$ streamlink hds://streaming.server.net/playpath/manifest.f4m| Name | Prefix |
|---|---|
| Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming | hds:// |
| Akamai HD Adaptive Streaming | akamaihd:// |
| Apple HTTP Live Streaming | hls:// [1] |
| MPEG-DASH [2] | dash:// |
| Real Time Messaging Protocol | rtmp:// rtmpe:// rtmps:// rtmpt:// rtmpte:// |
| Progressive HTTP, HTTPS, etc | httpstream:// [1] |
| [1] | (1, 2) supports local files using the file:// protocol |
| [2] | Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP |
You can use the :option:`--http-proxy` or :option:`--https-proxy` options to change the proxy server that Streamlink will use for HTTP and HTTPS requests respectively. For convenience reasons, :option:`--http-proxy` will automatically set the value of :option:`--https-proxy` as well, if it has not been set by the user.
Both HTTP and SOCKS proxies are supported, as well as authentication in each of them.
Note
When using a SOCKS proxy, the socks4 and socks5 schemes mean that DNS lookups are done
locally, rather than on the proxy server. To have the proxy server perform the DNS lookups, the
socks4a and socks5h schemes should be used instead.
$ streamlink --http-proxy "http://user:[email protected]:3128/" --https-proxy "socks5://10.10.1.10:1242"
$ streamlink --http-proxy "socks4a://10.10.1.10:1235" --https-proxy "socks5h://10.10.1.10:1234"$ streamlink [OPTIONS] <URL> [STREAM].. argparse::
:module: streamlink_cli.main
:attr: parser_helper