1. yt‑dlp
   A maintained fork of youtube‑dl, yt‑dlp is the de‑facto CLI for video downloads. Install via pip (pip install yt-dlp) or your package manager, then run: This grabs and merges the top‑quality streams into an MP4, and you can script it to loop over a list of URLs.

yt-dlp -f bestvideo+bestaudio "https://youtube.com/shorts/ABC123" \
-o "Shorts/%(title)s.%(ext)s"

1. youtube‑dl + ffmpeg
   If you prefer the original, install youtube‑dl and ensure ffmpeg is on your PATH. Then: This two‑step process downloads the highest‑quality video and remuxes it for maximum compatibility.

youtube-dl -f bestvideo "https://youtube.com/shorts/ABC123" -o temp.webm
ffmpeg -i temp.webm -c copy "Shorts/ABC123.mp4"
rm temp.webm

1. Gallery-dl
   Primarily for images, Gallery‑dl also supports YouTube playlists and channels via CLI. Install it (pip install gallery-dl) and add a simple config for Shorts: Great for continuous pulls from your own channel or a specific user’s Shorts stream.

gallery-dl "https://youtube.com/shorts/ABC123" -o "Shorts/{id}.mp4"

1. cURL + Invidious Instances
   For a pure bash hack, target an Invidious mirror’s API. Example with yewtu.be: This fetches the direct 1080p stream URL and pipes it straight into curl for download—no extra tools needed.

STREAM_URL=$(curl -s "https://yewtu.be/api/v1/videos/ABC123/streams" \
| jq -r '.mp4["1080p"]')
curl -L "$STREAM_URL" -o "Shorts/ABC123.mp4"

Use these command‑line methods to script, schedule and automate your YouTube Shorts archive - whether you need a one‑off download or a nightly cron job pulling the latest clips.