ytmusic-deleter: Delete your YouTube Music library

This is the command-line interface for ytmusic-deleter. For the graphical Windows .exe edition, visit the main page

Command-line interface install using Python / PIP

The CLI version of ytmusic-deleter is for advanced users who would rather use a command-line or are running macOS.

For the graphical Windows .exe edition (or Linux), visit the main page

Installation instructions of this command-line interface:

1. Install Python. Make sure it is available on your PATH.
2. Open a command prompt and type pip install ytmusic-deleter. Use a virtual environment if you're familiar with the process.
3. Run ytmusic-deleter by simply entering ytmusic-deleter at the command line.

Authentication (Browser)

The first time you run ytmusic-deleter, you will be asked to paste your request headers from your browser. This allows ytmusic-deleter to make requests against your music library. To copy your request headers follow the instructions from the ytmusicapi docs under "Copy authentication headers".

$ ytmusic-deleter whoami
[2024-11-16 12:51:05] Attempting authentication with: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\YTMusic_Deleter\browser.json
[2024-11-16 12:51:05] Creating file: browser.json
Please paste the request headers from Firefox and press 'Enter, Ctrl-Z, Enter' to continue:

If you are running macOS, please see the special pasting instructions in the "MacOS special pasting instructions" section of the ytmusicapi docs.

Usage

When you run ytmusic-deleter with no parameters, you will see see the usage information. There are several commands available.

delete-uploads:    Delete all tracks that you have uploaded to your YT Music library.

Use the --add-to-library or -a option to add each album or song to your library from YouTube Music's online catalog before deleting it from your uploads. If a match could not be found, the album or song will remain in your uploads. When using the -a option, you can also enable fuzzy matching with --fuzzy or -f. This is a less strict matching algorithm that will find more matches, but may find inaccurrate matches in its current experimental state. Use the --score-cutoff or -s option to raise or lower the default matching score cutoff of 90. A value closer to 100 will be more strict, and a value closer to 0 will be less strict.

remove-library:    Remove all tracks that you have added to your library from within YouTube Music.

unlike-all:    Reset all Thumbs Up ratings back to neutral.

delete-playlists:    Delete all manually created YT Music playlists.

delete-all:    Combo command that will run delete-uploads, remove-library, unlike-all, and delete-playlists.

Non-deletion commands:

sort-playlist:    Sort a playlist alphabetically by artist and then by song title.

Use the --shuffle or -s option to shuffle the playlist instead of sorting it.
Use --custom-sort or -c to define custom sort parameters Available parameters are: artist, album_title, track_title, and duration. See below for examples.
Use --reverse to reverse the sort order.

remove-duplicates:    Remove duplicate tracks from a particular playlist.

Use the --exact or -e option to only remove exact duplicates. This will skip the portion that checks for duplicates that are similar matches but not the same exact track.

add-all-to-playlist:    Add all library songs or uploads to a particular playlist.

Examples

Getting help:

ytmusic-deleter --help

This will print the usage information for ytmusic-deleter and exit.
You can use the --help argument to print usage information for subcommands as well, as follows:

ytmusic-deleter delete-uploads --help

Delete all your uploads:

ytmusic-deleter delete-uploads

Delete all your uploads but add them to your YouTube Music library first:

ytmusic-deleter delete-uploads -a

Remove all your library tracks (not uploads):

ytmusic-deleter remove-library

Reset all Thumbs Up ratings back to neutral:

ytmusic-deleter unlike-all

Delete all your personally created playlists:

ytmusic-deleter delete-playlists

Remove everything (uploads, library tracks, playlists, and unlike all songs):

ytmusic-deleter delete-all

Sort a playlist called Workout Jams using the default settings (sorts by artist then album title):

ytmusic-deleter sort-playlist "workout jams"

Sort a playlist using custom sorting attributes (attributes are applied in order):

ytmusic-deleter sort-playlist "workout jams" --custom-sort artist --custom-sort album_title --custom-sort track_title

Remove duplicate tracks from a playlist called "Focus"

ytmusic-deleter remove-duplicates focus

Add all uploads to a playlist called "All my uploads"

ytmusic-deleter add-all-to-playlist "All my uploads" --uploads

Extra options

These supplemental options are unlikely to be helpful for most use cases and are mainly to support the GUI version.

Options:
  --version                  Show the version and exit.
  -l, --log-dir TEXT         Custom directory in which to write log files,
                             instead of current working directory.
  -c, --credential-dir TEXT  Custom directory in which to locate/create JSON
                             credential file, instead of current working
                             directory
  -p, --static-progress      Log the progress statically instead of an
                             animated progress bar

Troubleshooting

ytmusic-deleter: command not found

or

'ytmusic-deleter' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Make sure you ran pip install ytmusic-deleter to install ytmusic-deleter. If you're still getting this error, try closing and re-opening your command prompt.