Best CLIs for Media and Video
These CLIs cover media downloads, video workflows, playback-adjacent utilities, subtitles, metadata extraction, and related processing tasks from the shell. They are useful when an agent needs concrete file and media operations instead of GUI-only workflows.
yt-dlp
Media download CLI for fetching video, audio, subtitles, and metadata from YouTube and thousands of supported sites.
ffmpeg
Media processing CLI for recording, transcoding, filtering, muxing, and streaming audio or video.
spotDL
Music download CLI that matches Spotify tracks, albums, and playlists to audio sources and saves tagged files locally.
VHS
CLI for scripting terminal recordings into GIF, video, screenshot, or text snapshot outputs with `.tape` files.
gallery-dl
Media download CLI for fetching images, videos, and metadata from supported gallery, creator, and social media URLs.
ImageMagick
Image processing CLI for converting, inspecting, and transforming images in batch workflows.
beets
Music library manager for importing, autotagging, querying, and reorganizing local audio collections.
Instaloader
Instagram downloader CLI for archiving profiles, hashtags, stories, saved posts, and post metadata.
streamlink
Extract streams from websites and pipe them to a video player.
catt
Chromecast control CLI for discovering devices, casting online or local media or web pages, and managing playback.
playerctl
Linux media control CLI for inspecting and controlling MPRIS-enabled players over D-Bus.
SoX
Audio processing CLI for converting files, applying effects, recording or playing audio, and inspecting audio metadata.
spogo
Spotify CLI for search, playback control, queue management, library updates, and playlist edits using browser cookies.
gifgrep
GIF search CLI and terminal browser for finding Tenor or Giphy results, downloading them, and extracting PNG stills or sheets.