[Youtube] Download interval between videos in a Playlist

Checklist

• I've read the NO AI / NO LLM POLICY and understand I may be blocked from the repository if it is violated
• I'm requesting a site-specific feature
• I've verified that I have updated yt-dlp to nightly or master (update instructions)
• I've checked that all provided URLs are playable in a browser with the same IP and same login details
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar requests including closed ones. DO NOT post duplicates
• I've read about sharing account credentials and I'm willing to share it if required

Region

world wide

Example URLs

https://youtube.com/allpossible/videos or all other tabs

Provide a description that is worded well enough to be understood

When you want to download a playlist, all videos (without filters, etc.) are downloaded.

Once a video has been downloaded, requests for the next video in the playlist start immediately.

I’d also like to have a 5–20-second delay between them.

Example:

youtu.be/video1 sleep 5–20 sec youtu.be/video2 sleep 5–20 sec .....

Currently in use (Copied from my config file)

Number of seconds to sleep between requests during data extraction

--sleep-requests 6.39

Number of seconds to sleep before each subtitle download

--sleep-subtitles 6

Number of seconds to sleep before each download. This is the minimum time to sleep when used along with --max-sleep-interval

--sleep-interval 6 --max-sleep-interval 20

Time to sleep between retries in seconds

--retry-sleep http:6.39 --retry-sleep fragment:6.39 --retry-sleep file_access:6.39 --retry-sleep extractor:6.39

Provide verbose output that clearly demonstrates the problem

• Run your yt-dlp command with -vU flag added (yt-dlp -vU <your command line>)
• If using API, add 'verbose': True to YoutubeDL params instead
• Copy the WHOLE output (starting with [debug] Command-line config) and insert it below

Complete Verbose Output

[debug] Command-line config: ['-vU']
[debug] User config "/home/user/.yt-dlp/config": ['--compat-options', 'no-youtube-unavailable-videos,prefer-vp9-sort', '--no-check-formats', '--write-description', '--no-write-playlist-metafiles', '--extractor-args', 'youtube:player_client=web,web_safari,default,tv_simply,mweb', '--extractor-args', 'youtubepot-bgutilhttp:base_url=http://127.0.0.1:4416', '--mtime', '-R', 'infinite', '--file-access-retries', 'infinite', '--fragment-retries', 'infinite', '--extractor-retries', '3', '--socket-timeout', '20', '--no-skip-unavailable-fragments', '--sleep-requests', '6.39', '--sleep-subtitles', '5', '--sleep-interval', '5', '--max-sleep-interval', '20', '--retry-sleep', 'http:6.39', '--retry-sleep', 'fragment:6.39', '--retry-sleep', 'file_access:6.39', '--retry-sleep', 'extractor:6.39']
[debug] System config "/etc/yt-dlp.conf": []
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, pref UTF-8, out utf-8, error utf-8, screen utf-8
[debug] yt-dlp version [email protected] from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds [bbc809a11] (pip)
[debug] Compatibility options: prefer-vp9-sort, no-youtube-unavailable-videos
[debug] Python 3.13.5 (CPython x86_64 64bit) - Linux-6.12.107+deb13-amd64-x86_64-with-glibc2.41 (OpenSSL 3.5.7 9 Jun 2026, glibc 2.41)
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 7.1.5 (fdk,setts), ffprobe 7.1.5
[debug] Optional libraries: Cryptodome-3.23.0, brotli-1.2.0, certifi-2026.07.22, curl_cffi-0.16.3, mutagen-1.48.1, requests-2.34.2, secretstorage-3.5.0, sqlite3-3.46.1, urllib3-2.7.0, websockets-17.1, yt_dlp_ejs-0.8.0
[debug] JS runtimes: deno-2.9.6
[debug] Request Handlers: urllib, requests, websockets, curl_cffi
[debug] Plugin directories: /home/user/.myenv/lib/python3.13/site-packages/yt_dlp_plugins
[debug] Loaded 1745 extractors
[debug] Fetching release info: https://api.github.com/repos/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases/latest
Latest version: [email protected] from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds
yt-dlp is up to date ([email protected] from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds)