This project has been sunset as Crunchyroll moved to a DRM-only system. See #362.

Well there is one endpoint which still has DRM-free streams, I guess I still have a bit time until (finally) everything is DRM-only.

crunchy-cli

👇 A Command-line downloader for Crunchyroll.

Usage 🖥️ • Disclaimer 📜 • License ⚖

We are in no way affiliated with, maintained, authorized, sponsored, or officially associated with Crunchyroll LLC or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The official Crunchyroll website can be found at www.crunchyroll.com.

✨ Features

• Download single videos and entire series from Crunchyroll.
• Archive episodes or seasons in an .mkv file with multiple subtitles and audios.
• Specify a range of episodes to download from an anime.
• Search through the Crunchyroll collection and return metadata (title, duration, direct stream link, ...) of all media types.

💾 Get the executable

📥 Download the latest binaries

Check out the releases tab and get the binary from the latest (pre-)release.

📦 Get it via a package manager

• AUR

  If you're using Arch or an Arch based Linux distribution you are able to install our AUR package. You need an AUR helper like yay to install it.

  # this package builds crunchy-cli manually (recommended)
  $ yay -S crunchy-cli
  # this package installs the latest pre-compiled release binary
  $ yay -S crunchy-cli-bin

• Scoop

  For Windows users, we support the scoop command-line installer.

  $ scoop bucket add extras
  $ scoop install extras/crunchy-cli

• Homebrew

  For macOS/linux users, we support the brew command-line installer. Packages are compiled by the homebrew project, and will also install the openssl@3 and ffmpeg dependencies.

  $ brew install crunchy-cli

  Supported archs: x86_64_linux, arm64_monterey, sonoma, ventura

• Nix

  This requires nix and you'll probably need --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes", depending on your configurations.

  $ nix <run|shell|develop> github:crunchy-labs/crunchy-cli

🛠 Build it yourself

Since we do not support every platform and architecture you may have to build the project yourself. This requires git and Cargo.

$ git clone https://github.com/crunchy-labs/crunchy-cli
$ cd crunchy-cli
# either just build it (will be available in ./target/release/crunchy-cli)...
$ cargo build --release
# ... or install it globally
$ cargo install --force --path .

🖥️ Usage

All shown commands are examples 🧑🏼‍🍳

Global Flags

crunchy-cli requires you to log in. Though you can use a non-premium account, you will not have access to premium content without a subscription. You can authenticate with your credentials (email:password) or by using a refresh token.

• Credentials

  $ crunchy-cli --credentials "email:password" <command>

• Stay Anonymous

  Login without an account (you won't be able to access premium content):

  $ crunchy-cli --anonymous <command>

Global settings

You can set specific settings which will be

• Verbose output

  If you want to include debug information in the output, use the -v / --verbose flag to show it.

  $ crunchy-cli -v <command>

  This flag can't be used in combination with -q / --quiet.

• Quiet output

  If you want to hide all output, use the -q / --quiet flag to do so. This is especially useful if you want to pipe the output video to an external program (like a video player).

  $ crunchy-cli -q <command>

  This flag can't be used in combination with -v / --verbose.

• Language

  By default, the resulting metadata like title or description are shown in your system language (if Crunchyroll supports it, else in English). If you want to show the results in another language, use the --lang flag to set it.

  $ crunchy-cli --lang de-DE <command>

• Experimental fixes

  Crunchyroll constantly changes and breaks its services or just delivers incorrect answers. The --experimental-fixes flag tries to fix some of those issues. As the experimental in --experimental-fixes states, these fixes may or may not break other functionality.

  $ crunchy-cli --experimental-fixes <command>

  For an overview which parts this flag affects, see the documentation of the underlying Crunchyroll library, all functions beginning with stabilization_ are applied.

• Proxy

  The --proxy flag supports https and socks5 proxies to route all your traffic through. This may be helpful to bypass the geo-restrictions Crunchyroll has on certain series. You are also able to set in which part of the cli a proxy should be used. Instead of a normal url you can also use: <url>: (only proxies api requests), :<url> (only proxies download traffic), <url>:<url> (proxies api requests through the first url and download traffic through the second url).

  $ crunchy-cli --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:8080 <command>

  Make sure that proxy can either forward TLS requests, which is needed to bypass the (cloudflare) bot protection, or that it is configured so that the proxy can bypass the protection itself.

• User Agent

  There might be cases where a custom user agent is necessary, e.g. to bypass the cloudflare bot protection (#104). In such cases, the --user-agent flag can be used to set a custom user agent.

  $ crunchy-cli --user-agent "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0)" <command>

  Default is the user agent, defined in the underlying library.

• Speed limit

  If you want to limit how fast requests/downloads should be, you can use the --speed-limit flag. Allowed units are B (bytes), KB (kilobytes) and MB (megabytes).

  $ crunchy-cli --speed-limit 10MB

Login

The login command can store your session, so you don't have to authenticate every time you execute a command.

# save the refresh token which gets generated when login with credentials.
# your email and password won't be stored at any time on disk
$ crunchy-cli login --credentials "email:password"

With the session stored, you do not need to pass --credentials / --anonymous anymore when you want to execute a command.

Download

The download command lets you download episodes with a specific audio language and optional subtitles.

Supported urls

• Single episode (with episode filtering)

  $ crunchy-cli download https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• Series (with episode filtering)

  $ crunchy-cli download https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

Options

• Audio language

  Set the audio language with the -a / --audio flag. This only works if the url points to a series since episode urls are language specific.

  $ crunchy-cli download -a de-DE https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is your system locale. If not supported by Crunchyroll, en-US (American English) is the default.

• Subtitle language

  Besides the audio, you can specify the subtitle language by using the -s / --subtitle flag. In formats that support it (.mp4, .mov and .mkv ), subtitles are stored as soft-subs. All other formats are hardsubbed: the subtitles will be burned into the video track (cf. hardsub) and thus can not be turned off.

  $ crunchy-cli download -s de-DE https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is none.

• Output template

  Define an output template by using the -o / --output flag.

  $ crunchy-cli download -o "ditf.mp4" https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

  Default is {title}.mp4. See the Template Options section below for more options.

• Output template for special episodes

  Define an output template which only gets used when the episode is a special (episode number is 0 or has non-zero decimal places) by using the --output-special flag.

  $ crunchy-cli download --output-specials "Special EP - {title}" https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GY8D975JY/veldoras-journal

  Default is the template, set by the -o / --output flag. See the Template Options section below for more options.

• Universal output

  The output template options can be forced to get sanitized via the --universal-output flag to be valid across all supported operating systems (Windows has a lot of characters which aren't allowed in filenames...).

  $ crunchy-cli download --universal-output -o https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/G7PU4XD48/tales-veldoras-journal-2

• Resolution

  The resolution for videos can be set via the -r / --resolution flag.

  $ crunchy-cli download -r worst https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

  Default is best.

• Language tagging

  You can force the usage of a specific language tagging in the output file with the --language-tagging flag. This might be useful as some video players doesn't recognize the language tagging Crunchyroll uses internally.

  $ crunchy-cli download --language-tagging ietf https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• FFmpeg Preset

  You can specify specific built-in presets with the --ffmpeg-preset flag to convert videos to a specific coding while downloading. Multiple predefined presets how videos should be encoded (h264, h265, av1, ...) are available, you can see them with crunchy-cli download --help. If you need more specific ffmpeg customizations you could either convert the output file manually or use ffmpeg output arguments as value for this flag.

  $ crunchy-cli download --ffmpeg-preset av1-lossless https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• FFmpeg threads

  If you want to manually set how many threads FFmpeg should use, you can use the --ffmpeg-threads flag. This does not work with every codec/preset and is skipped entirely when specifying custom ffmpeg output arguments instead of a preset for --ffmpeg-preset.

  $ crunchy-cli download --ffmpeg-threads 4 https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• Skip existing

  If you re-download a series but want to skip episodes you've already downloaded, the --skip-existing flag skips the already existing/downloaded files.

  $ crunchy-cli download --skip-existing https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

• Skip specials

  If you doesn't want to download special episodes, use the --skip-specials flag to skip the download of them.

  $ crunchy-cli download --skip-specials https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GYZJ43JMR/that-time-i-got-reincarnated-as-a-slime[S2]

• Include chapters

  Crunchyroll sometimes provide information about skippable events like the intro or credits. These information can be stored as chapters in the resulting video file via the --include-chapters flag.

  $ crunchy-cli download --include-chapters https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/G0DUND0K2/the-journeys-end

• Yes

  Sometimes different seasons have the same season number (e.g. Sword Art Online Alicization and Alicization War of Underworld are both marked as season 3), in such cases an interactive prompt is shown which needs user further user input to decide which season to download. The --yes flag suppresses this interactive prompt and just downloads all seasons.

  $ crunchy-cli download --yes https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GR49G9VP6/sword-art-online

  If you've passed the -q / --quiet global flag, this flag is automatically set.

• Force hardsub

  If you want to burn-in the subtitles, even if the output format/container supports soft-subs (e.g. .mp4), use the --force-hardsub flag to do so.

  $ crunchy-cli download --force-hardsub -s en-US https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• Threads

  To increase the download speed, video segments are downloaded simultaneously by creating multiple threads. If you want to manually specify how many threads to use when downloading, do this with the -t / --threads flag.

  $ crunchy-cli download -t 1 https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  The default thread count is the count of cpu threads your pc has.

Archive

The archive command lets you download episodes with multiple audios and subtitles and merges it into a .mkv file.

Supported urls

• Single episode (with episode filtering)

  $ crunchy-cli archive https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• Series (with episode filtering)

  $ crunchy-cli archive https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

Options

• Audio languages

  Set the audio language with the -a / --audio flag. Can be used multiple times.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -a ja-JP -a de-DE https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is your system locale (if not supported by Crunchyroll, en-US (American English) and ja-JP (Japanese) are used).

• Subtitle languages

  Besides the audio, you can specify the subtitle language by using the -s / --subtitle flag.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -s de-DE https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is all subtitles.

• Output template

  Define an output template by using the -o / --output flag. crunchy-cli exclusively uses the .mkv container format, because of its ability to store multiple audio, video and subtitle tracks at once.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -o "{title}.mkv" https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is {title}.mkv. See the Template Options section below for more options.

• Output template for special episodes

  Define an output template which only gets used when the episode is a special (episode number is 0 or has non-zero decimal places) by using the --output-special flag. crunchy-cli exclusively uses the .mkv container format, because of its ability to store multiple audio, video and subtitle tracks at once.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --output-specials "Special EP - {title}" https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GY8D975JY/veldoras-journal

  Default is the template, set by the -o / --output flag. See the Template Options section below for more options.

• Universal output

  The output template options can be forced to get sanitized via the --universal-output flag to be valid across all supported operating systems (Windows has a lot of characters which aren't allowed in filenames...).

  $ crunchy-cli archive --universal-output -o https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/G7PU4XD48/tales-veldoras-journal-2

• Resolution

  The resolution for videos can be set via the -r / --resolution flag.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -r worst https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is best.

• Merge behavior

  Due to censorship or additional intros, some episodes have multiple lengths for different languages. In the best case, when multiple audio & subtitle tracks are used, there is only one video track and all other languages can be stored as audio-only. But, as said, this is not always the case. With the -m / --merge flag you can define the behaviour when an episodes' video tracks differ in length. Valid options are audio - store one video and all other languages as audio only; video - store the video + audio for every language; auto - detect if videos differ in length: if so, behave like video - otherwise like audio; sync - detect if videos differ in length: if so, it tries to find the offset of matching audio parts and removes the offset from the beginning, otherwise it behaves like audio. Subtitles will always match the primary audio and video.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -m audio https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is auto.

• Merge time tolerance

  Sometimes two video tracks are downloaded with --merge set to auto even if they only differ some milliseconds in length which shouldn't be noticeable to the viewer. To prevent this, you can specify a range in milliseconds with the --merge-time-tolerance flag that only downloads one video if the length difference is in the given range.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -m auto --merge-time-tolerance 100 https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default are 200 milliseconds.

• Merge sync tolerance

  Sometimes two video tracks are downloaded with --merge set to sync because the audio fingerprinting fails to identify matching audio parts (e.g. opening). To prevent this, you can use the --merge-sync-tolerance flag to specify the difference by which two fingerprints are considered equal.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -m sync --merge-sync-tolerance 3 https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

  Default is 6.

• Merge sync precision

  If you use --merge set to sync and the syncing seems to be not accurate enough or takes to long, you can use the --sync-precision flag to specify the amount of offset determination runs from which the final offset is calculated.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -m sync --merge-sync-precision 3 https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

  Default is 4.

• Language tagging

  You can force the usage of a specific language tagging in the output file with the --language-tagging flag. This might be useful as some video players doesn't recognize the language tagging Crunchyroll uses internally.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --language-tagging ietf https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

• FFmpeg Preset

  You can specify specific built-in presets with the --ffmpeg-preset flag to convert videos to a specific coding while downloading. Multiple predefined presets how videos should be encoded (h264, h265, av1, ...) are available, you can see them with crunchy-cli archive --help. If you need more specific ffmpeg customizations you could either convert the output file manually or use ffmpeg output arguments as value for this flag.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --ffmpeg-preset av1-lossless https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• FFmpeg threads

  If you want to manually set how many threads FFmpeg should use, you can use the --ffmpeg-threads flag. This does not work with every codec/preset and is skipped entirely when specifying custom ffmpeg output arguments instead of a preset for --ffmpeg-preset.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --ffmpeg-threads 4 https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• Default subtitle

  --default-subtitle Set which subtitle language is to be flagged as default and forced.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --default-subtitle en-US https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is none.

• Include fonts

  You can include the fonts required by subtitles directly into the output file with the --include-fonts flag. This will use the embedded font for subtitles instead of the system font when playing the video in a video player which supports it.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --include-fonts https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

• Include chapters

  Crunchyroll sometimes provide information about skippable events like the intro or credits. These information can be stored as chapters in the resulting video file via the --include-chapters flag. This flag only works if --merge is set to audio because chapters cannot be mapped to a specific video steam.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --include-chapters https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/G0DUND0K2/the-journeys-end

• Skip existing

  If you re-download a series but want to skip episodes you've already downloaded, the --skip-existing flag skips the already existing/downloaded files.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --skip-existing https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

• Skip existing method

  By default, already existing files are determined by their name and the download of the corresponding episode is skipped. But sometimes Crunchyroll adds dubs or subs to an already existing episode and these changes aren't recognized and --skip-existing just skips it. This behavior can be changed by the --skip-existing-method flag. Valid options are audio and subtitle (if the file already exists but the audio/subtitle are less from what should be downloaded, the episode gets downloaded and the file overwritten).

  $ crunchy-cli archive --skip-existing-method audio --skip-existing-method video https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

• Skip specials

  If you doesn't want to download special episodes, use the --skip-specials flag to skip the download of them.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --skip-specials https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GYZJ43JMR/that-time-i-got-reincarnated-as-a-slime[S2]

• Yes

  Sometimes different seasons have the same season number (e.g. Sword Art Online Alicization and Alicization War of Underworld are both marked as season 3), in such cases an interactive prompt is shown which needs user further user input to decide which season to download. The --yes flag suppresses this interactive prompt and just downloads all seasons.

  $ crunchy-cli archive --yes https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GR49G9VP6/sword-art-online

  If you've passed the -q / --quiet global flag, this flag is automatically set.

• Threads

  To increase the download speed, video segments are downloaded simultaneously by creating multiple threads. If you want to manually specify how many threads to use when downloading, do this with the -t / --threads flag.

  $ crunchy-cli archive -t 1 https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  The default thread count is the count of cpu threads your pc has.

Search

The search command is a powerful tool to query the Crunchyroll library. It behaves like the regular search on the website but is able to further process the results and return everything it can find, from the series title down to the raw stream url. Using this command with the --anonymous flag or a non-premium account may return incomplete results.

Supported urls/input

• Single episode (with episode filtering)

  $ crunchy-cli search https://www.crunchyroll.com/watch/GRDQPM1ZY/alone-and-lonesome

• Series (with episode filtering)

  $ crunchy-cli search https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

• Search input

  $ crunchy-cli search "darling in the franxx"

Options

• Audio

  Set the audio language to search via the --audio flag. Can be used multiple times.

  $ crunchy-cli search --audio en-US https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is your system locale.

• Result limit

  If your input is a search term instead of an url, you have multiple options to control which results to process. The --search-top-results-limit flag sets the limit of top search results to process. --search-series-limit sets the limit of only series, --search-movie-listing-limit of only movie listings, --search-episode-limit of only episodes and --search-music-limit of only concerts and music videos.

  $ crunchy-cli search --search-top-results-limit 10 "darling in the franxx"
  # only return series which have 'darling' in it. do not return top results which might also be non-series items
  $ crunchy-cli search --search-top-results-limit 0 --search-series-limit 10 "darling"
  # this returns 2 top results, 3 movie listings, 5 episodes and 1 music item as result
  $ crunchy-cli search --search-top-results-limit 2 --search-movie-listing-limit 3 --search-episode-limit 5 --search-music-limit 1 "test"

  Default is 5 for --search-top-results-limit, 0 for all others.

• Output template

  The search command is designed to show only the specific information you want. This is done with the -o/--output flag. You can specify keywords in a specific pattern, and they will get replaced in the output text. The required pattern for this begins with {{, then the keyword, and closes with }} (e.g. {{episode.title}}). For example, if you want to get the title of an episode, you can use Title: {{episode.title}} and {{episode.title}} will be replaced with the episode title. You can see all supported keywords with crunchy-cli search --help.

  $ crunchy-cli search -o "{{series.title}}" https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx

  Default is S{{season.number}}E{{episode.number}} - {{episode.title}}.

---

Output Template Options

You can use various template options to change how the filename is processed. The following tags are available:

• {title} → Title of the video
• {series_name} → Name of the series
• {season_name} → Name of the season
• {audio} → Audio language of the video
• {width} → Width of the video
• {height} → Height of the video
• {season_number} → Number of the season
• {episode_number} → Number of the episode
• {relative_episode_number} → Number of the episode relative to its season
• {sequence_number} → Like {episode_number} but without possible non-number characters
• {relative_sequence_number} → Like {relative_episode_number} but with support for episode 0's and .5's
• {release_year} → Release year of the video
• {release_month} → Release month of the video
• {release_day} → Release day of the video
• {series_id} → ID of the series
• {season_id} → ID of the season
• {episode_id} → ID of the episode

Example:

$ crunchy-cli archive -o "[S{season_number}E{episode_number}] {title}.mkv" https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G8DHV7W21/dragon-ball
# Output file: '[S01E01] Secret of the Dragon Ball.mkv'

Episode filtering

Filters patterns can be used to download a specific range of episodes from a single series.

A filter pattern may consist of either a season, an episode, or a combination of the two. When used in combination, seasons S must be defined before episodes E.

There are many possible patterns, for example:

• ...[E5] - Download the fifth episode.
• ...[S1] - Download the whole first season.
• ...[-S2] - Download the first two seasons.
• ...[S3E4-] - Download everything from season three, episode four, onwards.
• ...[S1E4-S3] - Download season one, starting at episode four, then download season two and three.
• ...[S3,S5] - Download season three and five.
• ...[S1-S3,S4E2-S4E6] - Download season one to three, then episodes two to six from season four.

In practice, it would look like this:

https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY8VEQ95Y/darling-in-the-franxx[E1-E5]

📜 Disclaimer

This tool is meant for private use only. You need a Crunchyroll Premium subscription to access premium content.

You are entirely responsible for what happens when you use crunchy-cli.

⚖ License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for more details.