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Detailed installation instructions

This page is for those having trouble installing streamrip using the instructions on the main page

Finding your Command Line application

To begin, you'll need to get familiar with the command line. The command line is an application that allows you to send commands directly to the operating system without a Graphical User Interface, that is, any application that has elements beside text. To begin, find the Command Line application for your Operating System.

On macOS press ⌘-space to activate spotlight, and type in Terminal. Select the app with a black icon containing >_.

On Windows, click the windows key on your keyboard or taskbar, type "cmd" and open Command Prompt.

You should see an application that only contains text pop up. It may look intimidating at first, but it will get much easier as you get more familiar with it.

Installing Python and adding it to your PATH

For this step, you will need administrator access.

macOS

The easiest way to do this is through homebrew, which is a nifty package manager for macOS. To install homebrew, copy and paste the following into the command line

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

At some point during the installation, the administrator password will be requested. When you type it in, characters don't show up on the screen for security reasons.

After the process has been completed, check that brew is installed by running brew --version, which should display something like

Homebrew 3.2.6
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision c39f595a00; last commit 2021-08-09)
Homebrew/homebrew-cask (git revision f5c10cb908; last commit 2021-08-09)

Next, type

brew install python3

and it should be installed momentarily.

Verify that you have python3 installed by typing python3 --version, which should output something like Python 3.9.6. If all of this is working, continue to the next step.

For Windows, go to this page to find versions of python that you can download. Pick anything greater than or equal to version 3.8. Download the file, follow the prompts on the installer, and verify that you have python3 installed by typing

python --version

or

python3 --version

If you're getting an error message along the line of command not found, follow the instructions here to add the python executable to your Path variable.

Installing streamrip

The copy of python3 you have just installed should come packaged with pip3 (may be called pip), which is the Python package manager. This is what you will use to install streamrip, and other python programs. Run

pip3 install streamrip

At this point, you should be done. Verify the installation by typing

rip --version

This should output something like Rip (version 1.2). If you get a command not found message, you need to add the bin directory of your python installation to your PATH (Path for Windows). If you don't know which shell you are using, you can type in your terminal echo $SHELL, and then search from there how to easiest add to your PATH.

Hint: When you install streamrip, you should get a warning in your terminal that Python is not your PATH, along with the file location of the Python bin directory. It may be located in /Users/[your name]/Library/Python/3.9/bin for Mac users, for example.