How to Download M3U8 Using Wget and Curl

Wget and Curl are universal command-line tools for downloading files. For M3U8 streams, they're useful when you need to download the playlist file itself (to inspect it) or when FFmpeg isn't available. However, they can't merge TS segments — they download individual files only.

To download just the playlist (for inspection or analysis):

# With wget
wget "https://example.com/stream.m3u8"

# With curl
curl -O "https://example.com/stream.m3u8"

To download all TS segments listed in a playlist:

# Download the playlist first
wget "https://example.com/stream.m3u8"

# Extract segment URLs and download them
grep -v "^#" stream.m3u8 | grep -v "^$" | while read url; do
  wget "$url"
done

The most practical approach is to use curl to check stream availability, then FFmpeg for the actual download:

# Check if stream is accessible
curl -I "https://example.com/stream.m3u8"

# Download with FFmpeg
ffmpeg -i "https://example.com/stream.m3u8" -c copy output.mp4