Just install it via pip and then symlink its binary file to /usr/bin.
t. Am running a live stream 24/7 on my orange pi zero 3 (via ffplay/yt-dlp) since forever.
“Why not simply add $HOME/.local/bin to $PATH?”
Because it breaks things. While symlinking it does not.
“Why?”
No idea, honestly.
Also, you can take a step further and make a tmpfs partition @ $HOME/.local and then add the following line to your .bash_profile file: TMPDIR=$HOME/.local pip install --break-system-packages -I --no-input yt-dlp &&.