There are billions of hours of video on YouTube. Literally. And that's hardly the most astounding statistic about the site, which has been the go-to destination for uploading and watching video since 2005. That said, sometimes, you really want or need to have one of those videos on your own computer or phone. But when the topic of downloading YouTube videos comes up, there's a side subject that must be broached: Is it legal?
On the copyright front, as long as you're downloading a video for your own personal offline use, you're probably okay. It's more black and white when you consider Google's terms of service for YouTube, which reads: "You are not allowed to...access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders."
Watching YouTube videos offline through unofficial channels takes money from Google and video creators. There's a reason YouTube runs ads: people make a living this way.
So, obviously, stealing video from YouTube is a big no-no. If you want to share a video, YouTube and most other video sites make it easy, from embedding to emailing to sharing via social networks. You simply do not need to download a video most of the time.
However, you have your reasons. If you must download a YouTube video—absolutely need to, just for yourself, and not for dissemination, and not to be a total douche-nozzle—here's how.
Note: This story is updated frequently as the tools involved change regularly. Some of those changes are not always pleasant, such as software so full of "extras" it gets flagged as malware by antivirus tools. The same goes for the helper websites—a change in a site's ad network can also create issues with malware.
To prevent this from becoming a laundry list of programs and sites that can download YouTube videos, we came up with a few rules for inclusion. Services must:
- Support 4K downloads even in the free version.
- Work with top three video sites: YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo.
- Download entire playlists or channels in a batch (on YouTube), at least with a paid version.
- Output to MP3 for audio (or offer companion software that does so).
- Have an interface that doesn't suck.
- Not collect your personal data beyond your email address.
- Not contain malware. If there's even a whiff of it in the air, even a PUP, it's out.
The programs, services, and sites in this story are all free of spam/virus/problems as of this writing, but caveat emptor. Big time. Especially if you're not really emptor-ing.
Desktop Software
Third-party software is where you will get the best control over downloading online videos. Typically, you paste the URL for the YouTube video you want into the program, and it downloads the highest quality version it can find. For videos in 1080p High Definition (HD) format, that's usually an MP4 file. For anything higher in quality—4K and even 8K videos—the file format is typically MKV.
In the past, YouTube videos were Flash-based, so your download was an FLV file, but those tend to be harder to play back. MP4, short for MPEG-4 Part 14 multimedia format, plays everywhere
Note that the MKV file, also called a Matroska, is a container—the file could contain video utilizing any number of codecs inside. The fool-proof way to play them all is to use the VLC Media Player for Windows, which plays everything. (Read more about it below.) As for the downloaders, here are the best options.
VLC Media Player
Free; Windows, macOS, Linux
I've mentioned the VLC Media Player above because it's a fantastic tool for Windows users that plays back just about any media ever created. It turns out, it also has the ability to download YouTube videos, albeit in a convoluted way. (If you run into any problems with it, you may need to do a full re-install of VLC and clear your cache to make this work.)
Copy a URL from a YouTube video, then open up VLC. From the Media menu select Open Network Stream(Ctrl+N) and paste in the URL. Click Play. When the video is playing, go to Tools > Codec Information. There is a box at the bottom called "Source"—copy the URL you find in that box.
Go back to your browser and paste the URL—it's a temporary web address and will expire eventually—in the address bar and start playing the video. When you're viewing the video in the browser, you'll see an option to download the file to keep locally.
However, it appears that VLC is only going to save your file as 1080p and not any higher, even if the original YouTube stream was available in 1440p or 2160p (aka 4K). It also won't convert video to other formats. To get those options, you need the desktop software below.
4K Video Downloader
Free or $15 for lifetime license on 3 computers; Windows, macOS, Ubuntu Linux
Multi-lingual 4K Video Downloader (4KVD) is frequently updated and features clear download links on the program's website; no ad traps here. The software does what it advertises in a simple interface: grabs videos up to 8K in quality and downloads to plenty of formats. Just copy a YouTube URL and click the Paste Link button to get started. 4KVD will even grab subtitles, entire playlists, and all the videos in a channel to which you subscribe. The sites supported are limited to the big names like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and a few others, but covers most of what you need. It does display a large banner advertisement at the bottom to keep the lights on.
In tests, I had to make a switch from MP4 to MKV format to get my test video to download in 4K. 4KVD snagged the 3-minute duration, 229.7 Megabyte (MB) file for the movie trailer in about 1 minute and 20 seconds. 4KVD defaults back to 1080p HD, so I made the same switch when downloading an Ultra High Definition (8K) playlist. If you enable the Smart Mode and its pre-sets, 4K Video Downloader can perform one-click downloads to your favorite format. If you want to download more than 25 videos at a time or subscribe to YouTube channels to instantly download the latest, that requires the paid version. Playback of the resulting MKV files via VLC Media Player was flawless.
The program itself has an option to extract audio to MP3 format, so you don't even need the 4K YouTube to MP3 companion software.
WinX YouTube Downloader
Digiarty's multi-lingual WinXclaims to allow downloads from 300+ sites with user-generated content—including adult sites. Perhaps the biggest selling point of all is the claim that "There is no malware, adware, spyware or virus. 100% clean." It has a clean interface, but there are ads for WinX's premium service during install.
Copy a YouTube URL (even for a playlist) and launch the WinX software. The "analyzer" checks all the options. This tool tried to default to the 1,920-by-1,080 version in MP4; I picked the 4K version (3,840 by 2,160 pixels) in WebM format, a subset of the MKV format—you can rename a .WEBM file to a .MKV and it'll work fine. In settings there are options to default to WebM at the highest resolution. You can set up a number of videos to back up before you even click the download button. The 4K 226.9MB file took 2 minutes and 19 seconds to download.
There are no options for downloading closed captions. That's another strike. But WinX makes up for it by supporting so many download sites and having a price equal to nothing.
5KPlayer
Free; Windows and macOS
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