YouTube videos are designed for streaming, not to stay on your PC, phone or tablet. But sometimes there are very good reasons why you might want to save videos for offline viewing. You may live in a place where the reliable broad band is as rare as flying saucers. You may have to transit through remote areas where there is no cellular coverage of any kind. Or maybe you want to save a clip for posterity because suspect is about to be removed.
Whatever the reason, there are many ways to download YouTube videos for free on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. In this post, we'll share our favorites and explore what is legal and what is not.
Note: Several tools download and convert YouTube third have recently closed due to requests from Google and copyright holders, but all we used here are still active.
Download YouTube videos with TubeMate for Android
TubeMate is one of the most popular to download videos from YouTube on Android smartphones tools, and for good reason: it is really easy to use and has all the features you need to download videos without annoying added. It is our favorite tool for mobile.
This application is not available on Google Play Store (Google is not interested in support for YouTube downloaders), so you must first allow your Android device install and run applications downloaded from elsewhere. Be careful when you activate this setting, you'll want to make sure that only downloads applications that you know are safe and reliable.
First open Settings and go to Security. Scroll down and next to where "Unknown sources" says, touch the button to activate this setting. Now, on your Android device, visit the website TubeMate YouTube Downloader and select one of the verified to download sites.
The free program for downloading videos TubeMate is not available on Google Play Store, so you must grant permission for downloaded applications from unknown sources, and then get the developer's site.
You may see a warning about downloading APK files, so you must click "OK" to allow it. Once TubeMate is downloaded, run the file and touch 'Install' and then click 'Open'.
TubeMate application looks like normal YouTube, with an extra frame around it. You can browse YouTube as normal until you find what you want to download, or touch the menu icon in the upper right corner, select 'URL' and paste the address of a video from your web browser.
When you see a TubeMate YouTube video, a download button glossy green above appears. Touch and see a progress bar that tells you that the application is "analyzing video information".
The next thing you see is a list of formats. You'll see video and audio formats and different quality and resolution options for each. If you have a high-end device, download versions highest quality possible, but remember that the higher the resolution, the larger the file size: If your phone or tablet does not have much free space, YouTube videos soon fill .
YouTube browsing normally within TubeMate until you find the video you want, then tap the green button to download it in a format and quality of your choice
Download YouTube videos to a Mac or iOS device
If you are addicted to Apple, the process of downloading YouTube clips is very different depending on the operating system of Apple where you are. If you're using iOS on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, then you need our first method, and if you are using OS X or MacOS on a Mac, you'll need the second.
In iOS, the trick is to install a smart little application called Documents . It is a file manager, but it is also able to download clips from YouTube. The process is a bit complicated but still live.
First, find the clip you want to download the YouTube app for iOS or Safari. Once you've found it, touch the Share icon and select Copy Link.
To download a YouTube video with iOS, copy the link of the YouTube app, then use savefrom.net and Documents to save on your device
Open Documents and look for the icon of the web browser, which is the small compass in the bottom right of the screen. Touch it and see savefrom.net . Paste YouTube clip address in the box large entry, choose the options you prefer quality and the file will begin downloading.
When finished, it will appear in the download section of documents, from which you can drag on Photos> Camera Roll to make it available from outside the Documents5 application.
On a Mac there are many options, but one of the simplest is MacX YouTube Downloader (also available for Windows ). All you need to do is add the link and choose quality options, and can download multiple clips at once.
Download YouTube videos to a PC with Windows
There are all kinds of PC applications with names like "Super Best Windows YouTube Downloader" yes of course, but many of them are disreputable: wait installing unwanted software, links misleading download, terms and terrible conditions and other nonsense.
If it does not bother you to download several clips at once, we really like Any Video Converter Free . As with other applications, you simply must provide the address of the clip, choose the quality you want and let it do its job. If your ambitions are a little higher, excellent aTube Catcher offers all kinds of tools to download videos with very good quality. It is also very fast.
If you prefer to use a web - based tool, we really like ClipConverter.cc .
Any Video Converter Free is an excellent application to download YouTube videos on Windows. It lets you save multiple clips at a time and optimize them for playback on any device
What formats I can download videos from YouTube?
Applications download video usually give you a choice of file formats. The most common are MP4, 3GP, AVI and MOV ; the choice of format and quality settings affect the type of device which can play video and audio quality and image of it.
If you do not worry too much quality video, 3GP file format is for you. It's perfect for mobile phones small screen and loaded on any device, but the files are small (and low quality), which is important in old mobile phones, as they generally do not have much storage space or no capacity memory expansion.
For other devices, MOV is the Apple video format and works on all Mac, AVI was developed by Microsoft and runs happily on PC, and MP4 is the video equivalent of MP3 and works virtually anything. For maximum compatibility, we suggest that you stay with the MP4 format.
What about video quality?
Apart from 3GP, you basically have four options to save videos on your PC, smartphone or tablet: 360p, 480p, 720p and 1080p (YouTube recently has included quality 4K). The higher the quality, the larger the file size, so the trick is to balance the quality and size. If you plan to view content-for example on the screen of a mobile or tablet will probably suit you save videos at 720p, especially if you do not have much extra space.
If the video you're downloading is music, no matter what you choose quality video, the soundtrack has the same bit rate Whether you choose a video of 480p or 1080p. This is because the audio and video transmissions YouTube are two separate things, so adjust the video quality does not change the quality of the soundtrack.
YouTube videos are designed for streaming, not to stay on your PC, phone or tablet. But sometimes there are very good reasons why you might want to save videos for offline viewing. You may live in a place where the reliable broad band is as rare as flying saucers. You may have to transit through remote areas where there is no cellular coverage of any kind. Or maybe you want to save a clip for posterity because suspect is about to be removed.
