Imagine you’re about to go on a long road trip and know that you’ll be in areas with limited or no Internet connection. Having a collection of your favorite YouTube videos saved for offline viewing can provide entertainment or educational content as needed during those long stretches of driving. Or, perhaps you are a content creator who wants to save your reaction videos or other remixed content for use outside of YouTube.
The easiest way to download a YouTube video is with the free service provided by YouTube. After entering the video URL into the text box, the service automatically decodes the clip and provides you with a variety of different format and quality options to choose from. Select the one that best suits your needs and the file is then saved to a download location on your computer.
In addition to the official YouTube app, there are other third-party apps that let you download videos for offline playback. A few popular examples include SaveFrom, YTD, and 4K Video Downloader. If you’re on a Mac, there’s a command line utility called youtube-dl that can be used to download YouTube videos. To run it, open a terminal (command prompt on Windows, Terminal on Linux, or a similar command-line emulator). Then, enter the following command: youtube-dl “URL” to download the desired video.
Please keep in mind that many YouTube videos are copyrighted, and it’s illegal to download or reuse them without the content creator’s express permission. In fact, you could be sued by the content creator if you use their content in ways that violate copyright. youtube video download