18 Oct
YouTube, as we all know is the world’s largest video sharing platform. Either we talk about online learning, freelance writing, cooking, gaming, education, sports or whatever, there’ll be a long list of videos you can watch. But the question is, can you watch your favorite videos offline? The answer is obviously yes except for one thing, you need to download YouTube videos first on your computer, mac, or mobile device. Downloading YouTube videos helps a lot especially when you have a poor internet connection or if you are running out of your mobile data package.
You might have noticed that the cellular companies offer free Facebook and WhatsApp but they don’t offer free YouTube streaming, isn’t it? You can’t watch videos on YouTube for free unless you get free MBs or subscribe to an internet bundle. The reason behind it is bandwidth which depends on the video quality. HD videos consume a lot of bandwidth. For instance, if you are taking an online course on YouTube, you need to watch the same videos again and again. Therefore, it’s better to download them to avoid any inconvenience.
Let’s get started!
1. Is it Legal to Download YouTube Videos?
Before we proceed to see how can we download a YouTube video, let’s find out if it’s legal to download a YouTube video?
Every YouTube video comes with a license. In other words, every video is copyright protected. YouTube does not appreciate at all downloading it’s videos. As the company clarifies it in its terms:
You are not allowed to copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for any other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content.
You need to watch them online and since, Google runs ads on videos, that’s how the company and the content creators make money. Therefore, from YouTube, it’s a big “NO” to download any video.
In addition to that, it is a crime if you download a video from a popular channel and re-upload it through your own channel. YouTube will ban you or it will remove your channel for continuous copyright strikes. On the other hand, it is okay to download YouTube videos for personal use. Just like we have websites for stock images, there are royalty-free videos that are legal to download.
The following scenario can help you better understand for it’s legal use.
If you have a slower internet connection, buffering a video takes time and frustrates quite a lot. For instance, if you’re living in a remote area where there are frequent outages, or connectivity problems and you’ve got exams let’s suppose, it is okay to download the videos for your personal use and remove/delete them after you’re done.
Downloading a video and misusing it by any means is illegal and you’ll get a penalty.
2. Important Features to Check Before You Download YouTube Videos?
The download process is different for different devices. If you are on a desktop computer, a laptop, using a mac, an android device or an iPhone, there are alternative ways to download YouTube videos. There are multiple tools that are popular in the market for downloading videos.
Here are some of the features you must look before using a video download tool.
Malware Free
Be careful while downloading a YouTube video downloader or you might gonna end up with a malware. It should be 100% clean with no malware, spyware or any virus.
Softonic.com Rating
Softonic is the world’s best software downloading platform. Additionally, you can read the people’s reviews about any software. Therefore, before downloading a software, read what people say about it. Softonic’s ratings matter.
Standard Video Quality
The downloaded video file should have a standard video quality. Also, there should be options to choose our favorite resolution like low(360p), medium(720p), or HD(1080p).
Subtitles
YouTube supports a number of ways to subtitle your videos. You can add the subtitles later too but it’s ideal to download the video along with its subtitles.
Downloads Entire Playlist
Instead of downloading a single video, it should download the entire playlist or all videos from a channel. For instance, you can download an entire list of Oddbods videos for your kid.
SSL Encryption
Security can never be ignored. Our downloading method should support SSL encryption.
So, these are some important factors you need to keep in mind if you are going to download YouTube videos. I’ve listed here those tools and software programs that have all the above features.
3. How to Download YouTube Videos Using a Software?
There are a number of ways to download YouTube videos on your laptop or cell phone. I’ll mention all the shortcuts to do that. We can download a video with or without using a software. We have much better options and features if we download a video with the help of a YouTube downloader. Although there are many popular software programs to download YouTube videos on your computer but I like two of them.
i). 4K Downloader
Not only from YouTube, it can download best quality videos from the world’s popular platforms like Facebook, Vimeo, TikTok and Twitter. It’s best for downloading HD quality videos, subtitles, YouTube subscriptions and 3D videos. You can download full playlists and channels with 4K Downloader. There are 3 versions of the software available i.e.; Windows, macOS and Linux(Ubuntu). It is highly clean and neat software with 100% virus protection. 4K Downloader is best for downloading videos in HD 1080p, HD 720p, 4K, and 8K resolution.
After the download is complete, install it by clicking on the installer package. It’s installation is quick and simple; similar to the other programs we normally do on our laptop. Launch it after the installation is complete.
Now, copy the URL of the video that you’d like to download. Here, I am going to download the newly uploaded video by Ahrefs TV about speeding up your WordPress site.
Now paste the video link by clicking the “Paste Link” sign. After that, it’ll ask for the quality of the video, for instance, 8K ultra high, 4K, 2K, or 1080p high definition video. Choose your favorite quality and download the video.
You can try 4K Downloader and get a 14-day money-back guarantee. There are no monthly fees, Personal plan is available at $15 USD and you can get Pro at $45 USD to access unlimited features and video downloads.
ii). TubeMate
With over 100 million downloads, TubeMate is one of the best YouTube downloaders we have. It has a number of features and download options. You can even change the download speed, language and audio and video folders. It’s newly released version 3.3 lets you download high quality Facebook videos. For mobile users, if you are using an SD card to store videos, TubeMate can access the whole SD card. The videos are downloaded in the card and it’s perfectly safe to uninstall TubeMate anytime, your videos won’t be deleted.
4. How to Download YouTube Videos without any Software?
It is the simplest way to download any video from YouTube. You don’t need to install any video downloader. These are the 4 best shortcuts to download YouTube videos without any software:
- Using the “ss” trick
- SaveTube
- Y2Mate
- YouTubeMP4
You just need to copy the video link and paste it into the download bar.
How to download YouTube videos using ss?
Personally, I love the “ss” trick because it’s quick, neat and clean. Just write, “ss” before “youtube” in the link of the video. The following image shows it how:
After you hit enter, the page redirects to the download page of savefrom.net where you select the video quality. Press the download button to save the video to your computer.
Similarly, you can download by copying the video link and pasting it into other tools like Y2mate and SaveTube.
However, there are 2 major cons of using this way:
- You can’t download videos in bulk
- These sites are full of ads and some of them are disgusting
Wrap Up
We know that YouTube does appreciate downloading videos. But we can do it for personal and learning purposes only. Re-uploading any video is illegal and it will be removed after a strike. Therefore, if you are looking for downloading bulk videos with excellent quality, 4K Downloader is the best choice we have. It’s fast, affordable and virus-free software that helps to download YouTube videos with ease.
Give 4K Downloader a try and let me know how did you find it?
Hi, I am Faisal Rehman.
