Any free software to download youtube video?

eobox91103

@amelia I use Viddly (https://viddly.net/eng13) which seems to work very well and has an intuitive interface.

I think the basic version free, and a more fully-featured version is 20 USD. I have the basic version and I'm quite happy with it.

I run this on a Windows 10 machine. It will start automatically if you copy a YouTube URL into your clipboard, which can be annoying if all I want to do is paste a URL into an email. By going to task manager and turning Viddly off at startup, you can avoid this, but then you'll need to start Viddly manually if you want to use it. which can be done easily by putting a shortcut on your desktop or searching for Viddly in the Windows search box at the lower left of your primary window.

Note that the current version of Viddly requires Windows 10 (or greater), 64 bit. If you have a Mac or an older Windows machine, there are probably solutions that other users can suggest.

eusanderse

@amelia I've been using Stacher for a while, which I discovered from browsing Reddit when I was also looking. It's free and customizable (you can select which audio format, which video format in which available resolution, etc). I think it works with other video websites too, though I had only used it for youtube.

amelia

@eobox91103 Its not good enough. I tried but basic free software only allow me to download 480p or below.

eobox91103

@amelia said:

Its not good enough.

In that case, I suggest you invest in the paid version. It's a permanent license, not something you have to renew every year.

worf

@amelia
If you're on a Desktop PC running Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc, and you're comfortable with using command prompts, a really powerful YouTube downloader is "yt-dlp"

It's open-source, updated regularly to adapt to the roadblocks YT develops, can list all files & resolutions available for download, but normally it DLs the best video/audio available.

I use it to DL videos, but also to DL audio-only formats such as mp3, mp4, etc... It can batch DL playlists if you're savvy enough, but there are GUI's as well for more of a traditional experience...

It can be found here...

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation

Regards...

sswzqr

if you use mac or linux: yt-dlp

you need to:

have Brew installed. Brew is the package manager.
- do it via terminal [cmd+space > terminal].

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

install yt-dlp.
- also in terminal, type:

brew install yt-dlp

that's it.

youtube will always require cookies. so, usually the command will be:

yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser [safari/chrome/firefox/etc] http://youtube.com/video

works for (almost) every page/site with video. x/twitter, reddit, etc.

note: to make life easier, i save the config file (~/.config/yt-dlp/config) with the following content:

-f bestvideo+bestaudio/best
--audio-quality 0
--concurrent-fragments 8
--retries 10
--fragment-retries 10
--file-access-retries 5
--cookies-from-browser safari
--restrict-filenames

to do this via terminal:

mkdir -p ~/.config/yt-dlp 
cat > ~/.config/yt-dlp/config <<'EOF'
-f bestvideo+bestaudio/best
--audio-quality 0
--concurrent-fragments 8
--retries 10
--fragment-retries 10
--file-access-retries 5
--cookies-from-browser safari
--restrict-filenames
EOF

on Windows, or if you need extra help, any AI chat can help youuu.

Kevin4fm

@amelia I use Video Download Helper on Firefox to download from YouTube constantly. (I'm now on Linux, but I'm fairly sure I used it when on Windows too.)

I download multiple videos daily. Every now and then it does stop working, but usually a simple browser restart fixes it. I think there have been a couple of times I had to reboot, and there was once a period of a day or two when it stopped, so I had to save stuff to my Watch List to grab wn it started working again.

MrMazda

If you use Firefox, I find Video Download Helper works GREAT. Always has for me.

OKCancel

I have used JDownloader 2. It's an app/program (not an extension). Some of the features I like are -
Automatic Clipboard parsing, which adds to the "Link Grabber" tab and then you can trigger downloads (one or more, based on selection)
Also works with Playlist.
Default variant can be set for each site (e.g. I generally go for 480p, mp4, 128kbps audio, 30 fps etc.)
supports member credentials. It can be saved in settings, so don't need to enter again and again.

What I don't like (but not too much that I stop using ) -
some websites when copied to clipboard and there are hundreds of links on the page (includes txt, image, gifs, ad snippets etc.) they all get copied

doobiedeluxe

I use yt-dlp for a long time and miss nothing. With all the possible combinations on the -f (or in .config/) you can exactly define what you want. Î run it with deno as JS-Interpreter.

On Windows i run it into a WSL Ubuntu. In the past i used Cygwin for that.

Important is to have ffmpeg working to merge video+audio or convert something.

Stacher is not bad, i tested it but rarely used it. It comes with all you need. I have more fun hammer it into a shell

With your own youtube API key you can automize downloading of unseen videos of favourite channels. Or like me, i got an overview of new Videos from a list of channels linked in my Telegram bot, so i can directly access. Search and Sort in Channels is a pain in the youtube android tv app. Just playd around a bit.

The youtube-dl fork (yt-dlp) is very well maintained and up to date. Specially when a website change something, the yt-dlp modules for it will be updated fast.

I can't suggest any other software i haven't used. If you are not so into command line stuff the best is to try Stacher. All other GUI's i know are for linux.

Have fun. Tell us if you like it.

Doobie.