5 Of The Best Ways to Download YouTube Videos (Works With Mac, Windows, Iphone, 2023)

Have you ever wanted to listen to free music or watch youtube videos without an internet connection?

What about listening to a video without having the app open or while out on a walk?

Follow the below steps to easily download youtube videos irrespective of the physical device you are using.

What Are The Best Ways To Download YouTube Videos?

Downloading youtube videos to your device is generally a simple process.

Of course, these tools can be built upon to satisfy whatever workflow you choose.

1. Use Wave's Free Youtube To Mp4 Converter

Wave is a free tool that is extremely easy to use.

The usage steps are as follows.

1. Copy The YouTube Url

First, open the video that you want to download on YouTube and copy its URL.

2. Paste The YouTube Url Into Wave

Paste the YouTube URL into the box on the top of this page and click the “Download MP4” button. If you want to save the video to your Wave.video account and customize, host, or stream it, click on the “Save and edit video” button.

3. Download The Video

Now, the video will be automatically converted to MP4 format and saved to your device for you to use. Enjoy!

What HD Video Resolutions Are Supported?

Luckily for us, you can convert YouTube to MP4 in 1080p, 720p, 480p, or any other video resolution.

2. Use X2Mate's Youtube Downloader

X2Mate's Youtube Downloader is a tool to download MP4, MP3, 3GP videos from Youtube for free. It allows downloading and saving Youtube videos to mobile phones & computers online without installing software. It also supports all devices such as: computer, tablet, mobile phone (iPhone, Android).

As stated, they differentiate themselves by targetting a large range of file formats in an attempt to appease all devices and network bandwidth plans.

Usage is also pretty simple

Step 1:

Open the Youtube app on your phone or visit the Youtube.com website.

Step 2:

Find and open the video you want to download and click the Share button then continue pressing the Copy link button.

Step 3:

Go to X2Mate.com website, paste the copied Youtube link in the search box and press the Download button.

Step 4:

Select the MP4 or MP3 format you want and then click the Download button.

Optional Tip:

💡💡 Tip: Add "az" before "youtube.com" for fastest Youtube video download.

The tip they provide is nice since all of the video information can easily be passed to the tool without needing to work through steps 1-4. This can easily be used to automate this workflow in the future.

3. Use YouTube Premium For Built In Video Download Support

If YouTube Premium is available in your location, you can download and watch videos on your mobile device.

You can also download videos from your computer using Chrome, Edge, Firefox & Opera browsers.

YouTube is also hoping to bring this feature to other browsers in the future.

• Benefits: Native app support across all devices straight from the source. We can expect a highly available and robust solution that is fully maintained by the developers of the platform. This should also provide the highest performance and quality guarantees with the added ease of use built directly into the app.

• How Do I Get Started: Ensure you have YouTube Premium, are logged in, and follow these steps.

4. Use A Browser Extension

As a former Google employee, my browser of choice is Google Chrome (of course).

Chrome extensions can be found in the webstore.

In my case, I'm a fan of Video Downloader Professional.

The tool boasts a wide range of options for an extension:

• download and save videos playing on a website to hard disk
• select between different resolutions if the site supports it ( e.g. at Vimeo)
• play found MP4 videos via Google Chromecast on your TV or play it on your Google Home.
• add videos easily to your video list. There you have quick access to the videos and you can play them at any time, without having to return to the orignial web page. You also have the option to play the videos in any size (currently available at selected video providers like Youtube and Vimeo)

5. Create Your Own Tool

You know me, I hate relying on 3rd party tools that one day might vanish.

If you feel the same, lets talk about some of the technologies that you can use today to get started with your own solution to download youtube videos without relying on any 3rd party services.

Learn Or Use A Programming Language

I'll show you an example that you can copy/paste with Python.

Learning about the internals of HTTP, GET requests, and video data streaming is probably a little out of scope for this article.

Use An Open Source Package

Lucky for us, some nice folks over at pytube have done the heavy lifting for us.

We can simply import this into our python project without having to worry about any of those low level details.

Python Implementation

Here is a simple python script that can be used as is.

from pytube import YouTube

def Download(link):
    youtubeObject = YouTube(link)
    youtubeObject = youtubeObject.streams.get_highest_resolution()
    try:
        youtubeObject.download()
    except:
        print("An error has occurred")
    print("Download is completed successfully")


link = input("Enter the YouTube video URL: ")
Download(link)

What Do You Do Once Your Videos Are Downloaded?

The world is your oyster!

Maybe you want to take some of these methods and build a more complicated workflow as part of your business.

You could extend the python script to take in a link to a custom playlist. Rather than downloading 1 video at a time, it would download all of the videos!

Think about all of the potential time savings.

Check Out Our SEO Cheatsheet

Before going make sure you take a peak at this SEO Cheat Sheet.

Add it to your tool repertoire while building out those youtube downloads.