How To Download Youtube Videos Onto Desktop Mac

13-05-2021

How To Download Youtube Videos Onto Desktop Mac

Updated on July 25, 2018: Add an optional method with Screen Recorder.

YouTube is attractive. It has millions of additive contents such as movies, music videos, audiobooks, video tutorials and other great videos made by millions of thousand people.

As a third and final option, you may download a program for your Mac or Windows computer dedicated to downloading Web video. For Mac, check out MacTubes. Windows users can try Free YouTube. Set video download quality. To change the default quality for downloading videos, go to Settings and select Download quality under 'Background & Downloads.' Higher-quality videos may take longer to download and may use more storage space on your device.

However, none of us can watch YouTube videos offline unless we download and save them on our computers. There are so many guides telling people how to download YouTube videos on a Windows computer, so the minority (Mac users) ask, 'Is there any YouTube Downloader for Mac?'

Of course! This post will show you three ways to download YouTube Video on Mac and how to get YouTube Video without downloading.

To elaborate on this question, we divide this post into 4 parts:

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Method 1: Download YouTube Videos Online to Mac

VidPaw is a free online downloader that you can use to download YouTube video to Mac on Safari, Google Chrome, Firefox, etc. It requires 2 steps only to download a YouTube videos to Mac and it can download YouTube video in different qualities (720p, 1080p, 4K, 8K, etc.) and various formats (MP4, 3GP, WEMP).

STEP 1. Copy the URL of a YouTube video. Go to vidpaw.com and paste the URL into the empty box. Click Download.

STEP 2. Click one of the Download button. For example, choose to download 720p MP4 videos. The YouTube video will be downloaded to your Mac.

Add a bookmark for VidPaw.com so that you can quickly access the downloader next time you want to download a YouTube video to Mac. Or you can download VidPaw extension.

How To Download Youtube On Desktop

Method 2: Download YouTube Videos on Mac on Safari

Are you finding websites where you can download YouTube videos? Actually, you can download YouTube video on Safari.

1. Make sure that you are using the most recent version of Safari on your Mac.

2. Head on to YouTube website and navigate to your desired content and pause the video just after it starts playing.

3. Click the 'Window' tab and hit 'Activity' to bring up the 'Activity Monitor' window in Safari.

4. Locate the entry similar to the name of video you have opened, which has the largest file size. Double click to download the video to your Mac.

Method 3: Download YouTube Videos on Mac with Chrome

1. Open Google Chrome on your Mac which is running Mac OSX 10.6 or later.

2. Go to the YouTube website and find the video you want to download. Open it, pause the video and let it load completely.

3. Find the Cache folder via Finder > Library > Cache > Google > Chrome > Default > Cache. This contains all the recent information cached by Google from your internet usage.

4. Now begin to find the video. This is tricky since there are so many cache files. The information isn't named in a convenient way, because it's the raw data. So start by scrolling from the bottom of the list and looking closely for a file of the appropriate size.

5. When you've located your video file, right click, copy the file and paste it onto your desktop.

6. To open the file in QuickTime or other video players, you'll need to rename the extension by clicking on the file name and adding .mp4 to the end. You can also rename the video.

7. Double click it and play it on your MacBook or iMac.

Method 4: Record YouTube Playing Video on Mac

Besides to download the videos from YouTube, there is a practical way to keep YouTube video on your Mac: record the playing video with FonePaw Screen Recorder for Mac.

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1. Open the program and select Video Recorder option to get started.

2. Play the video on YouTube (actually, other platforms are supported.) and press REC button on the software at the same time.

3. As your target video is being captured, you can turn up or down, turn on/off webcam, add some notes with annotation panel and more. Of course, if you tend to keep the video as its original style on YouTube channel, you don't need to add anything to it.

4. When the video goes to the end, hit REC button or use the hotkey to stop recording. Then, preview the recording and save it. That is what you need from YouTube with no copyright infringement.

Which method will be the best for you? If you select one of them, please share with your friends.

DISCLAIMER: As some of you have pointed out in the comments, downloading personal copies of YouTube videos is not supported by the YouTube Terms of Service, which states:

'You may access User Submissions for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the YouTube Website. You shall not copy or download any User Submission unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the YouTube Website for that User Submission.'

We want to stress that most of these tools do violate the ToS and that if you use them, you do so at your own risk. Also , if you've been tempted to download for a better browsing experience on the big screen, don't forget YouTube has already got you covered on that with YouTube XL.

It's been a while since we looked at ways to download YouTube videos to get local copies of your favorite vids, and we thought it might be time to take a look at which options are still left standing and what new apps are worth checking out.

For those of you new to the concept, you'll need to know a couple of things. Many of these sites and tools simply grab YouTube videos in their native Flash format (FLV). To watch these files on your desktop, you'll either need to get yourself an FLV player or convert the files into another format you can watch in your media player of choice (or on your iPod/iPhone, cell phone, or wherever the videos will ultimately end up).

Some of the listed tools include FLV players or file format converters along with the video download functions. Choose your poison according to your needs and patience level — if you do a lot of downloading it might be worth your while to check out the more full-featured apps.

And now, on with the list!

This is by no means a comprehensive list — we left out a number of sites and apps with nearly identical features to the items on this list. And though we included a few freemium and paid apps, we avoided some of the more costly tools in favor of the free and cheap in this set.

How To Download Youtube On My Computer

Youtube Download To Desktop

There's also sure to be some apps and sites we just don't know about yet — so if you have a favorite tool for downloading YouTube videos to your desktop, let us know in the comments! If you're listing a paid app, be sure and tell us why it's worth paying for.