When I reviewed the video player IINA (see “Prepare for Apple Dropping Old Media Formats with the IINA Video Player,” 6 May 2019), quite a few TidBITS readers took it as an opportunity to vent their frustrations about downloading videos from YouTube. Recent changes in Firefox have broken extensions like DownThemAll, which used to be a handy way to download videos.
There are several reasons you might want to download videos from YouTube. Like most cloud-based things, YouTube videos are ephemeral—they vanish all the time for all kinds of reasons. The uploader might pull a video down, YouTube may remove a video in response to a copyright complaint (sometimes legitimate, sometimes not), and a video might disappear if it runs afoul of YouTube’s ever-changing and seemingly haphazard standards for acceptable content.
Step 1: You can download the YouTube Video and MP3 Downloader plugin from Addoncrop Site. After you have completed the installation, the YouTube video downloader extension automatically adds the ' Download ' button below the video you are playing at that time. Part 3: Best Alternative Method for Screen Audio Recording on Mac; Part 1: How to Use QuickTime to Record Screen and Audio for Mac. If you are using QuickTime 10, then you can get the screen recording and editing features freely. What’s more, QuickTime provides some editing tools like trim, split, cut, copy, paste and delete. To download the file: Click the Download VLC button and save the DMG file to your Mac. Double-click the downloaded DMG file in your Downloads folder. Drag the VLC icon (the orange-and-white cone) to the Applications folder.
But preservation isn’t the only reason people download YouTube videos. For example, they may want to download short clips to use in their videos (honoring the doctrine of fair use, of course). A friend of mine accidentally deleted the “sizzle clip” he slaps on the front of every video in iMovie, and he solved the problem by downloading one of his own videos from YouTube and extracting that clip. Or, you may want to be able to play some YouTube videos in a situation where there’s no Internet access.
Whatever the reason, you don’t have to rely on Firefox to download videos from YouTube. There are several solutions on the Mac, and I review a few of them here.
One Click to Download Online Video Now go to the site to play the video you want to download. When the 'Download' button appears at the top left corner of the video, click it to start downloading video to the original format, which is usually FLV or MP4. That means it's probably can't play with QuickTime Player.
![Quicktime Quicktime](/uploads/1/2/6/3/126368006/613555777.jpg)
Note that downloading YouTube videos with a utility other than YouTube’s apps (which require a YouTube Premium subscription) nominally violates YouTube’s terms of service:
You shall not download any Content unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that Content. You shall not 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. YouTube and its licensors reserve all rights not expressly granted in and to the Service and the Content.
That said, I’ve never heard of YouTube punishing a user for downloading videos, although using copyrighted material in videos you upload to YouTube could get you in trouble.
The Command-Line Grand Poobah: youtube-dl
Arguably, the greatest of the YouTube downloaders is the public-domain youtube-dl, a command-line utility that powers many apps like the aforementioned IINA. It’s not the friendliest option, but it’s free and powerful.
The project offers instructions for installing youtube-dl. You can use the
curl
command or rely on Homebrew, a command-line package manager that I strongly recommend—refer to Homebrew’s home page for a one-line command to install it from Terminal. Then, in Terminal, you can enter brew install youtube-dl
to install the download utility.Once you install youtube-dl, type
man youtube-dl
in Terminal to see its extensive list of options. But all you really need to do to use it is to type youtube-dl URL
in Terminal, where URL
is the link to the desired YouTube video. That downloads the video in your current directory. Type cd ~/Downloads
before running youtube-dl to download the video to your Downloads folder.You can play the video after you download it with QuickTime or with a third-party player like IINA or VLC.
The developers of youtube-dl issue updates frequently, which is why I recommend installing it with Homebrew. The first time I tried to download a video for this article, I received an error because I hadn’t updated youtube-dl first. Homebrew makes updating easy with the
brew update youtube-dl
command, which updates both youtube-dl and Homebrew itself, along with all the packages youtube-dl needs to function.A Free Graphical App: ClipGrab
ClipGrab is a simple, free utility for macOS that can download individual YouTube videos and even convert them to other formats, including MP3 if you’re only interested in the audio.
It’s easy to use: copy a YouTube URL and open ClipGrab. It will automatically extract the URL from the clipboard. Use the Format drop-down menu to choose a format (Original is usually fine if you want video), and click Grab This Clip to download the video. The default download location is your Desktop, but you can change it in the Settings tab.
ClipGrab offers a search tab where you can search for and download videos, but I find it easier to use YouTube’s search engine to find videos and then paste the URL into ClipGrab.
A Setapp Option: Downie
Quicktime Download For Mac Os
A subscription to Setapp includes several utilities that can download YouTube videos: the torrent client Folx, media players Movist Pro and Elmedia Player, and an app purpose-built for downloading YouTube videos: Downie. (If you’re not a Setapp subscriber, Downie costs $19.99.)
Downie, unlike ClipGrab, is tailor-made for the Mac. You can drag and drop YouTube URLs to Downie’s window or its Dock icon. Downie also comes bundled with a Safari extension, which you enable in Safari > Preferences > Extensions. Once you enable the extension, you can click the Downie icon in Safari’s toolbar to download a video.
In addition to Downie’s simplicity, I like that it downloads subtitles with the video (YouTube automatically generates subtitles for videos). Downie saves subtitles alongside the video as an SRT file. Unfortunately, QuickTime Player doesn’t understand those files, so you need to use a more capable video player like IINA to view them. As long as the SRT file is in the same directory as the video, it works automatically when you play the video in IINA.
Downie can also download an entire YouTube playlist at once. Just drag the playlist URL into Downie and click Playlist to see all the available videos to download. You can then click Add Selected to download the playlist videos.
Download an Entire Channel with 4K Video Downloader
Downie can download an entire playlist, but there’s only one Mac app that I know of that can download an entire YouTube channel: 4K Video Downloader. You can try the app for free (it costs $15 to unlock the entire app). To use it, copy the channel’s URL, open 4K Video Downloader, and click Paste Link to load every video in the channel.
Even better, when 4K Downloader is running, you can subscribe to a channel to download every new video published on the channel automatically.
Note that if a channel has a lot of videos, it can take a long time to download them all and it may use considerable system resources to do so. Nonetheless, I’ve successfully downloaded entire channels containing hundreds of videos with 4K Video Downloader, making it my favorite utility of the bunch.
4K Video Download can also download subtitles, and it can convert YouTube videos to MP3 audio files. Of course, it downloads individual videos as well.
There you have it: four utilities that you can use to download YouTube videos in macOS. Do you have another favorite? Let us know in the comments.
Two parts included: 1) Convert downloaded YouTube videos, 2) Download YouTube and convert to QuickTime.
YouTube is a popular video-hosting site where users can watch and upload videos to share with friends. Many users with third-party downloading apps even can download favorite YouTube videos and save to local folder so they can play them on media players (QT, WMP, VLC, etc.) watch on portable devices, or simply manage those YouTube videos in iTunes, Windows Media Center without an Internet access.
Now that you have YouTube video clips downloaded, here comes the tricky part. Since YouTube uses WebM, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash technology to display videos online, many of downloaded YT videos may end with .flv or .webm file extension. So if you want to play those YouTube video onto QuickTime player on Mac, for example, an incompatible playback error would pop up in front of you. QuickTime Player supports a limit of media file formats and codecs except for FLV and WebM.
In order to take an YouTube stream and view in the QuickTime video player, you will have to convert the YouTube video to QuickTime supported format. Apple QuickTime itself does not include converting capability at this time so you will need to use a third party burning tool. This article exemplifies how to convert videos from YouTube to QuickTime player with Video Converter, a reliable tool that lets you convert videos from one format to another and produce excellent end results. It also comes with video editing feature and has preset profiles available for working with device of your choice.
for Windows | for Mac
The guide below is written using the Mac version of the program, but the steps are identical to that of Windows.
Part 1: How to convert YouTube video and play on QuickTime in Mac
Stage 1 – Select downloaded YouTube source clips
To add file(s) into program, click the 'Add File' button on the top menu and open the file(s) using the pop-up dialog. Other way to do it is to directly drag-n-drop YouTube file(s) on the program's window.
Note: It is a great application that you can use it to process multiple videos in one go.
Stage 2 – Set up the output
When you finished adding YouTube videos it is time now to select the QuickTime friendly format for output converting.
Click the 'Profile' dropdown on the lower left side of the GUI, it will bring up the format selection panel. Select MOV Video, M4V Video or MP4 Video that QuickTime Player reads well there as shown below.
Stage 2.1 – Additional format settings
For video experts, this Mac YouTube to QuickTime converter even gives you options to change the video encoding settings such as bitrate, aspect ratio, resolution, along with a slew of other settings for adjusting the audio quality.
You can do this by clicking the 'Settings' next to 'Profile'. Here I just accept the default settings, which are fine.
Stage 2.2 – Preset selection
You can also use the built-in presets which are especially designed to quickly setting up a conversion for a portable device such as iPhone, iPad, Android phones, PS4, etc. This will simplify the format choosing task without fiddling with any settings.
Stage 3 – Start converting YouTube videos to QuickTime format
Click on 'Destination' button in the bottom-left corner of main interface (under 'Profile') and the dialog opens up where you can set the name and the destination folder of resulting file.
Now, start the real process with the blue 'Convert' button to convert all of your YouTube clips in the list to QuickTime file format in Mac.
When conversion process is started the program will display a progress bar under the item telling you the conversion status.
After the conversion complete, the new created QuickTime files will be ready on your local folder you set previously, you then can play them on your QuickTime Player or add to an iOS device and enjoy on the go.
That is it!
See also: how to convert FLV movie files to MOV on Mac OS X
Download Youtube Video Quicktime Mac Download
Part 2: How to download Videos from YouTube and convert for QuickTime
As for downloading video clips from YouTube, using AllMyTube couldn't be simpler. It supports downloading from 1000+ video sites (including Instagram, Facebook, Break, Vimeo, Dailymotion) and convert to different of video & audio formats all in place.
for Windows | for Mac
The operation is actually easy and simple.
1. Locate the YouTube video you would like to playback on QuickTime on Mac or PC, Copy the URL from the address bar of the browser, and then paste it on 'PASTE URL' field at the top left of this application.
Note: you can also simply click the 'Download' button appearing at the top right of the playing screen, or directly drag the URL of video and drop to blank area of the application to begin YouTube video downloading task.
2. Go to downloaded video list by clicking the 'Downloaded' category on the left portion, then highlight the downloaded item you want to convert, and click the 'Convert' button.
3. This will display a panel asking you to choose an output file format.
4. After do this, click OK to begin conversion.
![Quicktime Quicktime](https://www.easeus.com/images/en/screenshot/mobimover/download-youtube-videos-mac-vlc.jpg)
- MOV to WMV Mac OS X - transfer Apple mov file to a Microsoft wmv format