Anyone know of an easy way to download YouTube videos to mp4 on local drive?

yt-dlp is relatively easy once you set it up but it uses the command line.

Here's some instructions from Reddit:

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Download https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp.exe
Install ffmpeg (Optional, but recommended)
Download https://github.com/yt-dlp/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip
Extract the files and find ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe inside the bin folder
Copy those two files to the same folder as yt-dlp.exe
Download a video
Open windows explorer to the folder where you downloaded yt-dlp.exe
In the address bar of the the folder that yt-dlp.exe is in, type cmd and press enter
Then in the terminal window that opens, type yt-dlp "URL" replacing URL with the link u want to download.
Wait for your video to finish downloading
Skim through the documentation https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#readme to learn about more features
[OPTIONAL] Add the yt-dlp folder to PATH https://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.html

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You can use the -t flag to specify the video format (mp4, mkv, etc.):
example yt-dlp -t mp4 "URL"

Also, if it stops working you may just need to update it as follows:

yt-dlp -U

You can also extract audio only using: -x

Link to another tutorial:
https://medium.com/@pasangimhanaofficial/yt-dlp-the-ultimate-youtube-downloader-9f061a60c8f1

If your computer savvy and somewhat know Docker then I would go this route rather than installing anything on your machine. You could even use docker desktop.

https://github.com/alexta69/metube

I've found this to be cleaner and seems to not break as much as any of the standalone downloaders out there.

go to the video and take the "ube" out of the www.youtube.com part so it will be the original link, but www.yout.com etc.

Quote:

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go to the video and take the "ube" out of the www.youtube.com part so it will be the original link, but www.yout.com etc.

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This is a great hack. You need to upgrade to get any decent quality video download.

I use it to grab audio for dances for our dance studio.

I think you can do 1 or 2 a day.

you can switch browsers and get another 1 or 2 also

I'm trying to download the below YouTube video.



https://www.yout.com/watch?v=U9pgnIzM42w&list=PLGCnvYZkFpcZJ3ZSsqTAJb1jXCl3-KVMK

It appears to access the video and give me all the video download options. However, it always downloads as a 0 KB file.

ytDownloader works pretty well for me: https://github.com/aandrew-me/ytDownloader
4k VIdeo Downloader + is another good one: https://www.4kdownload.com/products/videodownloader-42

The first is completely free. The second has a paid option, but the only limitation I've run across is it limits the number of videos you can download in a single day to 10, which doesn't matter for me. I only download occasionally, so I never have more than 1 per day every now and then. I prefer this one

Disclaimer: I use linux so I can't vouch for the windows or mac versions of these

I have used the windows version without any problems.

This app is easy. Copy the link for the YT video and paste in the window on the app page.

YouTube Downloader

I paid for the full version of By Click Downloader a couple of years ago and it's been simple and trouble free. It works with not only YouTube but Facebook, X, abd many other sites with streamed videos. It gives you options o resolution and a choice to just download the audio as an mp3. It's been a handy tool for saving a copy of videos that may be removed and unavailable in the future.

https://www.byclickdownloader.com/m/