1

Which app should I install to download videos from YouTube?

TheOdd
  • 3,012
Raman Shah
  • 19

3 Answers3

3

TOS Violations

There are some programs and tools that exist to do this, but this is against YouTube's TOS.

Section 5.b :

Content is provided to you AS IS. You may access Content for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the Service and as permitted under these 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.

This basically means that unless explicitly stated otherwise, you may not download any content posted on YouTube.

Obviously, basically nobody follows this, but I do feel like I am obligated to inform you that this is, in fact, against their Terms Of Service.

Actual solution

Now that you've been informed of the TOS issues presented when doing this, there is a program that does download YouTube videos. This program is called youtube-dl.

To install it, run

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

To use it, the syntax looks like

youtube-dl (YouTube-Video-Link)

For example

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Here's the official documentation.

Community
  • 1
TheOdd
  • 3,012
0

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

This is an extremely feature-full and cross-platform program which can do this and many other variations (e.g. just audio, subtitles, metadata, etc.).

Full documentation is available at the website https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

Note this is a command-line program. There are probably GUI versions, browser plugins, as well as other programs more-platform specific which might not require python. However youtube-dl is considered the "standard" in research community where is it frequently used in machine learning to gather training and test data. I suppose some people use it for other things (note smartphone youtube apps generally have a download for off-line viewing feature now as well).

Please observe all copyright and fair-use conventions, and check the YouTube Terms of Service before downloading.

toddkaufmann
  • 170
-1

If you have Firefox, install the addon DownloadHelper. It works on nearly all video platforms.

wjandrea
  • 14,504
westernCiv
  • 11