How to Download YouTube Videos
on Your PC
- First, go to the YouTube page containing the video you want to download. When you've found the page, press Ctrl+L on your keyboard to highlight the text in the address bar, and then Ctrl+C to copy the Internet address. If you are on an Apple computer, substitute Ctrl with the Command key (⌘).
- Go to the website https://keepvid.pro.
- The page shows a text box where you can enter the URL of a YouTube video. Click inside the text box to place your text cursor there, then paste the address that you copied in step 1 by pressing Ctrl+V (or ⌘+V on a Mac).
- A preview thumbnail image of your video is displayed 5 to 10 seconds after pasting the YouTube video URL in step 3. Click the blue Best Download button next to the video preview.
- Depending on the Internet browser and its settings, you may see a prompt asking what you want to do with the video file. Select the Save option to save the file to your computer. The video file may also begin downloading immediately with no prompt.
If the video opens directly in your browser, right-click the video and choose Save Video As.
- The file name defaults to the video name or "videoplayback" with a mp4 or webm file extension, depending on the best quality video available for that URL.
- If desired, change the file name to something related to your specific video. You don't need to enter the file extension (such as .webm). The extension is added to the file automatically.
- Click Save to save your video. By default, it is saved to your downloads folder.
Download HD YouTube video with youtube-dl
If you want to download a YouTube video in HD (high definition), your options are limited. Most websites, such as the one listed above, do not allow you to download HD video for free.
However, the free program youtube-dl can download any available YouTube video format to your computer, including the HD version.
Youtube-dl can be downloaded for free at the youtube-dl website. Click the Windows exe link to download the program.
The youtube-dl.exe executable file can run directly from the command prompt. For example, to download the best quality of a YouTube video, run youtube-dl.exe URL, where URL is the URL of the video on YouTube.
In the example pictured above, the video downloaded by youtube-dl was the HD version, with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The file was saved in the MKV format, which is supported by many media players, such as VLC.
By comparison, the same video downloaded from the KeepVid website was the SD (standard definition) version, with a resolution of 640x360 pixels even though the site listed the "best download" as HD.
For a complete guide to using youtube-dl, see our article how to download YouTube videos and audio with youtube-dl.
What about a private video?
You cannot download private videos because the YouTube download service would not have the necessary rights to access them.
I still can't download a video
If, after following the steps above, you don't get a preview like our example, make sure that the link you are using works by opening the page in a new window. Once verified as working, try the above steps again. If the steps continue not to work, try refreshing this page by pressing the F5 key on your keyboard and following the above steps again.
YouTube bookmarklet, browser add-ons, and extensions
If you plan on downloading several videos, you can also use the Computer Hope YouTube bookmarklet. See our bookmarklet page for more information about bookmarklets. There are also browser add-ons for Firefox and extensions for Google Chrome to download from video sites.
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