youtube download free videos The best free YouTube downloaders in 2021. The best YouTube downloaders will let you store your YouTube playlists offline effortlessly and cost-free, whether you have a Windows PC , a Mac or a smartphone . And, they are a boon to those who rely on YouTube to catch up on their favorite content. The best YouTube downloader for PC is 4K Video Downloader, a free program that allows you to save videos in the format of your choice ad- free and to remove watermarks on your downloaded clips. It’ll even let you extract the audio from a video and download an entire playlist, putting many paid-for tools to shame. However, there are a wide variety of free YouTube downloaders for PC, many of which will let you simply enter the URL of the video you want to attain, and do the rest of the work for you. Here are our top picks of the best YouTube downloaders. If you're specifically interested in saving music from YouTube, our guide to the best free YouTube to MP3 software might serve you better. We've also rounded up the best free video converters if you want to play videos offline on a different device, such as a phone or tablet, as well as the best free video editing software for clipping and cropping your saved videos. For more detailed instructions, check out our full guide on how to download YouTube videos for free. Is downloading YouTube videos legal? Before you use a free YouTube downloader, bear in mind that using third-party apps to download videos is against YouTube's terms of service, which say you can only stream videos directly from its servers. Downloading videos is also a potential copyright infringement unless you own the video yourself, have permission from the copyright holder, or it's in the public domain. The best YouTube downloader available right now is: WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe Of all the YouTube downloaders we've tried, WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe is the most impressive. It doesn't just grab videos – it can also convert them into virtually any format, rips content from DVDs and Blu-ray discs, and lets you burn your own. It handles 4K content with ease, too. It's not free, unlike the software below, but you won't find a more powerful tool. 1. 4K Video Downloader. Fast, free and flexible – the most versatile YouTube downloader. Specifications. Reasons to buy. 4K Video Downloader is the best free YouTube downloader around for quick, fuss-free YouTube downloads. It's simple to use, highly customizable, ad-free, and doesn't include any bundled extra software. To grab a video (or a whole playlist, provided it's not longer than 24 videos), simply copy its URL from your web browser, click 'Paste URL' and select an output format, quality and location. There's a great choice of formats – both video and audio – including MP4 and MP3. You can download captions for individual videos, and there's support for 3D and 360-degree videos too. Delving into the properties lets you tweak options like multi-stream downloads (increasing the number of streams will speed up downloads, but increases the risk YouTube blocking your IP address) and set up a proxy connection. Buying a key will let you download longer playlists and playlists with captions, and at £7.95 (about US$10, AU$15) for a lifetime license for three PCs, it's a bargain, but the free edition has everything else you could wish for. 2. WinX YouTube Downloader. Clear, powerful and well designed – a very close runner-up. Specifications. Reasons to buy. Reasons to avoid. Running a very close second, WinX YouTube Downloader can download videos from all the most popular sites, including Facebook, Vimeo and DailyMotion. It's very easy to use. Just paste in a URL, select an output format and quality setting, and it will be added to the current batch. Once you've added all the videos you want to download, simply click the 'Download' button and they'll all be processed at once, and saved to the destination folder of your choice. WinX YouTube Downloader can download 4K video when available, and only loses out to 4K Video Downloader because it's unable to download 3D and 360-degree videos. If this isn't a problem for you, this free YouTube downloader comes highly recommended. 3. Any Video Converter Free. Download and convert videos, and add special effects. Specifications. Reasons to buy. Reasons to avoid. On the face of it, Any Video Converter Free is one of the best free YouTube downloaders out there. The only drawback is that this free version limits you to downloading a single video at a time, but if you're looking for a free solution, this is something you may decide you're happy to put up with. There are lots of video formats to choose from, and there's even a basic video editor built into this YouTube downloader. This can be used to crop a video you download, add simple effects such as colour adjustment, and add overlay text. The whole process is quick and easy. Any Video Converter's interface may not be to everyone's liking, but that's really nitpicking; this is a fantastic free YouTube downloader all other respects. Watch out for the bundled ByteFence and Yahoo software during installation, and you're good to go. 4. Free YouTube Download. Grab videos without clicking a single button. Specifications. Reasons to buy. Reasons to avoid. There are no prizes for guessing what Free YouTube Download does. This is a very simple, tightly focused free YouTube downloader that does away with distractions to get the job done well. Paste in a URL from YouTube and you can download the video in just a couple of clicks – or no clicks at all if you enable the Auto Download option. You can download several videos at once if you need to, and you can convert to several different formats on the fly. Just which formats are available to you will depend on the quality of the original video, but AVI, MP4, iPhone/iPod and MKV should be available in most cases. It's also possible to convert to audio-only MP3 if you don’t need the footage as well. There's only one real drawback, but it's a biggie – you can only use Free YouTube Download to grab clips that are less than three minutes long. That rules out most music videos for a start, and is a real shame. 5. aTube Catcher. Download, convert and merge videos as they're playing. Specifications. Reasons to buy. Reasons to avoid. Although the name suggests that this is just a YouTube downloader, aTube Catcher can actually save videos from most of the big video hosting sites. First, however, a word of warning: sneaky adware abounds during the installation. When you're offered the first app, make sure to hit Cancel, and for the second one click Decline – then you'll be free to enjoy aTube Catcher without any unwanted surprises. Downloaded videos can be converted automatically to a number of popular formats, so you can tailor them for their intended use, or whatever device you intend to watch them on. If you're looking to download a large number of videos, you can download them all at once, maxing out your bandwidth – something not available in all of the best free YouTube downloaders on this list. This free YouTube downloader offers plenty of added extras too, such as the ability to record any on-screen video, video merging, and disc burning. Online YouTube downloaders vs desktop software. There are many sites that you can use to download YouTube videos, but we don't recommend them due to their disadvantages over desktop software. First of all, they're slower due to the limitations of the remote server and your data connection. Many such sites also feature ads of a NSFW variety, or display thumbnails of recently downloaded videos, which may not be appropriate. Online video converters typically don't give you much (if any) choice about the video file either, in terms of quality or expert format. They only allow you to download a single video at a time, and you can forget about saving whole playlists. 3D and 360-degree videos are also out of the question, and very few can handle 4K. Check out our guide to the best free photo editors. Daryl is the Software and Downloads Writer at TechRadar, where you will see his posts covering Apple, Google, Microsoft and the software that they all inhabit. Easy Steps For How To Download YouTube Videos. YouTube, the video streaming platform that is single-handedly dominating the industry without any doubt contains uncountable videos. You can stream any video, anytime on the platform without any interruption and not to mention the money that YouTubers are making. But, let’s not get into that, so you want to download the videos from YouTube. That’s quite a good idea as in order to download your favorite video from any other resource you need to browse through the web and it will take plenty of time. But, on YouTube, you will find the video instantly. Although it is the most accessible spot for streaming videos,but how can you download video from YouTube? What if I say that it is too easy to download the videos and you just need to follow the simple task. YouTube doesn't allow to download the videos directly, but you can use different software and websites to make that happen.