Watching YouTube videos online is one of the favorite pastimes of many people while they are on an activity or just to fill in spare time. But what if you are offline – away from home, data is dead and there is no Wi-Fi?
YouTube videos are designed for streaming, not for sitting on your hard disk, telephone or solid state drive. But sometimes there are good reasons why you want to save videos to watch offline.
You can stay somewhere, where fast broadband is very rare to find such a reliable tool. You still live in an area where people are still pointing airplanes or still leaving cellular data poles near them.
And you might be relying on fast but overcrowded data connections so that your internet connection becomes slow and resembles a road full of obstacles for many people or you might just want to save a few video clips to show to the closest person.
Whatever the reason, there are many ways to download YouTube videos for free on Android, Mac and iOS. In this article we will share interesting information and explore what is legal and what is not.
This time we will explain how to download YouTube to Android with just a few simple steps.
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How to Download YouTube Videos from Android Using TubeMate
TubeMate is one of the most popular applications for downloading YouTube videos on Android smartphones, and with good reason: it’s easy to use and has features that make it easy for you without the hassle or confusion.
This application is not available on the Google Play Store (Google is not very interested in YouTube downloaders), so you must first allow Android devices to install and run applications downloaded from other places.
Be careful when you enable this setting, because you want to make sure that you only download applications that you know are safe and reliable.
Open Settings and enter Security. Scroll down and next to the place where it says ‘Unknown source’, tap the toggle to activate this setting. Now, on your Android device visit the TubeMate YouTube Downloader website and select one of the verified sites to download it.
Download and install TubeMate 2.4.4 (you must activate an unknown source first). Launch YouTube and browse to the video that you want to download. Tap Share, select TubeMate, then select and also select the resolution and press Download
We will explain these steps in detail below, but before you begin, you should know that Google does not approve of you going through platforms to watch videos (also see if it’s legal to download videos from YouTube?). For this reason you will not find TubeMate – or other YouTube downloaders – on Google Play.
How to use TubeMate to make YouTube videos available offline
Step 1. TubeMate is not available through Google Play, so you need to activate application installation from outside the Google app store first. Please remember to turn off this setting after it’s done: it’s there for your protection.
To enable installation of other third-party applications to Security, Unknown apps and toggles on the slider.
Step 2. Launch the browser and search for TubeMate. We click on the top results and download them directly from the site. The latest version at the time of writing is 2.4.4, and when an update is available, you can follow the same steps to implement it (Google Play will not download app updates that are installed outside of the store automatically).
Step 3. When TubeMate .apk has finished downloading, tap the notification in the drop-down bar at the top of the screen to start the installation. Follow the instructions, and when installation is complete press Finish.
Step 4. Launch YouTube and find the video you want to download. Tap Share, then select TubeMate from the list of available applications. This will launch TubeMate in a new application window; Select the resolution from the available list and touch the green download icon.
You might see a warning message about downloading the APK file, so click ‘OK’ to allow it. After TubeMate has been downloaded, run the file and tap ‘Install’, then tap ‘Open’.
TubeMate looks like an ordinary YouTube application, with an extra frame around it. You can browse YouTube as usual until you find what you want to download, or tap the menu icon on the top right, select ‘URL’ and paste the video address from your web browser.
When watching a YouTube video on TubeMate, a bright green download button will appear above it. Tap and you will see a progress bar, which tells you that the app is “parsing video information”. In simple English it means that all the pieces and pieces need to be downloaded.
The next thing you will see is a list of formats. You will see video and audio formats and different quality and resolution options for each.
If you have a high-end device then by all means download the highest quality version, but remember that the higher the resolution, the bigger the file: if your phone or tablet doesn’t have a lot of free space, YouTube videos will fill it immediately.
How to download YouTube videos to iOS or Mac devices
If you are an Apple addict, the process of downloading YouTube clips is a little different, depending on which type of Apple OS you are in. If you use iOS on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you need our first method, and if you use OS X or MacOS on Mac, you need the second.
On iOS, the trick is to install a smart little application called Documents. This is a file manager, but you can also download YouTube clips too. The process is a little fiddly but still straightforward.
First, find the clip you want to download in the YouTube app for iOS or in Safari. After finding it, tap the Share icon then Copy Link.
Open Documents and look for the web browser icon
Open Documents and look for the web browser icon, which is a small compass in the lower right of the screen. Tap it and go to savefrom.net.
Paste the address of the YouTube clip in the large input box, select the quality option you want and the file will start downloading.
When finished, the document will appear in the Documents download section, from where you can drag it to Photos> Camera Roll so that it is available outside the Documents5 application.
On Mac there are heaps of choices, but the easiest is MacX YouTube Downloader (also available for Windows). All you need to do is add a link and choose a quality option, and you can download several clips at once.
How? Surely it is very easy to do right? Finally you don’t need any more hassles when you want to download videos from YouTube using Android, Mac or iOS. Please try it.