Youtube Downloader?

There are a few existing threads but they all seem to be pretty ancient and these things change.

The one I used most recently, ClipConverter (a website service so no installation) is now subverted.

Is there still a reasonably easy (preferably free) way to do this?

Want it for class use. I have a small collection but need something new since I have resitting students on a course.

Less essential now because internet performance is better, but I might want this for a test, and for that I’d want the file locally.

my favorite is flashgot

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I use y2mate.

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Do you need to download from a channel multiple times?

I suppose its likely. Successive clips, that kind of thing.

Thanks above for those suggestions. I’ll give them a try later.

Client of mine sells cheap NASes that are able to access a youtube channel and simply download videos as they are uploaded if needed. Full app and everything. No need for those ad-ridden sites.

Last time i did this my phone and computer was riddled with viruses after. One phone continued to have the issue even after repeat factory resets…i would be careful.

Are any of these sites 100% safe?

This is why I use my NAS. NASes have youtube downloaders built in.

Easiest I found so far is to just add “X2” after YouTube on the URL of the video. You’ll then get link to download the video. You can even choose the resolution you want it to be.
For example, to download
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&list=PLahKLy8pQdCM0SiXNn3EfGIXX19QGzUG3
Use the modified URL
https://www.youtubex2.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&list=PLahKLy8pQdCM0SiXNn3EfGIXX19QGzUG3

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I use this:

Yes, that is certainly a concern.

I checked out the current ClipConverter sites (there are more than one, another bad sign, if one were needed) from a library PC, which are allegedly rebuilt on reboot, which MAY help.

ZE plan, such as it was, was to sweep anything I downloaded with Clamwin Portable running off a write - protected SD card, but I couldn’t get that to work, and decided I shouldn’t touch the sites anyway’even with someone elses barge pole .

Portable Apps generally wont run off write-protected media, a serious limitation in my view. I’ve raised it with them a few times and they don’t seem to get why it would be useful.

I dunno where they’ve been, but it wasn’t a Taiwan university.

I tried the y2mate site from a library PC, which I first scanned with Trend Micro Housecall,

Other than a few (cancelled) ad redirects, downloads seemed to go ok.

I checked the URL and the three files I downloaded on the VirusTotal site and they came up “Nothing Known”

No guarantee of course but so far OK. Thanks all.

This may be wrong, out of date, from a bad dream.

I have a feeling that the write protect switch on SD cards is advisory. That is, whatever is trying to write to it MAY check the switch - or otherwise.

Of course it may be that on modern windows ONLY the operating system has permission to write and that it ALWAYS checks. But a virus that had bypassed the OS security already would not necessarily be so nice.

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The final solution https://youtube-dl.org/

Public services can get taken down, open source downloader lives forever. The services probably use this anyway in the background.

Plus the current version can bypass the age-gating. Not sure about the geoblocking but I haven’t been blocked from downloading any music for a while so it’s probably getting around that too.

RIAA is suing them for being able to download music off YouTube, BTW.

Geoblocking is based on ip, so that won’t help. Age restriction has always been trivial to bypass because you can always view it if embedded.

RIAA is not suing anyone yet, just sent a DMCA take down request to github but as you can see website is still up and immediately thousands of people copied the code so it will never disappear. It’s the same game of tag as with the pirate bay back in the day.

That’s unpleasantly interesting, and very bad news if true.

A while ago I had an instance of an SD card that apparently was sometimes writable with the protect switch engaged.

I assumed it was a physical fault, but I suppose it could have been an infection. I asked about it in a gizmo shop and the guy said he’d heard of it happening.

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or add “ss” just between the dot and YouTube
You’ll then need to look carefully at the screen which appears in order to find the straightforward clickable download link rather than subscribing or buying plans etc. - but it does work

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Y2mate no worky on the library machines anymore. File appears then disappears in less than a second, which I’d guess is due to admin building in some prevention.

If this is true it might still work with my laptop, but I don’t feel I can afford to risk that.