Tap through on a video to get to its full page, complete with comments, and there’s a Download button there you can use as well. When you’re browsing through videos on the Home tab, you can tap on the three dots next to any clip to find a Download video option, and that will start the download. David Nield for Popular ScienceĪ similar set of download features are available on the YouTube app for Android and iOS. The YouTube app has you covered for downloads on a phone or tablet. How to download YouTube videos to a phone or tablet To watch the videos you’ve saved, you need to go through YouTube. That means you can’t open up a folder on your Windows or macOS system and see a list of video files. Your browser of choice will cache your chosen videos on your computer’s storage drive for when you need them, but they’ll be in a scrambled format that only the browser can recognize. You can also turn on smart downloads, which will download a selection of recommended videos in the background for you. To delete a video, click the three dots next to it, then choose Remove from downloads.Ĭlick Download settings (top right on the downloads page) to change the quality of downloaded videos (better quality means longer download times and larger file sizes)-or get YouTube to prompt you to choose a quality setting every time you initiate a download. You can also click the YouTube logo in the top left corner and choose Downloads from the menu that appears to get to the same screen.

To see downloads that are in progress and to view your downloaded videos, head to (you might want to bookmark the link for future reference). It’s on search results pages too, if you click the three dots next to any clip. On the front page of YouTube, for example, you can click the three dots next to any video to find a Download option there. You’ll see the option to download videos in other places, too. You must keep YouTube open in a browser tab to keep the downloads running, but you can leave the page you’re downloading from to view other videos. Click the button, and the download will start. When you’re using YouTube in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Opera and are signed into an account that has YouTube Premium, you’ll see a Download button underneath every video when you open up its full page.

The only official way to download a YouTube video is to use YouTube Premium.

How to download a youtube video