The best free YouTube downloader apps can let you watch videos offline when you're traveling to work with no fuss, which is why we've found a bunch of easy-to-use apps to help you do just that.
It's a consistently difficult challenge to watch your favorite YouTube videos without having a Premium subscription that enables this for a fee. This is where a free downloader on a smartphone, Mac, or Windows PC comes in.
Perhaps you want to watch a video offline for a meeting, or for a place where you won't have fast or inaccessible internet, such as a train or plane commute.
The process of having a video from YouTube is surprisingly easy - it mainly involves taking the video's URL, and then using one of the websites below to download it. But if you only want the audio, we do have a free YouTube to MP3 converter guide instead.
Currently, our top choice for downloading videos from YouTube is the 4K Video Downloader, which can do the job without leaving a watermark, compared to other apps. However, there are other apps that you can look into that do the same job, which we've highlighted below.
The best free YouTube downloader apps to use for 2023
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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 of 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.
Read our full review: 4K Video Downloader
At first glance, 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 download 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 color 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 in all other respects. Watch out for the bundled ByteFence and Yahoo software during installation, and you're good to go.
Read our full review: Any Video Converter Free
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 them 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.
Read our full review: Free YouTube Download
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.
Read our full review: aTube Catcher
Is it legal to downloaded YouTube videos?
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 potentially a copyright infringement unless you own the video yourself, have permission from the copyright holder, or it's in the public domain.
What's the difference between Online YouTube downloaders and desktop apps?
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 an 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
