Download a YouTube Video
The YouTube app does have a download button, and it is not what you want. It saves the video inside the app, for as long as the app feels like keeping it, only if you pay for Premium. What it never hands you is a file.
That’s how you download a YouTube video here: copy the link, paste it, save the MP4.
A browser gives you the file. Paste a link, pick a quality, get an MP4 sitting in your downloads folder like anything else.
Copy the link
In the app, tap Share under the video, then Copy link. On a computer, the address in the bar is already the link — Share does the same job if you prefer clicking.
Both give you something like youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ, or a short youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ from the app. Either works.
Two things ride along with the link sometimes. If you shared at a specific moment, there is a &t=125 on the end; the download ignores it and gives you the whole video. If you copied from inside a playlist, there is a &list= too, and that is also ignored — one link, one video.
Paste it and pick a quality
Open the YouTube downloader, paste, press Grab. The card comes back with the title, the channel and the length, and the quality list fills in a second later.
That list is built from the video, not from a menu we wrote. A clip uploaded in 4K offers 4K; one filmed on a phone in 2015 tops out at 360p and no amount of asking changes that. Under the list is the size estimate for whatever you have selected, so a 4K choice does not surprise you at 900 MB.
Then press MP4. Above 720p YouTube keeps the picture and the sound in separate streams, so they are joined into one file before you get it — that is why 1080p takes a few seconds longer than 720p.
The limits are plain: up to 60 minutes and up to a gigabyte. Longer than that and the job stops with a message saying so, rather than running for ten minutes and failing quietly.
Shorts, regular videos, and audio
The same field takes all three, but two of them have their own page because people arrive looking for them by name.
- A Short has /shorts/ in the address. It downloads here perfectly well, and the Shorts downloader is the same machinery with wording that matches what you came for.
- A regular video is the /watch?v= kind. That is what this page is about.
- If the picture is not the point — a lecture, a podcast, a song you want in your player — the YouTube to MP3 converter hands you audio only, and skips downloading a video you were going to throw away.
There is an MP3 button on the video page too. Same file either way.
When it does not work
It usually works. It does not always work, and pretending otherwise would just waste your time.
“YouTube is temporarily blocking requests.” YouTube watches for traffic that looks automated and sometimes decides ours is. It passes — wait a minute and press the button again. If it keeps happening on one video while others download fine, the problem is that video, not the block.
“This video is age-restricted.” Age-gated videos need a signed-in adult account to open at all, and there is no account behind this site. So they do not download, and the page says that plainly rather than telling you to try again for an hour. That one is not going to change by retrying.
“Video is longer than 60 minutes.” The limit, doing its job.
Private, unlisted-and-deleted, or removed videos. If it does not open in a browser where you are logged out, nothing here can reach it either. That is the honest boundary of what a downloader is: it fetches what the public internet already serves, and nothing beyond it. Download what you have the right to keep — your own uploads, material you are licensed to use, or a clip whose author is happy to see it travel.
Where the file lands
On a computer it goes to your usual downloads folder. On an iPhone it does not appear in Photos — Safari puts it in Downloads inside the Files app, which is the single most common “it did not work” that turns out to have worked. The article about that folder covers it, and the rest of the phone notes are in the blog.
FAQ
What quality can I get?
Whatever the video was uploaded in, up to 4K. The list on the card is read from the video itself, so if 1080p is missing, it was never there.
Why does 1080p take longer than 720p?
Above 720p YouTube keeps the picture and the sound in separate streams. Both are fetched and then joined into one MP4, and that joining is the extra few seconds.
Can I download age-restricted videos?
No. They need a signed-in account, and there is not one here. The page tells you instead of retrying.
Can I download a whole playlist at once?
No. One link, one video. A playlist link downloads the video you were watching, not the rest of the list.
Where is the file on my iPhone?
In the Files app, under Downloads. Not in Photos, unless you move it there yourself from the share menu.
So: copy the link, paste it into the downloader, pick a quality, press MP4. The rest of the page is just the honest edges of a two-step job.