While there are quite a few software tools and apps available that let you download videos from YouTube for offline watching, you don’t really need them anymore if you are looking to download your own videos from the YouTube website.
The easiest way to download an individual YouTube video click is through the Video Manager. Click the Edit button next to a video that you wish to download (see screenshot) and choose “Download MP4? from the dropdown.
Download your YouTube Videos, legally
This method has been around for a while now but the one big limitation is that the quality of the downloaded videos isn’t the same as your original clips. Your 720p and 1080p HD video will be saved at 480p.
If this lone limitation has been keeping you from hosting any of your videos on YouTube, worry no more. You now have an option to download all your YouTube videos in their original resolution. Here’s how:
- Go to google.com/takeout and click the Create Archive button. Google will now create a zipped archived with all the videos that you have ever uploaded to YouTube.
- Once the archive says 100%, proceed to the Downloads tab to grab the actual files. If the archive is large, Google Takeout will split them into individual files of 2 GB each.
The downside is that you have to download the entire archives – there’s no option to download individual video in high resolution.
That said, if you are planning to copy videos from YouTube to Vimeo or another video hosting service but don’t have access to the source video files, you’ll find this new option extremely handy.
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