How To Download YouTube Videos (Revisited)

A long time ago I wrote a post about how to download YouTube videos. This was a very popular post that I'm sure many thousands of people have read. However, due to changes in YouTube, there is now a much better way to download YouTube videos.

Step 1: Open the video you want to download in Safari.

Step 2: Add "&fmt=18" to the end of the URL and hit return. This will make the downloaded file be a ".mp4" file instead of a ".flv" file.



Step 3: Open the Activity window with Cmd-Option-A. (Or go the Window > Activity



Step 4: Find the section associated with the YouTube page. (It will have the same title as the YouTube Page.)



Step 5: Once you've found the page, look for the video file. The URL will usually have the word "cache" in it. In addition, if it's a reasonably long movie, it will also be the largest file.



Step 6: Hold down the option key and double-click on the video file's URL in the Activity window. This will start the download at which point you can close the YouTube video page. (If you want.)





When the movie is done downloading, you can do with it as you wish without having to worry about converting it to a useable video format first.

(While I am aware of the countless applications and websites designed to download YouTube videos, I am pretty sure this is the most reliable way to download them. While I'm sure your favored application/website works great for you, chances are that it does not work for everybody else.)