The best YouTube downloaders (and how Google silenced the press)

Most websites can't tell you about them. But I can.

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The Windows ReadMe - #005
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“We can’t write about them. We’ll get in trouble.”

That’s the attitude I had about YouTube downloaders when I ran How-To Geek as Editor-in-Chief. We self-censored to protect ourselves. But I’m not dancing for Google ad revenue anymore.

This ReadMe file is about incredibly useful free YouTube downloaders that I recommend. But it’s also about so many other truths people don’t normally share:

• Why YouTube downloaders are ethical and you shouldn’t apologize for using them.

• Why Google secretly needs YouTube downloaders.

• Why toothless terms of services like YouTube’s are no better than the EULAs we’ve been ignoring for decades.

• And how Google has used its ad network (now ruled an illegal monopoly) to privilege its own services ahead of competitors.

But yes, this is also a list of seriously useful free YouTube downloaders. The web is full of spammy ones, and I’ll show you the real ones.

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This week’s tip
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Since I’m not writing to optimize this list for Google, I can just give you the answer!

The best YouTube downloaders for Windows (and beyond)

Here are the best YouTube downloaders -- based on my personal experience:

• The best YouTube downloader for Windows is Stacher. It’s free and seems community-driven, although the author hasn’t yet made it open-source as promised. It’s an easy-to-use graphical application that does the setup for you.

• The best YouTube downloader for the command line is yt-dlp. Use it if you want to get your hands dirty! (Stacher is cool because it provides a graphical interface and does all the hard work for you.)

• The best YouTube download for Mac and Linux? Also Stacher! It’s cross-platform.

• The best YouTube downloader on the web is Cobalt.tools -- or at least it used to be. It looks like Google is blocking it right now. Until it comes back, I recommend other tools. (Edit: Apparently there are still Cobalt instances that work — see this comment! Thanks, ZedK.)

• The best YouTube downloader for Android is NewPipe. This third-party YouTube app has a built-in download tool.

Use any of these and you’ll get a video file you can back up, archive, and do whatever you want with. It’s yours to preserve.

Stacher in action on Windows 11.

YouTube’s rules are just another EULA

When you install an application, you often click through a long end user license agreement. If people had to read each agreement in full, society would grind to a halt.

Even companies often don’t read their own EULAs. When Apple launched Safari for Windows, it launched it with a EULA that said people couldn’t install it on Windows. The message? Even companies like Apple don’t care what their own legal boilerplate says. So why should we care?

So yes: YouTube’s terms of service may or may not say you can’t download videos from it. I haven’t checked. Have you read it in full? Have you checked the terms of service for every product you’ve used to confirm you’re in compliance? No one has -- that’s the point.

Why Google secretly needs YouTube downloaders

YouTube has become part of the plumbing of the modern web. It hosts everything from city council meetings to recorded live-streams of important family events. If a video is important to you -- or you want to have a copy for legal reasons -- you should download it. And, to do that, you’ll need a YouTube downloader.

Using a YouTube downloader is like printing a web page to a PDF or saving an image file for later -- you get an offline copy you can archive. Just like with anything else on the web, a YouTube video may be taken down by its creator in the future. And you may need your offline copy.

Google needs YouTube downloaders. They perform a valuable role: If it were impossible to download YouTube videos, many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility. Or they’d need to host a separate download link and put it in their YouTube descriptions. But organizations don’t need to jump through hoops -- they just let people use YouTube downloaders.

Google could lock down YouTube harder. Services like Netflix use DRM-protected streams to stop downloads. Google could make it much harder to download videos. But Google benefits from setting up a gray market ecosystem of often-inconvenient download tools. The ecosystem of YouTube downloaders and Google’s tacit approval of them has helped cement YouTube’s dominance.

Why How-To Geek never wrote about YouTube downloaders

When I ran How-To Geek as Editor-in-Chief -- and when I was a writer -- we went out of our way to avoid writing about YouTube downloaders. And we weren’t the only publication that avoided touching them, despite reader interest.

So many publications have long been dependent on Google ad revenue -- in fact, Google’s ad network was recently ruled an illegal monopoly in the U.S. And Google had a very interesting provision in its rules: Google could revoke ads if you messed with its other businesses.

This wasn’t just theoretical. Back in 2012, GHacks shared that it had Google AdSense ads removed from its entire website for “Google Product Abuse” because the website wrote about a YouTube downloader. Google required the offensive YouTube downloader article removed.

The message was that Google was serious, and that messing with Google’s YouTube business in any way was grounds for Google putting you out of business.

Google has now covered its tracks better -- there’s nothing about “Google Product Abuse” in its current AdSense policies. But the anti-downloader rules appear to have started as a way to protect its own products.

Google just wants to make it annoying

Google has been walking a line for over a decade now: YouTube lets you use downloaders, but Google makes them inconvenient to find and annoying to use. Google tries to stop your favorite websites from writing about them. Google breaks tricks they depend on.

If you want to find a way to download an important video, you’ll find it -- that’s an important escape hatch and means YouTube retains its dominance as an online engine of culture.

But Google loves making YouTube downloads just annoying enough that you won’t bother unless you really want to do it.

Let’s say the AI-related part out loud, too

Also: When Google itself is training its AI on content against the wishes of publishers, why should we feel bad about downloading backup copies of videos that are important to us?

We shouldn’t. Download the video you want. Back it up somewhere safe.

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Something I'm proud of this week
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Microsoft was pitching Windows Recall as the shiny AI feature to carry its Copilot+ PC brand, but no one talks about Recall anymore. The launch was too messy, the feature was too delayed, and the search experience never became as useful as Microsoft promised.

Now, Microsoft’s headline AI feature for Copilot+ PCs has become Click To Do. I dove into how this awkwardly named AI feature works for PCWorld.

Seriously, what a weird name: Haven’t we always been clicking to do things?

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Insights from Thurrott.com
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Google is bringing a search app to Windows -- it’s the return of Google Desktop, but with more AI this time! Also, in more AI-related Google news, Gemini is popping up in Chrome browsers -- no subscription needed.

In Windows news, Consumer Reports is calling on Microsoft to extend support for Windows 10. And Notepad will let you use AI features without spending AI credits.

For Thurrott Premium subscribers, Paul’s been trying out the iPad as a laptop and thinking about the future of computing. He also launched a newsletter that’s not about news -- and isn’t a letter. (Excellent.)

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EULAs and a time machine
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Back in 2012, I wrote this piece about ridiculous EULA clauses for MakeUseOf.

(Yes, I just linked an Archive.org backup of a piece I wrote 13 years ago. I don’t know whether MakeUseOf’s terms of service allowed Archive.org to save a backup copy, but I’m glad they did save copy. Backups are important.)

Looking back at it, my favorite ridiculous EULA clause was the "special consideration" in PC Pitstop's EULA. It said that the first person who noticed this line in the EULA could email the company and receive a financial reward.

It took four months for someone to notice the line and claim a $1000 prize. No one reads EULAs, even when they have something positive to say!

==== Command Prompt ====

C:\> net send * "Have a great weekend!"