How do I download or save a YouTube video to my computer?

Updated: 0/12/2017 by Shivshakti Comuter's & E-MItra Work

YouTube has been designed to only allow users to watch and view videos on their website. Many users want to download or save their favorite YouTube videos to their computer so they can watch them without being connected to the Internet or on other devices. Below are the steps required for downloading and watching YouTube videos on your computer for free.

Note: This page only provides instructions for downloading or saving a YouTube video to your computer. Instructions for saving a video as audio is on our saving only the audio of a YouTube video to an MP3 file page.

Tip: Unless you plan on transferring the video from your computer to your smartphone or tablet after it has been downloaded, we suggest using our how to download a YouTube video on a smartphone or tablet steps for these devices.

Saving YouTube video as a video file on your computer

Today, many websites that allow you to enter the URL of the video you want to save to your computer and get a link to download the video file. Below is a simple three-step process to download any YouTube video.

Note: These steps may not work if at a school or job that's blocking YouTube.

1. First, go to the YouTube page containing the video you want to download. When you've found the page, press Ctrl+L on your keyboard to highlight the text in the address bar, and then Ctrl+C to copy the Internet address. If you are on an Apple computer substitute Ctrl with the Command key.

2. Once this address has been copied, paste that address into the text field below by clicking inside the box and pressing Ctrl+V on your keyboard. Then, click the Download Video button.

Note: If the text field or Download Video button above is not visible or clickable, you can also type savefrom.net/ in front of any YouTube address (URL).

3. Click the download video in browser link, below the green "Download the app and get your video" box. If you don't see that link immediately, wait a few seconds.

Note: Using the above link will allow you to download a Youtube video for free. Ignore any advertisements that say you need to pay money to download a video.

4. If done properly, below the link mentioned above, you will see a preview of the video (as shown below), along with a green Download button and the video format. The default format for downloading the video is either Low or Medium quality.

Click the down arrow on the right-hand side of the Download box and click on the Moreoption in that drop-down list to see additional video formats, such as FLV, 3GP, and WebM. Select the video format you want and click the green Download button.

Note: A Subtitles option may be available in the list when clicking on the "More" option. If subtitles are available for the YouTube video you are downloading, you can choose to include subtitles in the downloaded YouTube video.

After the file has been downloaded, it will be available in your downloads folder.

What about a private video?

You cannot download private videos because the YouTube download service would not have the necessary rights to access the video.

I still can't download a video

If after following the above steps, you do not get a preview like our example, make sure that the link you are using works by opening the page in a new window. Once verified as working, try the above steps again. If the steps continue to not work, try refreshing this page by pressing the F5 key on your keyboard and following the above steps again. If that does not work, try one of the YouTube download sites below. Or, use the link below for installing a utility to download videos on Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems.

• How to download or save streaming video from over 700 sites.

It is only saving as audio and not video

Make sure you are choosing the "MP4 360p" or "MP4 480p" option from the download link. If you choose "Audio MP4 128", it only downloads the audio and not the video. If you did choose the right download link to download the file, it is very likely that the player you are using does not have the necessary codec for video files. Download the free VLC player for your computer and try to play the video file from within VLC and not the player you are currently using.

How to Create a Bootable USB Drive Without Using Any Software

To create a bootable USB drive manually, we will use the Command Prompt as a Windows default program. Here are step by step to create a bootable USB drive as the Windows installation media. To create a bootable USB drive as a Windows installation media, we require at least 4 GB for minimum capacity. Larger capacity is better. At this moment, I use the USB flash drive with 2 GB of capacity as just an example. It's due to some reasons that my 4 GB flash drive encountered an unusual problem that i have to fix later. :D

Step 1: Using DISKPART Command

1. Insert your USB flash drive to your running computer. As the first step, we need to run Command Prompt as administrator. To do this, we need to find cmd by typing 'cmd' in the search box on Windows Start Menu. After search result for 'cmd' appears, right click on it and select "Run as administrator".
2. Type 'diskpart' on Command Prompt (without quotes) and hit Enter. Wait for a while until the DISKPART program run.
3. Type 'list disk' to view active disks on your computer and hit Enter. There would be seen that the active disks shown as Disk 0 for hard drive and Disk 1 for your USB flashdrive with its total capacity.
4. Type 'select disk 1' to determine that disk 1 would be processed in the next step then hit Enter.
5. Type 'clean' and hit Enter to remove all of data in the drive.
6. Type 'create partition primary' and hit Enter. Creating a primary partition and further recognized by Windows as 'partition 1'.
7. Type 'select partition 1' an hit Enter. Choosing the 'partition 1' for setting up it as an active partition.
8. Type 'active' and hit Enter. Activating current partition.
9. Type 'format fs=ntfs quick' and hit Enter. Formatting current partition as NTFS file system quickly.
10. Type 'exit' and hit Enter. Leaving DISKPART program but don't close the Command Prompt instead. We would still need it for next process.

Step 2: Creating Boot Sector

Let us assume that the flash / USB drive is the D: drive and the DVD installer located on drive F :. The first step, we will navigate Command Prompt to set installation DVD as its active directory.

1. By default, Command Prompt's active directory for Administrator permission is on C:\Windows\System32>. We will navigate Command Prompt to set on DVD (F:) as its active directory. Just type 'f:' then hit Enter, and the active directory changed to F:.
2. Type 'cd boot' and hit Enter. Active directory changed to F:\boot>.
3. Type 'bootsect /nt60 d:' and hit Enter. Creating boot sector on D: drive (USB flash drive).
4. Type 'exit' and hit Enter to close the Command Prompt. Until this step we have made a bootable USB drive sucessfully, and the flash drive is ready to be used as a boot media.

Step 3: Copying Installation Files

To install Windows from a bootable USB drive, we just need to copy the whole installation files contained on the DVD installer to flash drive. To do this, open the Command Prompt as in previous steps. Once it opens, type 'xcopy f: \ *. * d: \ / E / H / F' and then press Enter. Wait until all the files in the DVD installer copied to the flash drive. Now bootable USB drive is ready to be used for installing Windows from flash drive and you're done !