Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.comp.os.windows-11 Subject: David Gewirtz On How To Download YouTube Videos For Free Date: Thu, 15 May 2025 23:10:34 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 27 Message-ID: <1005s9a$3ce7b$1@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 16 May 2025 01:10:35 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="ec2bdedd731496f8af69d70726f807d4"; logging-data="3553515"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX186X6DshOVGqqrL2P4G4B8E" User-Agent: Pan/0.162 (Pokrosvk) Cancel-Lock: sha1:/RFtA7XJEf4uhDNZJTr6LMMYTg0= So, here’s a roundup of download options from video sites, from the viewpoint of someone who’s scared of anything remotely technical . Fun fact: ClipGrab is available as open-source for Linux-only, not for Mac or Windows. (Wise developer, I think, who doesn’t want a flood of bug reports from Mac/Windows noobs who can’t figure out the basics of building something from source.) But I check the site, and its YouTube support only seems to go up to 1080 HD. This in spite of the fact that many videos are available in 4K or even 8K resolution. Also, ClipGrab doesn’t seem to support over 100 different sites, like youtube-dl and its offspring do. The author’s excuse for avoiding the command-line-based Linux tools: Both youtube-dl and yt-dlp offer a very, very wide range of features if you need them. Personally, I'm going to stick with ClipGrab, because I don't have time to turn YouTube downloading into a third full-time job. Yes, they have a lot of options. But they default to downloading the best quality available, without you having to specify any options at all. The options are there just to fine-tune the details of what you want.