Devices and Mac OS X version
VLC media player requires Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later. It runs on any 64bit Intel-based Mac. Previous devices are supported by older releases.
Note that the first generation of Intel-based Macs equipped with Core Solo or Core Duo processors is no longer supported. Please use version 2.0.10 linked below.
How To Download Your Favorite YouTube Videos Using VLC Media Player. VLC is undoubtedly one of the best and most popular media players around. VLC Media Player is a free and open-source and has the added advantage of offering users many hidden features. Before solving the VLC not playing YouTube videos from URL issue, let us see why people prefer VLC to play videos from YouTube. Some of the advantages are; Play YouTube videos without annoying ads. Watch videos while you are doing something else on your computer by putting VLC always on top. Take screenshot from videos. Better viewing pleasure. Jan 17, 2020 Click the Download VLC button and save the DMG file to your Mac. Double-click the downloaded DMG file in your Downloads folder. Drag the VLC icon (the orange-and-white cone) to the Applications folder. How to download YouTube videos with VLC. This is a great trick if you’re trying to show someone instructions for doing something on their Windows or Mac systems—especially if you don’t. Get latest version of youtube. Lua: get ready file of youtube lua: http.
Web browser plugin for Mac OS X
Support for NPAPI plugins was removed from all modern web browsers, so VLC's plugin is no longer maintained. The last version is 3.0.4 and can be found here. It will not receive any further updates.
Older versions of Mac OS X and VLC media player
We provide older releases for users who wish to deploy our software on legacy releases of Mac OS X. You can find recommendations for the respective operating system version below. Note that support ended for all releases listed below and hence they won't receive any further updates.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
Use VLC 2.2.8. Get it here.
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Use VLC 2.0.10. Get it for PowerPC or 32bit Intel.
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later is required
Use VLC 0.9.10. Get it for PowerPC or Intel.
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
QuickTime 6.5.2 or later is required
Use VLC 0.8.6i. Get it for PowerPC.
Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
Use VLC 0.8.4a. Get it for PowerPC.
Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah and 10.1 Puma
Use VLC 0.7.0. Get it for PowerPC.
When I reviewed the video player IINA (see “Prepare for Apple Dropping Old Media Formats with the IINA Video Player,” 6 May 2019), quite a few TidBITS readers took it as an opportunity to vent their frustrations about downloading videos from YouTube. Recent changes in Firefox have broken extensions like DownThemAll, which used to be a handy way to download videos.
There are several reasons you might want to download videos from YouTube. Like most cloud-based things, YouTube videos are ephemeral—they vanish all the time for all kinds of reasons. The uploader might pull a video down, YouTube may remove a video in response to a copyright complaint (sometimes legitimate, sometimes not), and a video might disappear if it runs afoul of YouTube’s ever-changing and seemingly haphazard standards for acceptable content.
But preservation isn’t the only reason people download YouTube videos. For example, they may want to download short clips to use in their videos (honoring the doctrine of fair use, of course). A friend of mine accidentally deleted the “sizzle clip” he slaps on the front of every video in iMovie, and he solved the problem by downloading one of his own videos from YouTube and extracting that clip. Or, you may want to be able to play some YouTube videos in a situation where there’s no Internet access.
Whatever the reason, you don’t have to rely on Firefox to download videos from YouTube. There are several solutions on the Mac, and I review a few of them here.
Note that downloading YouTube videos with a utility other than YouTube’s apps (which require a YouTube Premium subscription) nominally violates YouTube’s terms of service:
You shall not download any Content unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that Content. You shall not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for any other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content. YouTube and its licensors reserve all rights not expressly granted in and to the Service and the Content.
That said, I’ve never heard of YouTube punishing a user for downloading videos, although using copyrighted material in videos you upload to YouTube could get you in trouble.
The Command-Line Grand Poobah: youtube-dl
Arguably, the greatest of the YouTube downloaders is the public-domain youtube-dl, a command-line utility that powers many apps like the aforementioned IINA. It’s not the friendliest option, but it’s free and powerful.
The project offers instructions for installing youtube-dl. You can use the curl command or rely on Homebrew, a command-line package manager that I strongly recommend—refer to Homebrew’s home page for a one-line command to install it from Terminal. Then, in Terminal, you can enter brew install youtube-dl to install the download utility.
Once you install youtube-dl, type man youtube-dl in Terminal to see its extensive list of options. But all you really need to do to use it is to type youtube-dl URL in Terminal, where URL is the link to the desired YouTube video. That downloads the video in your current directory. Type cd ~/Downloads before running youtube-dl to download the video to your Downloads folder.
You can play the video after you download it with QuickTime or with a third-party player like IINA or VLC.
The developers of youtube-dl issue updates frequently, which is why I recommend installing it with Homebrew. The first time I tried to download a video for this article, I received an error because I hadn’t updated youtube-dl first. Homebrew makes updating easy with the brew update youtube-dl command, which updates both youtube-dl and Homebrew itself, along with all the packages youtube-dl needs to function.
A Free Graphical App: ClipGrab
ClipGrab is a simple, free utility for macOS that can download individual YouTube videos and even convert them to other formats, including MP3 if you’re only interested in the audio.
Download Youtube Vlc Mac
It’s easy to use: copy a YouTube URL and open ClipGrab. It will automatically extract the URL from the clipboard. Use the Format drop-down menu to choose a format (Original is usually fine if you want video), and click Grab This Clip to download the video. The default download location is your Desktop, but you can change it in the Settings tab.
ClipGrab offers a search tab where you can search for and download videos, but I find it easier to use YouTube’s search engine to find videos and then paste the URL into ClipGrab.
A Setapp Option: Downie
A subscription to Setapp includes several utilities that can download YouTube videos: the torrent client Folx, media players Movist Pro and Elmedia Player, and an app purpose-built for downloading YouTube videos: Downie. (If you’re not a Setapp subscriber, Downie costs $19.99.)
Downie, unlike ClipGrab, is tailor-made for the Mac. You can drag and drop YouTube URLs to Downie’s window or its Dock icon. Downie also comes bundled with a Safari extension, which you enable in Safari > Preferences > Extensions. Once you enable the extension, you can click the Downie icon in Safari’s toolbar to download a video.
In addition to Downie’s simplicity, I like that it downloads subtitles with the video (YouTube automatically generates subtitles for videos). Downie saves subtitles alongside the video as an SRT file. Unfortunately, QuickTime Player doesn’t understand those files, so you need to use a more capable video player like IINA to view them. As long as the SRT file is in the same directory as the video, it works automatically when you play the video in IINA.
Downie can also download an entire YouTube playlist at once. Just drag the playlist URL into Downie and click Playlist to see all the available videos to download. You can then click Add Selected to download the playlist videos.
Vlc Mac Download Youtube Mp3
Download an Entire Channel with 4K Video Downloader
Downie can download an entire playlist, but there’s only one Mac app that I know of that can download an entire YouTube channel: 4K Video Downloader. You can try the app for free (it costs $15 to unlock the entire app). To use it, copy the channel’s URL, open 4K Video Downloader, and click Paste Link to load every video in the channel.
Vlc Free Download
Even better, when 4K Downloader is running, you can subscribe to a channel to download every new video published on the channel automatically.
Note that if a channel has a lot of videos, it can take a long time to download them all and it may use considerable system resources to do so. Nonetheless, I’ve successfully downloaded entire channels containing hundreds of videos with 4K Video Downloader, making it my favorite utility of the bunch.
4K Video Download can also download subtitles, and it can convert YouTube videos to MP3 audio files. Of course, it downloads individual videos as well.
There you have it: four utilities that you can use to download YouTube videos in macOS. Do you have another favorite? Let us know in the comments.