You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your entertainment just because you have no service. Here’s our guide on how to watch YouTube videos offline.

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With over 1.8 billion monthly users, YouTube is one of the most popular websites in the world. They supply an endless number of videos that are entertaining, informational, and just plain strange.

Unfortunately, you need the internet to access those wonderful videos. And that’s not something we always have at our disposal.

Luckily, there are some fairly simple solutions to this problem.

Interested in learning more? Continue reading and we’ll walk you through how to watch YouTube videos offline.

Download a Media Player

To watch YouTube videos offline, you’re going to have to save them to your computer.

To do this, you’re first going to have to make sure that you have an application on your computer that can play videos.

One of the most popular media player apps is VLC.

Once you’ve downloaded the app, open it and then select “Open Media”. This will be near the bottom right of the application’s window.

Get the Link

Then, while you still have access to the internet, go over to YouTube. Go the video you want to save and copy the URL.

If you have a Mac, you can copy the link by selecting it and then pressing Command+C. For a Windows system, you would press Control+C.

Now, go back to the app’s media player and click on “Network.” This option will appear on the top menu bar. Go ahead and paste the URL of the YouTube video that you copied into the empty box.

You can paste by pressing Command+V for a Mac or Control+V for Windows.

Go to the top menu bar and select Window. In the dropdown menu, press “Codec Information” if you have a Windows computer or “Media Information” if you’re a Mac user.

Several pieces of information will pop up. Go to the information under “Location” and copy the link that it provides.

Back to the Browser

Paste that URL into your browser. This is now going to open an MP4 version of the video that you can go ahead and save it to your computer.

Download the video by right-clicking on it and selecting “Save Video As”. Select where to save it to and what name to give it.

Get YouTube Download Apps

You can also download apps that are specifically meant to help you take YouTube videos offline. These are great for people who are looking to save from YouTube or any other video streaming site like Vimeo or Twitch.

Many of these apps can also support high-quality files in 4K which is only going to become more important as time goes on.

Download Audio to Your Computer

Sometimes, you might not want to download the video of a YouTube file but just the audio.

To do this, you can search on Google “YouTube to MP3”. You should get a number of high-quality, web-based converters.

All you have to do is copy the link of the YouTube video that you want audio from and paste it into the empty bar on one of these sites.

Then just click the convert button. After a minute or so, the conversion should be done and all you have to do then is click Download.

Some converters have limits on how many videos you can convert. Other ones will give a maximum of runtime for videos. For many converters, you can’t download a video that lasts longer than 10 minutes.

Screen Record

Not interested in downloading an application download videos? You can always just play the video on your desktop and then record your screen.

Apps like QuickTime are free to download and have this option. This option isn’t always preferred, however.

That’s because the beginning of your recorded video won’t be the start of the YouTube video. Instead, it’s going to be a recording of your desktop screen as you move your mouse to start playing the video.

Also, if you want to record the audio too, it’s going to record audio that comes out of your speakers. This is going to be poor quality compared to the actual video’s audio quality since your computer’s internal microphone probably isn’t that great.

Still, you can download audio recording software like SoundFlower which is designed to help your recording application also be able to capture sound directly from your computer, instead of through the microphone.

Get YouTube Videos Onto Your Mobile Phone

One way to transfer downloaded YouTube videos to your cell phone is by emailing the video as an attachment to yourself.

Another way is to drag the video to your iTunes application. Then plug in your phone and transfer the video that way to your cell.

Data costs can be expensive for some people and watching YouTube on your phone can definitely draw an excessive amount of mobile data. Having them saved and downloaded to your phone thus can help save you money too.

Also, without YouTube Red, you can only watch YouTube videos with the application open. This not just wastes data but also drains the battery.

By downloading YouTube videos, you can leave your screen off and listen to your favorite YouTube songs and interviews without worry.

The Importance of Knowing How to Watch YouTube Videos Offline

By knowing how to watch YouTube videos offline, you can now watch your favorite clips and listen to your favorite songs wherever you go.

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