Best Free YouTube Downloaders

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YouTube is where you can find thousands, if not millions, of videos that would be perfect for listening offline; such as songs. There are plenty of websites out there that work as a free YouTube downloader for mac, stripping the audio from a video and downloading it by itself, but we wanted to focus on desktop software.

There are several advantages to using a free YouTube video downloader for Mac program over an online service. For a start they are generally faster and they don’t require users to submit their email address – and run the risk of being spammed – to download files. The best free YouTube downloader on Mac OSX will even let you download several videos at the same time.

Here are some of the very best tools available for downloading the audio from YouTube videos as an MP3 file, or indeed any other format that you might want.

The Best Free YouTube Downloaders for Mac

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Requirements: OS X 10.9+. 19.86MB free space. Version 3.12.252. (24th Jan, 2020). 4.9 Rank based on 812+ users, Reviews(889)
Category: UtilitiesApplication
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Airy is one of the best free YouTube downloaders for Mac Sierra. It allows you to save all your favorite videos from YouTube on to your Mac in order to play them whenever and wherever you want. Play music from YouTube without an internet connection and have them on your computer just in case they are taken down from the website. Airy allows for two free downloads.
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Here’s a look at what this program can do:

  • Download entire YouTube playlists in video and audio format.
  • Download an entire YouTube channel.
  • Download a private YouTube video.
Save youtube videos online

It’s easy to download, install, and use Airy. Just follow these simple steps:

  1. Download and install Airy and activate the full version.
  2. Find the video, playlist, and channel you want to download on YouTube and copy and paste the link into Airy.
  3. Choose whether to save the file as a video or audio file and the specific file type. If you just want the audio then choose MP3. Please note that downloading can take longer depending on how many videos you’re downloading.
  4. Click on the Download button when ready.

Any Video Converter

One could be forgiven for looking at the name Any Video Converter and thinking that it was able to convert videos into any different format. While the program is capable of doing this, another feature is that it can download videos directly from YouTube and save them on your computer as an MP3 file, which is just what we’re after.

Given that this free YouTube downloader for Mac is designed for more than just downloading MP3s, it might be bigger than you expect. This shouldn’t put you off of getting it though. Just be sure to pay attention during the installation to avoid installing unwanted adware programs.

It seems almost like overkill to use something as powerful and versatile as this for the singular purpose of downloading MP3s. Even so, it’s simple to do. Just copy and paste the URL of the YouTube video and wait for your download to finish. Once it’s done you can choose the output format and click on the button to Convert Now. It’s a shame that there isn’t a one-click option but this is just a minor fault against the program.

Any Video Converter

MacX YouTube Video Downloader

MacX YouTube Downloader is a program that can download videos from a range of websites including YouTube, Dailymotion, Facebook, Vimeo, and Vevo. When downloading from YouTube you have the option to choose a range of formats and resolutions. This includes all the common YouTube video videos and 720p, 1080p, Ultra HD, 4K, 5K, and 8K resolutions.

This program is somewhat more professional looking than the others, but the interface is more confusing than it should be; while other apps will automatically start downloading files, MacX will add them to a queue. Users have to click on the “Download Now” button to the bottom right before the app actually does anything.

MacX YouTube Video Downloader

ClipGrab for Mac

ClipGrab is a fast and free simple-to-use video downloader for Mac. It downloads videos in high definition from most of the major video hosting websites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, and more. What’s so great about ClipGrab is that it automatically detects whenever you paste a link from a video site onto your clipboard and is able to automatically download them.

ClipGrab is able to convert (though conversion is only possible on Intel Macs), download videos in MPEG, OGG, WMV, Theora, MP3, OGG Vorbis, or just download and store them in their original format.

One thing to note is that conversion may not work for all sites. When we wanted to download an FLV video from Vimeo we found that we couldn’t choose a different format for the video. So don’t expect to be able to download everything in every format.

ClipGrab for Mac

As you can no doubt tell there’s lots of different choices when it comes to downloading YouTube videos on to Mac. If we were to recommend just one of these programs it would have to be Airy. We prefer apps that are designed for a singular purpose because they tend to run faster and aren’t overloaded with unnecessary features.

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Requirements: OS X 10.9+ , 19.86MB size
Version 3.12.252 (24th Jan, 2020) Release notes
Category: UtilitiesApplication
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