YouTube videos are designed to stream, not to sit on your hard disk or solid state drive. But sometimes there are very good reasons why you might want to save videos for watching offline. You might live in the sticks, where reliable broadband is as rare as reliable buses. You might commute through areas where people still point at aeroplanes, never mind let mobile data masts anywhere near them. Or you might be reliant on data connections so congested they resemble the M25 as designed by the Devil himself.
Or you might just want to save a clip for posterity because you suspect it’s about to be deleted.
Whatever the reason, there are plenty of ways to download YouTube videos for free on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. In this feature we’ll share our favorites and explore what’s legal and what isn’t.
To the tubes!
