Can anyone suggest a reliable (even paid) service that allows me to easily download YouTube videos and audio files?  I do use YouTube Premium, but the download function is somewhat 'walled garden'.  I want to download science videos to my USB stick, for then playing back in my science lessons (the school's internet service is mostly blocked - I'm in Myanmar!).

 

This isn't a VPN issue.  The results from Google Search for 'download YouTube MP4' lists a large number of scam and phishing websites - I'm yet to find a truly decent service amongst them....

Not websites, tbh, there is only one reason a free site like this exists, to mine your data.

 

You could try these, they are apps that you can use on your machine.

 

Tubedigger - https://www.tubedigger.com/download.html

 

or

 

YT-DLP which is command line

 

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

 

https://ytdlp.online

 

these will also cap BBC player downloads which you can access via a VPN.

 

The YT-DLP is probably the actual code that a lot of the websites you have been looking at use, they just put a paywall and GUI around it. 

 

If you are using a Mac - an app called Downie.

 

 

I use yt-dlp on Windows.

46 minutes ago, simon43 said:

Can anyone suggest a reliable (even paid) service that allows me to easily download YouTube videos and audio files?  I do use YouTube Premium, but the download function is somewhat 'walled garden'.  I want to download science videos to my USB stick, for then playing back in my science lessons (the school's internet service is mostly blocked - I'm in Myanmar!).

 

This isn't a VPN issue.  The results from Google Search for 'download YouTube MP4' lists a large number of scam and phishing websites - I'm yet to find a truly decent service amongst them....

 

If you need help with that, just post the links, via PM if necessary and I'll upload them somewhere for you in various qualities.

3 hours ago, recom273 said:

YT-DLP which is command line

 

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

 

 

yt-dlp has a couple front end GUI apps:

 

https://github.com/kannagi0303/yt-dlp-gui

 

https://stacher.io/

Thanks to all!  I'll check out yt-dlp 🙂

On 12/13/2024 at 5:20 PM, simon43 said:

that allows me to easily download YouTube videos and audio files? 

I may have got the wrong end of the stick here (and if so apologies) but recently needed to download some networking videos on YT and found Any Video Converter about easy as anything I have ever used - 

https://www.any-video-converter.com/en8/for_video_free/